What Did Ancient Egyptians Actually Do All Day?

What Did Ancient Egyptians Actually Do All Day? We know what the ancient Egyptians believed about the afterlife, the names of their gods, the spells for the dead — and almost nothing about what an ordinary Egyptian actually did between waking up and going to sleep. This is that missing story: the breakfast, the back-breaking work, the boss, the world's first recorded strike, and the rubbish heap that quietly handed an entire ordinary world back to us. Their lives turned out to be far more normal — and far more relatable — than the pyramids ever let on. 📚 Sources are listed at the bottom of this description. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ SOURCES & FURTHER READING ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ The Deir el-Medina ostraca — thousands of workmen's notes, IOUs, and the attendance register recording why each man missed work — from the royal tomb-builders' village The Turin Strike Papyrus — the first recorded labour strike, in year 29 of Ramesses III (~1157 BC), written down by the scribe Amennakht The Diary of Merer / Wadi al-Jarf papyri — the oldest inscribed papyri ever found, from the reign of Khufu (~2560 BC); excavated by Pierre Tallet's team in 2013 The Satire of the Trades (the Instruction of Dua-Khety) — a Middle Kingdom text bullying a son into becoming a scribe The Giza workers' town — bakeries, breweries, and healed skeletons showing the pyramid builders were paid, cared-for labourers, not slaves — excavations led by Mark Lehner and Zahi Hawass Further reading: ancient Egyptian women's legal rights; dental wear from sand in the diet (including the mummy of Ramesses II) #AncientEgypt #DailyLife #Egypt #Pyramids #Egyptology #DeirElMedina #AncientHistory #History