DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.55201#0039
26
EXCAVATIONS AT DEIR EL BAHRI
house. The beeves have been led into a columned hall, two stories
high and open to the air high up on one side. They are thrown on the
ground and trussed up for butchering; a scribe with pen case and
papyrus roll is present to keep the accounts; a head butcher superin-
tends the killing and two men make blood puddings over braziers in
the corner. On a balcony at the back the joints of beef hang on lines
to ripen.
Baking and brewing are next shown. At the granary the ever present
clerks sit in the courtyard with papyrus rolls and tablets keeping the
account, while two men scoop up the wheat in measures and load it
into sacks, and others carry it up the stairs to dump it into three
capacious bins (pl. 27). By the front door there sits a boss with cane
in hand superintending the work and watching that no one leaves
before the time is up. Then comes the bakery and brewery combined
in one building. In the first room two women grind the corn into flour
and a man makes it into cakes of dough, which another treads into a
mash in a barrel. Nearby, the rising mash stands in four tall crocks
while the yeast ferments, and when it has finished working, another
man pours it into a row of jugs which stand along the wall. In the
other room is the bakery. Men are cracking the grain with pestles;
women grind the flour; men mix the dough and make fancifully
shaped loaves which others bake in ovens.
The women spin and weave in one shop and the carpenters ply
their trade in another. In the weaving shop three women prepare the
flax and put it into buckets for three others who spin it, standing with
their distaffs in their left hands and turning their spindles with their
right hands against their knees. When the spindles are full they
stretch the newly spun thread out on three pegs on the opposite wall.
Meanwhile, other women work two looms stretched out on the floor.
The carpenters’ shop is a half-roofed-over court with a furnace for
sharpening tools and a tremendous tool chest full of saws, adzes,
chisels, and drills beneath the shed. Around the sides of the open
court squat gangs of carpenters squaring great timbers with adzes
and smooth-surfacing them with blocks of sandstone. In the middle
of the court a sawyer has lashed a balk of timber upright to a post
while he rip-saws it down into boards, and another carpenter sits
astride a plank cutting mortise holes in the edge with mortising chisel
and mallet.
Two model gardens were unique, so far as our experience of Egyp-
tian antiquities goes (pls. 26-27). Just as when we make a child’s
doll house we leave out lots of details like stairways and put all of our
EXCAVATIONS AT DEIR EL BAHRI
house. The beeves have been led into a columned hall, two stories
high and open to the air high up on one side. They are thrown on the
ground and trussed up for butchering; a scribe with pen case and
papyrus roll is present to keep the accounts; a head butcher superin-
tends the killing and two men make blood puddings over braziers in
the corner. On a balcony at the back the joints of beef hang on lines
to ripen.
Baking and brewing are next shown. At the granary the ever present
clerks sit in the courtyard with papyrus rolls and tablets keeping the
account, while two men scoop up the wheat in measures and load it
into sacks, and others carry it up the stairs to dump it into three
capacious bins (pl. 27). By the front door there sits a boss with cane
in hand superintending the work and watching that no one leaves
before the time is up. Then comes the bakery and brewery combined
in one building. In the first room two women grind the corn into flour
and a man makes it into cakes of dough, which another treads into a
mash in a barrel. Nearby, the rising mash stands in four tall crocks
while the yeast ferments, and when it has finished working, another
man pours it into a row of jugs which stand along the wall. In the
other room is the bakery. Men are cracking the grain with pestles;
women grind the flour; men mix the dough and make fancifully
shaped loaves which others bake in ovens.
The women spin and weave in one shop and the carpenters ply
their trade in another. In the weaving shop three women prepare the
flax and put it into buckets for three others who spin it, standing with
their distaffs in their left hands and turning their spindles with their
right hands against their knees. When the spindles are full they
stretch the newly spun thread out on three pegs on the opposite wall.
Meanwhile, other women work two looms stretched out on the floor.
The carpenters’ shop is a half-roofed-over court with a furnace for
sharpening tools and a tremendous tool chest full of saws, adzes,
chisels, and drills beneath the shed. Around the sides of the open
court squat gangs of carpenters squaring great timbers with adzes
and smooth-surfacing them with blocks of sandstone. In the middle
of the court a sawyer has lashed a balk of timber upright to a post
while he rip-saws it down into boards, and another carpenter sits
astride a plank cutting mortise holes in the edge with mortising chisel
and mallet.
Two model gardens were unique, so far as our experience of Egyp-
tian antiquities goes (pls. 26-27). Just as when we make a child’s
doll house we leave out lots of details like stairways and put all of our