What Was Life Like for an Ancient Egyptian Family? The Village That Built Pharaoh's Tombs

A woman grinds barley before sunrise. Her husband sleeps on the roof of a house sitting in a desert valley with no river, no fields, and not one working well. Every drop of water arrives by donkey. He isn't a farmer, a soldier, or a priest — he carves the tombs of the pharaohs, in a village built to guard the greatest secret in Egypt. This is the true story of Deir el-Medina, the walled community of royal tomb builders on the west bank of the Nile at Thebes. Paid entirely in grain because Egypt had no coined money, the villagers were also some of the most literate people in the ancient world, leaving behind thousands of ostraca — notes, bills, love poems, and one worker's excuse for missing a shift: he was brewing beer. Inside this video: Why Egypt's kings abandoned the pyramids and started hiding their tombs underground How an entire village survived in a valley where nothing could grow A day in the life of a tomb-cutter, his wife, and their daughter The world's earliest recorded labor strike The tomb robbery confession that named workers from the village itself The strange deep pit that gave archaeologists everything we know about this place #ancientegypt #pharaoh #history #DeirElMedina #valleyofthekings #ancienthistory #Egyptology #historydocumentary #ancientegypt #ancientwisdom #ancientcivilizations