Ancient Egyptian Workers Had Sick Days. We Have Their Excuses.

3,200 years ago, a scribe in Egypt wrote down every day the royal tomb builders missed work, and why: ill, eye trouble, stung by a scorpion, embalming his brother, drinking with a friend, brewing. This is the daily life of the workmen of Deir el-Medina, the village of the men who dug and painted the tombs in the Valley of the Kings: their ten-day week, their pay in grain and beer, their quarrels over donkeys, a foreman accused of robbing the king, and the first recorded strike in history. Told with real tomb paintings, ostraca and papyri. 0:00 Intro 0:56 The secret village 2:05 The gang 3:13 Paid in grain 4:04 The register 5:10 The excuses 6:13 Letters and quarrels 7:22 We are hungry 8:21 The worst foreman 9:13 Our village Main sources British Museum, ostracon EA 5634 (the absence register, year 40 of Ramesses II): https://www.britishmuseum.org/collect... N. Gräßler, "O. BM 5634", Manuscript of the Month, CSMC Hamburg: https://www.csmc.uni-hamburg.de/publi... The register's entries (after Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions III, and Janssen 1980): https://www.egyptianhistorypodcast.co... Theban Mapping Project, "Tomb Builders": https://www.thebanmappingproject.com/... Museo Egizio, the Turin Strike Papyrus: https://collezionepapiri.museoegizio.... The strike texts, tr. P. J. Frandsen: https://libcom.org/article/records-st... British Museum, Papyrus Salt 124 (the complaint against Paneb): https://www.britishmuseum.org/collect... A. Austin, "Accounting for Sick Days" (2014): https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi... Deir el-Medina: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deir_el... ; Paneb: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paneb ; Sennedjem's tomb: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TT1 A. G. McDowell, Village Life in Ancient Egypt: Laundry Lists and Love Songs (1999); J. J. Janssen, Donkeys at Deir el-Medina (2005) Pictures Paintings from the tomb of Sennedjem (TT1), with Eduardo Toda's 1887 drawings and Charles Wilkinson's facsimile (Metropolitan Museum of Art); tombs of Pashedu, Inherkha and Paneb at Deir el-Medina; the feast of Nebamun (British Museum); ostraca and papyri from the Museo Egizio, Turin (the Strike Papyrus, the plan of the tomb of Ramesses IV, the Necropolis Journal, figured ostraca), the Louvre, the British Museum, LACMA and the Museum of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm; tools, bread and a stela from the Met and the Museo Egizio; 1905-1914 photographs from the Schiaparelli excavations (Museo Egizio archive) and Félix Bonfils. Wikimedia Commons, public domain or CC0 except: Sennedjem and Pashedu tomb photos by R Prazeres (CC BY-SA 4.0); Deir el-Medina photos by Djehouty (CC BY-SA 4.0), Roland Unger (CC BY-SA 3.0) and Gerd Eichmann (CC BY-SA 4.0, also the Inherkha tomb); Valley of the Kings and Medinet Habu by Vyacheslav Argenberg (CC BY 4.0); Louvre work record, workmen's list and Mose letter by SpeakingArch (CC BY-SA 4.0); Stockholm ostraca by Hanay (CC BY-SA 3.0); tomb of Seti II by Tobeytravels (CC BY-SA 2.0); the Younger Memnon by JRennocks (CC BY 4.0); Abbott Papyrus by Captmondo (CC BY-SA 3.0). Some illustrations and the narration were made with the help of AI tools. All the tomb paintings, ostraca, papyri, objects and photographs are real. #history #ancientegypt #egypt #archaeology #valleyofthekings