A fascinating new exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge is shifting focus from Egypt’s famous pharaohs to the skilled yet forgotten workers who built their royal tombs. Through everyday objects, particularly discarded pottery shards known as ostraca, the show reveals the daily lives of artisans—stonemasons, coffin makers, and sandal makers—who lived near Thebes over 3,000 years ago. These broken fragments served as ancient notepads, capturing everything from urgent work orders with precise sketches to sick-day records for a worker bitten by an unnamed creature. We see drawing guides for tomb art and receipts for expensive coffins, humanizing these individuals and making their experiences relatable. Featuring rare loans from the Louvre, the exhibition humanizes Egypt’s laborers, showing their pressures, humor, and fingerprints—echoes of workers whose hands shaped history.
The Guardian
