Deir el-Medina, like Kahun and the town being uncovered at Giza, is a community of workmen and their families, supervisors and foremen and their families, all dedicated to building the great tombs of the Egyptian Kings. The image of hundreds, perhaps thousands of toiling slaves, whipped by overseers, seems seared into the modern consciousness, and "everyone" is convinced that the despots who ruled Egypt with iron greedy fists must have built their wealth and glory on the bleeding backs of this tortured labor.
Nothing can be farther from truth (except perhaps that aliens in space ships pressed a button and built the Giza complex, and other great monuments.) The more work being done on these villages sounds a clear message that, while they worked hard, these villages were made up of mostly free and willing citizens, doing their part to ensure the afterlife of their King. The Giza town dates from the Old Kingdom, Kahun from the Middle Kingdom, and Deir el-Medina from the New Kingdom. In each, we can see the daily lives and some of the larger politics that fascinate us so about Egypt.
Deir el-Medina, which in Arabic means "monastery of the city", was called Pa-demi by the workmen, simply, "the town," though it was also called Set Maa, "the place of truth." is one of the most well-preserved ancient settlements in all Egypt. It lies near Thebes and was a highly skilled community of craftsmen who passed their expertise on from father to son. The community included the workmen and their wives, children and other dependents, as well as coppersmiths, carpenters, potters, basket-makers, and a part-time physician. The workers belonged to what we today would call the middle class, having no royal or noble connections, and much of their work was unglamorous.
These workers cut and prepared the tombs in the Valley of the Kings and in the Valley of the Queens, both on the West Bank at Thebes, and were administered directly by the vizier. They were better educated and better paid than the vast majority of their contemporaries elsewhere in Egypt. A number of the inhabitants augmented their income by producing furniture and funerary items for surrounding communities, and so they bought and sold in the west Theban markets, intermarried with the Theban population, and visited the Theban temples.
The village was located southeast of the Valley, on the Nile side of the western mountains, in a barren, waterless pocket in the hills. One hundred or more individuals including children lived in the community, and more than 30 foreign names have been identified there. In addition to the names of the viziers and other high officials who oversaw from Thebes, the names, families, and other details of the workmen’s lives are known.

The site has yielded a wealth of textual material providing information about the way these people lived, their marriages, inheritances, divorces, how they sought legal redress, advice from the gods. In addition to papyri, large flakes of limestone were used by scribes as note pads. Thousands of these ostraca were found inscribed with letters, notes, records, and many other kinds of evidence concerning the lives of the men and their families, most dating from the 19th and 20th Dynasties.
For much of the time Deir el-Medina was a community of women. They were entrusted with many responsibilities of their own, and in one case a foreman’s wife paid out the workmen’s wages in her husband’s absence. Many of the wives may have been literate, since messages were sent to them at times, when it is doubtful that scribes were present, who might have translated the messages. Many of the women also held religious titles such as chantress, singer or priestess, including duties in major temple cults outside the village. There are stelae showing women making offerings venerating their ancestors. At least one example is recorded of the wife of a scribe who willed distribution of goods from her estate to her sons, indicating that women had legal rights