What Did People in Ancient Egypt Actually Do All Day?

Ancient Egyptian workers are supposed to have spent their lives dragging stone under a whip. Then a village of tomb painters left behind a year of attendance records, and the excuses in them are far more human: a scorpion bite, a sick mother, a day off to embalm a relative, and one man who missed work three times in a single year just to brew beer. The men of Deir el-Medina, called Set-Maat, "The Place of Truth," in their own time, carved and painted the hidden royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings. They lived in a sealed village, worked in shifts, and were paid in grain, fish, oil, linen, and beer. Someone tracked every absence in red ink. "Wife or daughter bleeding" counted as a reason to stay home. Nobody was fined. It worked, until year twenty-nine of Ramesses III's reign, when the grain stopped arriving. Eighteen days past payday, a workforce that knew exactly where the kings were buried had to decide what to do. The papyrus that survives records only one line of what they said. Follow one worker through a single working day and see how a schedule, a paycheck, and a stack of sick notes explain ancient Egyptian daily life better than the pyramids do. And if the tomb builders of Egypt were this aware of their own leverage, what were the workers in Mesopotamia, famously paid almost entirely in beer, doing the day their brewery ran late? CHAPTERS 0:00 The Valley That Grows Nothing 0:48 The Picture Everyone Gets Wrong 1:37 Set-Maat, The Place of Truth 2:09 The Ancient Egyptian Workweek 2:49 The World's Oldest Sick Notes 3:49 The Beer Excuse 4:27 "Wife or Daughter Bleeding" 5:05 Year Twenty-Nine of Ramesses III 5:34 Eighteen Days Late 6:13 What Happened Next 6:38 The Lever Every Workforce Finds 7:11 Back to Your Morning Walk 7:54 Why the Paperwork Matters #AncientEgypt #EgyptHistory #DeirElMedina #ValleyOfTheKings #AncientHistory #Egyptology #Pharaoh #HistoryFacts #AncientCivilizations #LaborHistory TAGS ancient egypt, ancient egypt daily life, what did ancient egyptians do all day, ancient egyptian workers, ancient egyptian work week, deir el medina, set maat, place of truth, valley of the kings, tomb builders, who built the tombs of egypt, ramesses III, turin strike papyrus, ancient egyptian strike, first labor strike in history, ancient egyptian beer, beer as wages, ancient egyptian sick days, ancient egyptian attendance record, ancient egypt history, egyptology, ancient egypt documentary, ancient egyptian village, pharaoh, new kingdom egypt, ancient civilizations, ancient history, history documentary, ancient and alive SEARCHES PEOPLE MAKE ON YOUTUBE what did ancient egyptians do all day ancient egypt daily life were the pyramid builders slaves who built the tombs in the valley of the kings deir el medina explained first labor strike in history ancient egyptian workers strike ramesses III did ancient egyptians get paid ancient egyptian work week how did ancient egyptians live ancient egyptian beer why were ancient egyptians paid in beer ancient egyptian jobs ancient egypt sick days ancient egypt facts they never taught you