One Night With the Pharaoh's Tomb Builders, 1250 BC | 90 Min of History for Sleep

The sun sets behind the cliffs of western Thebes, and the men who carve and paint the tombs of Ramesses the Great walk home over the hills. Spend one quiet night in their walled village, Deir el-Medina, around 1250 BC: water carried up by donkey, bread and beer for supper, notes scribbled on flakes of stone, small gods in the wall niches, and beds with wooden headrests under a sky full of stars. Lie back and let the village go quiet around you. The narration ends at 59:28; soft night sounds carry on until the end. 🎬 Handcrafted with the Klyssa.app video editor: klyssa.app Chapters 0:00 Sunset over the west bank of Thebes 4:19 The crew comes home 10:55 Water by donkey 15:35 The house on the long street 22:55 Bread, beer and supper 28:50 Writing on stone 35:26 The gods of the village 40:34 The painted tomb of Sennedjem 45:19 Lamps and stars 50:20 Headrests and sleep 56:28 Dawn over the Nile 59:28 Night sounds until the end What's real: the night is set in Year 40 of Ramesses II, the year of a real register of the crew's days off now in the British Museum. Houses, food, writing, gods and the tomb of Sennedjem follow the excavated village and its tens of thousands of written ostraca. Where the sources are unsure, the narration says "perhaps" or "historians believe". Sources British Museum, ostracon EA 5634 (absence register, Year 40 of Ramesses II); University of Hamburg CSMC, Manuscript of the Month 54 Koltsida and Haring, "Deir el-Medina", UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology Metropolitan Museum: "An Artisan's Tomb in New Kingdom Egypt"; facsimile 30.4.2 by C. K. Wilkinson (1922); "Food and Feasts"; headrest 26.2.11 Museo Egizio Turin: TT1 photo archive; satirical ostraca; stela of Neferabu (N. 50058) Theban Mapping Project: "Tomb Builders"; KV7 Davies, Genealogies of the Workmen in the Deir el-Medina Community (University of Liverpool) Images of Deir el-Medina: Huts, Houses, Great Pit (citing Bruyère, Černý, Meskell, McDowell) Driaux, "Water supply of ancient Egyptian settlements", Water History (2016) Janssen, "Accountancy at Deir el-Medina" UCL Digital Egypt: Manuscripts from Deir el-Medina; figured ostraca British Museum: the Dream Book (EA 10683); stela of Neferabu to Ptah (EA 589) Brooklyn Museum: "Cat and Mouse" ostracon 37.51E; Egyptian Museum Cairo JE 63801 ISAC (University of Chicago), News & Notes 246, on Egyptian love songs American Research Center in Egypt: "Royal Gods: Ahmose-Nefertari and Amenhotep I" Smith, "Maids at the grindstone", Journal of Lithic Studies Herodotus, Histories 2.95 Perimeter Institute and McMaster University on Ramesside star clocks; Eton College Collections, the Amduat New Orleans Museum of Art, "Queen Nefertari's Egypt"; The Past, "Nefertari: into the Valley of the Queens" World History Encyclopedia, "Deir el-Medina" Narration: AI voice (ElevenLabs). Paintings: AI-generated in an old-master style, with historical prompts we researched and checked ourselves. Some landscape scenes use short AI-generated camera moves. Sounds (CC0, Freesound): river by Biofonik, wind by BotanicalVan, crickets by Daphne_in_Wonderland, tawny owl by Vrymaa, fire by a deleted Freesound user. #historyforsleep #ancientegypt #sleepstory