Deir el-Medina was the village built to house the workmen who excavated and decorated the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings. For almost 500 years, from the early New Kingdom to the end of the Ramesside period, skilled artisans lived here with their families, cut off from the wider world by the desert. The preserved remains of the village — houses, shrines, and tombs — give an unparalleled glimpse into the lives of ordinary Egyptians below the royal level.
The tombs of the workers themselves are some of the most remarkable in the Theban necropolis. Because these men were master painters, they decorated their own burial chambers with the same skill they applied to the pharaohs' tombs, and the results are spectacular. The tomb of Sennedjem and the tomb of Inherkhau are particularly vivid, their colours almost fresh after three thousand years. Visit early — the tombs are small and the better ones can get crowded. The adjacent Ptolemaic temple dedicated to Hathor is also worth seeing.