The investigation of the village and tombs of Deir el-Medina has brought to light an incredible quantity of textile tools and textiles, but also textual sources linked to textiles. This combination of sources could provide a unique opportunity to understand the production and consumption of one of the most common goods in Ancient Egypt.

The first phase of the project consists of an assessment of the textiles present on site, and comparing this evidence with the reports and excavation’s journals of Bernard Bruyère. A particularly relevant source of information are the textiles excavated in the Eastern cemetery during 1934-35 seasons and partially still on the mummies. Bruyère has in fact unwrapped all the mummies and provided a brief description of the textiles that he found. Through his description and an in-depth analysis of the fabrics already removed from the bodies, it will be possible to provide a thorough examination of the technical features, quality and measurements of the textiles used in funerary contexts. Furthermore, they have a clear and defined context of provenance, a rarity in Ancient Egyptian textile studies, providing a secure chronological frame for all the different techniques and typologies that will be identified. Finally, it will be possible to investigate not only a single person or a family, but of several burials, providing information about the variations in terms of quantity and quality of textiles used for the different individuals.

The examination of a large amount of different textiles will also provide a clear picture of which qualities, typologies and techniques were available in Deir el-Medina. They will be put in dialogue with the information collected from other New Kingdom contexts during the EgYarn project. These will allow to understand if the Deir el-Medina textile production and consumption can be placed in the same frame of other contexts or if it has specific traits typical of the site. The study of the textile tools found on the site, in collaboration with the Medjehu project, will allow to reconstruct what kind of threads and textiles could be produced on site and what should be instead connected with wages and