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Posted on 06/19/2025 9:45:09 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
During the 19th Dynasty (ca. 1295–1186 b.c.), the village of Deir el-Medina, on the Nile's west bank in Upper, or southern, Egypt, was home to a community of civil servants and artisans who built and decorated the royal tombs in the nearby Valley of the Kings. Scholars are on unusually familiar terms with these people. "As expert scribes and draftsmen, they left quite a lot of writing," says Egyptologist Rob Demarée of Leiden University. At the site, archaeologists have excavated tens of thousands of texts written on papyrus and ostracons -- discarded pieces of pottery or stone used like scrap paper. In 1997, Demarée began compiling these texts into an online database that now contains more than 5,000 records. Although some texts are accounts of mundane work, others paint a portrait of life in the ancient village.
About 25 years ago, while perusing Berlin's Egyptian Museum and Papyrus Collection's newly digitized archive of ostracons, Demarée came across a curious note on a limestone ostracon that had been found at Deir el-Medina in 1913. The note reads: "To Khay. Let there be brought some fresh goose fat directly, very, very quickly because the cat has eaten that which was brought to me yesterday." The exploits of the mischievous feline caught Demarée's attention, but the brief memo provided no further context for the rush request...
Years later, a colleague sent Demarée the text of a related letter written on another limestone ostracon, this one housed in the Royal Pump Room Museum in the northern English town of Harrogate. It reads, in part: "Draftsman Nebre cannot sleep well. Let someone look for some fresh goose fat and let it be brought at once. Please go to the woman who knows about deaths." ...
(Excerpt) Read more at archaeology.org ...
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Statuette of Nebre© The Trustees of the British Museum
Apparently the site is littered with texts. /rimshot
Stone Cold Medina......................
😁😎............................
I’ve actually been to Harrogate and to the pump room a couple of times. Neat town.
My cat Daisy approves of stealing all the fat.
What’s wrong with that? Cats rule.
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