Kha’s Assemblage: Status in Fabrics

Honey Hammer
BCDSS PhD Researcher

The village of Deir el-Medina housed the skilled craftsmen who built the tombs in the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens and were dependent on the state for their food, fabrics, water, and survival as they worked. Kha was a high-ranking resident in this village, holding numerous titles in a career that spanned the reigns of at least three pharaohs. Through the items found in his tomb we explore textiles in Deir el-Medina.  

Deir el-Medina 

On the west bank of the river Nile at Thebes the village of Deir el-Medina was founded at the beginning of the New Kingdom (1539–1076 BC) to house the skilled craftsmen who built the tombs in the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens. The village was active throughout the New Kingdom and, due to its location in the desert, has provided multitudes of well-preserved materials, objects, and structures that have contributed enormously to our knowledge of ancient Egyptian daily life, jurisdiction, economy, and administrative practices, among other subjects (fig. 1). 

Fig. 1: View of Deir el-Medina from the Western Cemetery (photo: Shutterstock, license ID 1435951985). 

Who was Kha? 

Kha lived and worked in Deir el-Medina with his wife, Merit, his two sons, Amenemopet and Nakhteftaneb, and his daughter Merit (fig. 2). He occupied a variety of posts, including Overseer of the Works in the Great Place and Royal Scribe, in a career that extended through the reigns of at least three pharaohs (Amenhotep II 1428–1397 BC, Thutmosis IV 1397–1388 BC, and Amenhotep III 1388–1351 BC). In his position as the Overseer of the Works in the Great Place, Kha would report progress to the Vizier or directly to the Pharaoh and likely held several of his titles/offices simultaneously. This position put him in a place of relative privilege within the village, being in charge of the works and answering directly to the royal residence. 

Most of what we know about Kha and his family comes from his tomb and mortuary chapel, found in 1906 during the Italian Deir el-Medina excavations by Ernesto Schiaparelli (fig. 3). The tomb was found intact, and its extensive assemblage has featured as a main attraction of the Museo Egizio in Turin since the early 1900s. Among the many items that formed the funerary assemblage of Kha was a golden cubit, a royal reward gifted to Kha that was an illustration of the real wooden cubit measures that were used regularly in Deir el-Medina for measuring out the passageways to cut into the cliffs for the tombs and for marking out guidelines for decorating the tombs. 

Fig. 2: Linen box of Kha and Merit, containing loincloths and other linens, depicting the owners seated, receiving offerings from their daughter and son (Photo: Museo Egizio, n.d., public domain). 

Fig. 3: Tomb Chapel of Kha and Merit (photo: Museo Egizio, 1906, public domain). 

The Importance of Fabrics in Deir el-Medina 

Due to the climatic conditions and cultural traditions of ancient Egypt, we have many examples of fabrics and their usages (fig. 4). Deir el-Medina, however, is a special case as it was a nonagricultural settlement of specialized workmen dedicated to tomb-building. However, the need for textiles in daily life and the afterlife is well preserved in the workmen’s village, which, although specialized, can to some degree be seen as representative of village life in ancient Egypt. Kha and his wife Merit’s clothes, bed sheets, and blankets were found in their tomb, and their mummies were found perfectly preserved in their coffins, with their wrappings concealing some impressive jewelry including a shebyu collar necklace worn by Kha, known to be “gold of honor” granted by the pharaoh as a reward to his worthy officials. The fabrics were made from linen, the most common textile in ancient Egypt, which was woven from flax, a plant known to have been cultivated in Lower Egypt from as early as the 6th millennium BC. 

Fig. 4: Kha’s tunics, called meses, and other linens contained in the linen box (photo: Museo Egizio, n.d., public domain). 

As demonstrated by the use of bandaging for mummies, textiles were just as important in death as in life to the ancient Egyptians. In daily life, most fabrics were reused and repurposed when they became old and frayed, and many pieces of material could have multiple uses, be worn multiple ways, and were often unisex (fig. 5 + 6). In death, not only were the textiles that were necessary for daily life used to equip the deceased for their afterlife in their tomb assemblage, but linen formed part of the standard offerings that one would leave for the deceased family or officials in their tombs, and was a common feature in depictions of offering tables, such as the one on Kha and Merit’s linen box and on their funerary stela (fig. 7). Linen was also a staple in the Offering Formula, a standardized text written on funerary monuments and items to provide the deceased with offerings in the afterlife. 

Fig. 7: Funerary stela of Kha and Merit depicting them praising Osiris and Anubis in the top register, and receiving offerings in the lower register (photo: Museo Egizio, n.d., public domain). 

How Did Deir el-Medina Get its Textiles? 

So, if Deir el-Medina was not an agricultural settlement, how did it get its textiles? To produce linen from flax required an extensive process that began with sowing the seeds annually in November and harvesting them in March at varying stages of ripening which determined the quality and type of yarn. The specialized process of extracting textile fibers from flax plants involved leaving the stems to sit in water for long periods so that the inner fibers could be more easily separated from the outer stem. The fibers were then cleaned and combed and then spun into yarn, with different spinning techniques used depending on the type of yarn that was wanted. After this, the yarn was ready for weaving, which was a time-consuming and skilled craft in and of itself (fig. 8). 

Being a specialized settlement of skilled craftsmen whose job was to build the tombs of the kings and queens, the workmen were paid in produce and were dependent on the state for their food, water, and survival as they worked. Textiles and yarns made up some of the wages of the workmen, but it is unclear how flax, not yarn or linen, arrived in the village, and at what point of its processing it arrived. It is possible that each family had to buy flax if they wanted it, but the presence of a remarkable amount of textile-working tools in this small community suggests that nearly all the families who lived there produced yarns domestically. Since looms were more specialized, and therefore more expensive, equipment, it is unlikely that every household owned one. Instead, it seems possible that only the few households that did would weave textiles for their household and to trade with other households within the community, in an intricate web of interdependence among skilled craftsmen and their families (fig. 9). 

Fig. 8: Scene from Theban Tomb 1 of Sennedjem depicting idealized cultivation in the afterlife, including flax cultivation (photo: Museo Egizio, 1905–1914, public domain). 

Fig. 9: A selection of weaving and spinning tools and raw materials from Deir el-Medina (photo: Museo Egizio, n.d., public domain). 

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Further Reading

Anonymous (ed.), 2015. Museo Egizio. Translated by Colum Fordham. Torino; Modena: Museo Egizio; Franco Cosimo Panini. 

Della Monica, Madeleine, 1980. La classe ouvrière sous les pharaons: étude du village de Deir el Medineh, 2nd, revised ed. Paris: Librairie d’Amérique et d’Orient. 

Drewsen, Anne, 2019. Spinning for the gods? Preliminary observations on prehistoric textile production at Hierakonpolis, Egypt. Archaeological Textiles Review 61, 3-13. 

McDowell, A. G., 1999. Village life in ancient Egypt: laundry lists and love songs. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Spinazzi-Lucchesi, Chiara, 2022. Textile production at Deir el-Medina: a hidden activity. In Töpfer, Susanne, Paolo Del Vesco, and Federico Poole (eds), Deir el-Medina: through the kaleidoscope. Proceedings of the international workshop, Turin 8th-10th October 2018, 493-501. Torino: Museo Egizio; Franco Cosimo Panini. 

Wilson, Hilary, 2014-2015. Linen. Ancient Egypt: the history, people and culture of the Nile valley 87 (15/3), 41-43.