Chiara Spinazzi-Lucchesi (Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen – National Museum of Denmark)
Matilde Borla (Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio per la Città Metropolitana di Torino, Italy)
Deir el-Medina is one of the best-known archaeological sites near Luxor. The village was home to a community of skilled workmen responsible for building and decorating the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings. Around the settlement are the decorated tombs and burial places of the villagers, as well as a number of small chapels. The textile project at Deir el-Medina aims to explore how textiles were made, used, and reused by examining the many textile tools, yarns, and fabrics preserved at the site, both in the settlement and in the burials.
The project continued in 2026, with 22 additional textiles recorded and properly stored, while another 28 textiles were documented while still wrapped around their original mummies. The mummies examined this season belonged to three women: Maya, Hemen, and an unnamed woman from Tomb 1352.
One of the most interesting discoveries to emerge from this work is that the textiles used for mummification were not necessarily new fabrics made specifically for burial. Instead, many were old pieces that had already been used in everyday life and were still in reasonably good condition when they were repurposed as mummy wrappings. This is particularly fascinating because these textiles provide information about funerary traditions and mummification practices, while at the same time preserving traces of the lives they had before burial.
For example, one of the textiles from the mummy of Maya has large patches and areas of mending that were added at different stages during its earlier use. Other pieces show large holes and heavily worn areas, clear signs that they had been used extensively before becoming part of the burial. These traces allow us to look beyond the funerary context and glimpse something of the everyday lives of the people who used these fabrics. Another intriguing feature is the presence of identity marks embroidered onto some textiles. These marks may have been connected with the village’s laundry system, perhaps helping inhabitants distinguish their own textiles from those belonging to others. In this respect, they may have served a function not so different from the names or labels we still put on children’s clothes today.
The project also documented almost 300 spinning tools, confirming Deir el-Medina as the site with the largest known assemblage of spinning tools in ancient Egypt. These objects, found in the village and in the surrounding rubbish dumps, provide an important complement to the textiles themselves. They show that textiles were not only used in everyday life and later reused for funerary purposes: they were also produced locally. The spinning tools offer a glimpse into the process behind the fabrics we can still see today. Some spindles are complete, while others survive only in fragments; a few even preserve the yarn that was still wound around them. Like the textiles, the tools can also carry carved or painted identity marks. Their appearance varies considerably, from very roughly made incisions to carefully designed hieroglyphs, adding yet another dimension to our understanding of the people who worked with textiles at Deir el- Medina.
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