What Did Ancient Egyptians Do All Day? (Their Diaries Survived)

Ancient humans in Egypt kept a sick-day register 3,200 years ago, and it still survives. A stonecutter called Seba missed work because a scorpion stung him, and a scribe wrote it down in red ink. This is a day in the life of the tomb-builders of Deir el-Medina, told through their own records. In this video: • What ancient Egyptian workers actually did all day, and how hard their commute was • The real excuses for missing work: illness, embalming a brother, "drinking with Khonsu" • How the workers were paid in grain, and why they had a healer on the payroll • The first strike anyone ever wrote down • How more than 10,000 of their notes ended up where we could find them CHAPTERS 0:00 The scorpion excuse 1:04 One slab in the British Museum 1:17 A commute down a cliff 2:22 Red ink: every excuse written down 3:25 When the boss is the reason 4:56 Paid in grain 5:55 The rations stop coming 7:06 How did any of this survive? 8:12 The last line SOURCES • British Museum, EA 5634: limestone register of attendance, Year 40 of Ramesses II, c. 1250 BC, 15 in (38.5 cm) tall. https://www.britishmuseum.org/collect... • Gräßler, N. "Manuscript of the Month 54." Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, University of Hamburg. https://www.csmc.uni-hamburg.de/publi... • Janssen, J. J. (1980). Absence from work by the necropolis workmen of Thebes. Studien zur Altägyptischen Kultur 8: 127–152. • Wente, E. (1990). Letters from Ancient Egypt, no. 149 (Pa-Ra-Hotep's letter, O. DeM 303). • Theban Mapping Project. "Tomb builders." https://thebanmappingproject.com/arti... • Austin, A. (2017). What tracing a tough commute in ancient Egypt reveals about osteoarthritis. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/what-trac... • Wilson, H. "Bread, beer and economics, part 1." Ancient Egypt magazine. https://the-past.com/feature/hilary-w... • Museo Egizio, Turin Strike Papyrus (Cat. 1880), Year 29 of Ramesses III, c. 1157 BC; trans. P. J. Frandsen (1990). https://collezionepapiri.museoegizio.... • Haring, B. (2018). Leiden University, on the Deir el-Medina ostraca. https://scholarlypublications.univers... • Bruyère, B. (1951). Chronique d'Égypte 51 (the Great Pit excavation, 1949–51). PEOPLE AND PLACES Deir el-Medina (the tomb-builders' village near Luxor) · Valley of the Kings · Seba · Qenherkhepeshef (scribe) · Simut · Neferabu · Pendua · Khonsu · Pennub · Paneb (foreman) · Pa-Ra-Hotep (draftsman) · Paherypedjet (healer) · Amennakht (scribe of the strike) · Bernard Bruyère · Anne Austin EVIDENCE NOTE The absence register, the strike papyrus, the letters and the quotes are real records. The register covers one crew in one year, around 1250 BC; the strike happened about a century later under Ramesses III, so these are not the same men. "Grain worked like money" and "the earliest documented government health care plan" are interpretations, credited to the researchers who make them. These workers were skilled and paid by the state, so they weren't typical Egyptians. Scenes in the animation are illustrations. If you liked this, the same village is in our video on why ancient Egyptians never needed air conditioning:    • Why Ancient Egyptians Never Needed AC in 4...   Which excuse would you have used? a) The scorpion stung me b) I'm embalming my brother c) I was drinking with Khonsu For business inquiries: ancestorystudio@gmail.com #AncientHumans #AncientEgypt #History