Ancient Egyptian notes and coffin mask to go on display in new exhibition

Ancient Egyptian notes written on shards of stone or broken pieces of pottery are to go on display in a new exhibition, giving insights into the lives of everyday people.

Made In Egypt will open at Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum on Friday October 3, including items on loan from the Louvre in Paris and a museum in Berlin.

Texts written on ostraca – shards of stone or pieces of pottery – will be displayed.

They are described by curators as the “ancient Egyptian equivalent of writing on the back of an envelope or a Post-it note”.

Many ostraca were discovered in a huge pit close to the workers’ village of Deir el-Medina, in Luxor.

One 3,500-year-old ostracon records absences from work on the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings in ancient Thebes.

On one day, a worker called Panebu was away because he said he had been bitten by something.

Another line records the foreman Ramery as off sick, while five others also “did not work” that day.

Elsewhere in the exhibition there is an urgent order for window coverings, which says, “it’s a job to do four of this type exactly, exactly! But hurry, hurry by tomorrow. I will let you know!”

Helen Strudwick, curator of Made in Ancient Egypt and senior Egyptologist at the Fitzwilliam, said: “These remarkable ostraca on loan for the first time from our colleagues at the Louvre take us right into the lives of the craftsmen.

“We can all recognise the tone of voice of the man who needed his windows the next day.

“We can sympathise with Panebu suffering from a bite.

“Mention of the foreman Ramery starts to give us an idea about the organisation of these workers.

“The texts on these ostraca are part of a huge body of information about these craftspeople who become living individuals, with similar concerns to us today.”

Other artefacts to be displayed include an Egyptian coffin mask.

Tickets for the exhibition are on sale now.