Servants In the Place of Truth: Who Built the Tombs in the Valley of the Kings?

For almost 500 years – from the 16th to 11th century BC – tombs, many of the elaborate and ornate, were constructed in the Valley of the Kings for the rulers and powerful nobles of the Egyptian New Kingdom. Needless to say, the civilization’s top dogs didn’t roll up their sleeves and do the work themselves. So who did?

Like the pyramids, the tombs of the Valley of the Kings were built by skilled labourers and artisans, who came to the site in the Theban Mountains every day from Deir el-Medina, a specially-built village that lay just south of the valley within easy walking distance. Founded at the earliest during the reign of Thutmosis I (c. 1506-1493 BC) Deir el-Medina’s ancient name was Set Maat which translates as “The Place of Truth”. The workmen themselves were known as “Servants in the Place of Truth”.

They were a mixture of Egyptians, Nubians and Asiatics from across the kingdom, each free citizens. The artisans were middle-class and among the most skilled stone-cutters, plasterers, architects and alike in Egypt. Supporting them was a team of manual workers – water-carriers and cooks – as well as their wives and families, and those involved in the administration and decoration of the tombs and temples. The artisans would be organised into two groups: gangs on left and right, who worked almost like a ship’s crew simultaneously on opposite sides of the tomb, while being overseen by a foreman.

Bruyère’s Study

We know so much about the workers who lived Deir el-Medina mainly because of the work of French archaeologist Bernard Bruyère. It was he who first excavated the village properly, starting in 1922. At the time, the world was watching on in fascination as Howard Carter opened the spectacular tomb of King Tut, so Bruyère’s work received only limited attention. But it produced some remarkable results.

Between 1922 and 1951, he carried out one of the most thorough studies of community life anywhere in the ancient world, revealing all from the nature of social interactions in Deir el-Medina to living and working conditions for the tomb builders. He was able to determine intimate details about their daily lives, from their wages (as much as three times the rations of a normal field hand) to the length of their working week (eight days on and two days off) to excuses for pulling a sickie (ranging from illness to family matters, rows with the wife and even having a hangover).

Recent Digs

More insights into the lives of workers are being gained all the time in the Valley of the Kings, as a new surge of interest grows in the tomb builders. The first season of research at a hut village also discovered by Bruyère in 1935 – on the slope of a mountain midway between the valley and Deir el-Medina – was completed by Finnish archaeologists in February 2009. After being excavated by Bruyère, the small settlement – full of temporary dwellings used by workers from Deir el-Medina while onsite – was overlooked by other archaeologists on the hunt for more glamorous finds, and left to be destroyed.

“Passers-by have used the huts as dumps and restrooms,” said Jaana Toivari-Viitala, Docent of Egyptology at the University of Helsinki, in a statement. “Fortunately, while we still have some surface cleaning to do, documentation and conservation are off to a good start.” Toivari-Viitala and her team are set to return for another season of fieldwork at the village this October.

Elsewhere, Dr Zahi Hawass of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Archaeology (SCA) has been heading up a dig in the valley since 2007, which has discovered more evidence still of the everyday lives of workers. “We found graffiti,” he told Heritage Key in an exclusive video interview, “and an area where the workmen would sit down, and a hole for their food and drink.

“And we found in the area, worker men huts,” he continues. “We know that the worker men used to come from Deir el-Medina, and they would come and live in the huts until they could finish creating the tomb, or cutting the tomb.”

 

Video: Dr Hawass in the Valley of the Kings

Unrest, Strikes and Tomb Robberies

Deir el-Medina was abandoned by 1110-1080 BC, during the reign of Ramesses XI, who was the last of the royals to have a tomb built for himself in The Valley of the Kings. Raids by Libyans were a constant threat by that stage and civil war loomed over the kingdom. Unrest had clearly started to set in among the workers too – evidence from the reign of Ramesses III suggests that the Deir el-Medina workforce may have been the first in history to stage a sit-down strike, around 1170 BC, in protest at lack of supplies. They were still known to be grumbling 50 years on.
 
In the final years of inhabitation at Deir el-Medina, many workers set to redress their poor working conditions with light-fingeredness. It’s believed that the village was deliberately set apart from the wider population of the Thebes area in order to preserve the secrecy of the work ongoing in the Valley of the Kings, and protect its graves from robbers. Yet that was to overlook the threat to the tombs from the workmen themselves, who were able to use their intimate knowledge of their build to plunder them better than anyone.

A widespread culture of tomb robbing had developed by the start of the reign of Ramesses IV (c. 1155-1149 BC), with officials accepting bribes to look the other way, and fences ready to sell-on stolen goods. The very workers who built the tombs in the Valley of the Kings may, it seems, be the same people responsible for ransacking almost all of them in antiquity.

Deir el-Medina picture (top) by kairoinfo4u; worker at the Valley of the Kings picture by Archie Wong. All rights reserved.

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