Where can I find reliable primary sources written by Ancient Egyptian laborers?

Upvote:2

You're not going to find any written evidence from workers, not only because they were usually illiterate but also because the Pharaoh was a king-god, therefore he was infallible to his people.

Most of what we know about Egypt is religious stuff, basically because it was written in stone or was copied once the original got in bad condition, whereas common people probably didn't have any way to preserve their writings.

Upvote:2

Back then writing systems were more difficult to master, writing and copying was very labor-intensive, and reading wasn't a particularly useful skill for a laborer. If you could do that, you wouldn't be a laborer. It would be kind of like today asking for examples of available computer operating systems written by janitors.

However, since writing was relatively exceptional, we do have moderately complete lists of extant ancient Egyptian papyrus (papyri?). You could look through that and see if anything looks useful for your project.

Upvote:18

We actually have a lot of good evidence written by workers from that period. The bulk of that evidence comes from the workers' village of Deir el-Medina which housed the men who built the tombs in the Valley of the Kings (and their families) during the 18th to 20th dynasties (Ramesses II was 19th dynasty).

It is probably not surprising that the people who built the tombs of the Pharaohs also had pretty spectacular tombs themselves, and you can get a lot of information from the inscriptions in these tombs. Perhaps more important though are the records of the daily life of the villagers in the form of letters and many other documents written on papyrus and ostraca (including a record of the first known workers strike in history during the reign of Ramesses III).

From studying these records, we can even identify individual workers by name. In many cases, we know what as particular worker's job was, which house they lived in, and when they were given time off to work on their own tomb or to brew beer.

Thousands of these documents have been transcribed and published, and thousands more remain to be transcribed in the ongoing project. The records were written by people at all levels within the village society, women as well as men. Since these workers were directly employed by the Pharaoh, you will find a lot of evidence which will help you determine whether Ramesses II was indeed an effective king, and also whether his successor, Merneptah, was any better or worse.

A Google search for "Deir el Medina primary sources" will give you plenty of web-sites documenting the kind of primary sources you are looking for.

I should warn you, however, it is always dangerous to derive your conclusions before you have reviewed the evidence. If you use evidence selectively to support your conclusion, you are going to look very foolish when your teacher produces evidence you have ignored to challenge you.

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