Thebes·1250 BC

The Village of the Tomb-Makers

Name: Daily Life in Ancient Egypt (Thebes, 1250 BC) | History for Sleep
Uploaded: 2026-08-07
Duration: 2 h 46 min 53 s
Description: In the fortieth year of Ramesses the Great, a scribe in a walled village outside Thebes wrote forty names down a piece of limestone in black ink — and beside each one, in red, the reason that man had not come to work.

2 hr 46 min·7 August 2026·17 chapters·15 sources

Thebes, 1250 BC — an illustration made for this film.

An illustration made for this film. Nothing loads from YouTube until you press play.

In the fortieth year of Ramesses the Great, a scribe in a walled village outside Thebes wrote forty names down a piece of limestone in black ink — and beside each one, in red, the reason that man had not come to work.

That stone is still readable. This is the world it came out of.

Three hours of slow, sourced documentary on ordinary life in Egypt around 1250 BC. Not pharaohs and gold — the men who cut the royal tombs and the women who ground their flour. What they ate, what they were paid, who they married, what happened when it went wrong, what medicine could and could not reach, and what they did when somebody died. Everything here is read from surviving evidence: ration lists, court records, love poems, medical papyri, a dream manual, and an attendance register kept in two colours of ink. Narrated quietly, at a pace meant for the end of the day.

Chapters

17 · each opens the film at that point

0:00The Fortieth Year 7:03The Bank Where Nobody Lives 14:53Eight Days in the Dark 24:10The Reasons in Red 34:17The Wage You Could Eat 44:43There Was No Wedding 53:01Judged by the People Next Door 1:02:04A Number Taken in Private 1:11:45Six Hundred Names 1:21:07Down Two Steps From the Street 1:30:46Be a Scribe 1:41:05Once a Year the Doors Open 1:52:27When the Star Comes Back 2:02:49Everything They Could Do 2:14:03An Ailment Not to Be Treated 2:24:45Seventy Days 2:36:43Going Forth by Day

Sources

as published with the film

Ostracon BM EA 5634, the workmen’s absence register, year 39–40 of Ramesses II — British Museum
The Papyrus of Ani, BM EA 10470 — British Museum
Papyrus Chester Beatty I (love songs), Chester Beatty Library, Dublin
Papyrus Chester Beatty III, the Dream Book, BM EA 10683
Papyrus Lansing, and the Middle Kingdom Satire of the Trades
The Ebers Papyrus and the Edwin Smith surgical papyrus
Turin Stela 50066 — Museo Egizio
Bernard Bruyère, excavations at Deir el-Medina, 1922–1951
Jac. J. Janssen, Commodity Prices from the Ramessid Period (1975)
Anne Austin, on health care and tattooing at Deir el-Medina; with Marie-Lys Arnette, “Of Ink and Clay” (2022)
Delwen Samuel, on Egyptian baking and brewing, Science (1996)
Kathrin Gabler, Who’s Who Around Deir el-Medina (2018)
Barry Kemp, on the Ramesseum storerooms
Kent Weeks and the Theban Mapping Project, KV5
Ghalioungui, Khalil and Ammar, “On an Ancient Egyptian Method of Diagnosing Pregnancy,” Medical History (1963)

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