c. 1250 BC · Deir el-Medina, a village of tomb workers · In research
Welcome to 1250 BC.
A village that built tombs and left its own paperwork behind.
Arrival mode
Who are you?
You are a tomb painter. Age 31. Living at A walled village on the west bank at Thebes.
You wake in a mudbrick house before the heat arrives. Water has been delivered; grain rations have not.
Now explore your day
- Dawn — walk the path over the hill to the tomb site.
- Morning — grind pigment, mix plaster, paint by lamplight underground.
- Midday — bread and beer rations, distributed and recorded.
- Evening — return over the hill; dispute the late grain delivery with the scribe.
Everyday life · historical layers
What we know, what was written, what we think
Homes
Excavated mudbrick houses with front rooms, cellars, roof access and painted domestic shrines.
Food
Bread loaves, brewing vessels, fish bone, date and fig remains.
Work
Tool marks, unfinished tombs, absence registers naming workers and reasons.
Medicine
Mummified remains showing disease, healed injury and dentistry.
Living museum
Walk through it
Village house
Workshop
Marketplace
Time compare
The achievements and the limitations of each era, side by side.
Grain rations
↓ Monthly salary
Payment in food, measured and recorded, with the same disputes.
Ostracon note
↓ Text message
Cheap, disposable writing for everyday business.
Soundscape
Environmental sound only. No music unless it would have been heard.
Historical garden
What was growing
Papyrus
Writing, rope, boats
Cultivated and harvested at scale.
Date palm
Food and sweetening
Stones survive in enormous quantity.
Emmer wheat
Bread and beer
The base of the entire economy.
A day in the life