Ostracon with tomb measurement plans

This ostracon (British Museum. EA8505) was discovered in Deir el-Medina, the site of the famed Worker’s Village (Set Ma’at). The Worker’s Village housed the workmen and their families employed to construct nearby royal and aristocratic tombs.

It is officially classified as a heritage site due to the large number of archaeological discoveries left by the ancient labourers who resided in the area over the ages. The community’s literate and artistic population left an abundance of ostracon (pottery shards that served as a ‘paper’) full of words and images depicting not just building plans, but also and even more importantly, an insight into daily life in the village.

Hieratic emerged as a cursive version of hieroglyphic script during Ancient Egypt’s Naqada III period, which spanned during approximately 3200-3000 B.C. Although handwritten hieroglyphs were still used in some formal contexts, such as manuscripts of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, non-cursive hieroglyphic lettering was generally limited to monumental inscriptions. Around 650 B.C., the even more cursive Demotic script evolved from hieratic.

Hieratic script is read from right to left. Originally, hieratic may have been written in columns or horizontal lines, but beginning with the twelfth dynasty (particularly, during the reign of Amenemhat III), horizontal writing became the norm.