The ‘Necropolis Journal’ and the Absentee Records of the Deir el-Medina Workforce

The workmen's village at Deir el-Medina, which was engaged in the quarrying and decoration of tombs in the Valley of the Kings and Valley of the Queens, has left a remarkable full record reflecting many aspects of Deir el-Medina workers' day to day employment. These are of particular interest for the light they shed on the system and nature of the work. Although the potential of these records is great, their evaluation is severely hampered by the fact that they are so fragmentary and difficult to interpret in any systematic fashion.The available documents of this class, generally referred to today as the ‘Necropolis Journal’, are here gathered together and analysed. The nonliterary texts from Deir el-Medina may be shown to fall conveniently into one of two distinct categories: legal documents; and socio-economic documents. The socio-economic documents may themselves be subdivided into Turnus lists; absentee lists; provisions documentation; name lists and true journal texts.From the style and content of the various documents it is possible to draw two principal conclusions:1. Apart from true journal texts, the main body of the ‘Necropolis Journal’ consists of Turnus lists and absentee lists, which had originally been drawn up as separate memoranda.2. From an analysis of the absentee lists and the ‘Necropolis Journal’ it appears that the Deir el-Medina workforce was reorganized in around the Year 24 of Ramesses III and again under Ramesses V. Similar reorganizations of the tomb workmen are to have taken place in the reign of Horemheb and, another is referred to in Papyrus Greg, as I have shown in a previous article.From these facts we may suppose that the organization of the workmen was flexible, and altered as and when occasion demanded

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