Crafts, Workshops and Labour in Ancient Egypt

Across pharaonic Egypt, from about 3100 to 332 BCE, craftspeople turned clay, flax, wood and metal into vessels, cloth, furniture and tools. Their work ranged from household production to workshops processing glass, faience and copper alloys. Evidence from the Old Kingdom (c. 2686–2181 BCE), Middle Kingdom (c. 2055–1650 BCE) and New Kingdom (c. 1550–1069 BCE) shows changes in tools and organization, from a potter’s wheel and textile looms to a multi-craft neighborhood at Amarna.

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Pottery from clay to kiln

Potters began by selecting and preparing Nile silt or marl, a clay formed from local shale and limestone, then kneading it before shaping. Vessels could be pinched and hollowed by hand, built from coils, shaped over a core or turned on a wheel. UCL’s production sequence dates the wheel to Egypt’s Fifth Dynasty, around 2400 BCE, and clay moulding to the Seventeenth Dynasty, around 1650 BCE. After shaping, the pot dried in the sun; a slip, or thin clay coating, could be added before firing in an open fire or kiln.

A Middle Kingdom pottery account gives a view of production’s administration as well as its objects. The papyrus from Lahun, at the entrance to the Fayum in Middle Egypt, dates to year 38 of King Amenemhat III (r. c. 1859–1813 BCE) and refers to pottery supplies and an accountant. UCL notes that people called “potters” in such accounts may have managed groups of makers rather than personally formed every vessel. The papyrus brings management and accounting into the story of production, alongside other work and wages arrangements for workers.

Flax, spinning and weaving

Linen began as strips of fibre pulled from flax stems. In the dynastic method, workers split wider strips to the required fineness, joined their ends by splicing, and twisted the joined fibres into roves, loosely twisted lengths ready for spinning. A spindle added the twist that strengthened the yarn. A Middle Kingdom model from the tomb of Meketre, made around 1950 BCE, shows three women or girls at low platforms, presumably splicing fibre into roves, three spinners with two spindles each, and women working at two ground looms.

Weavers stretched the lengthwise warp threads around the loom’s beams. They opened alternating gaps in the warp with a shed stick and a looped heddle rod, which raised alternating threads to create a passage for the crosswise weft; they then beat the weft into place with a weaving sword. At Gurob near the Fayum, a New Kingdom weaving sword preserves the tool used to widen the opening and pack in the weft. A later Eighteenth Dynasty painting in the tomb-chapel of Thotnefer at Thebes (modern Luxor) shows women spinning and men working at vertical looms, a different arrangement from Meketre’s earlier ground-looms scene. The Tarkhan garment from a First Dynasty burial in Lower Egypt, around 3000 BCE, uses a tabby weave: each lengthwise thread passes over one crosswise thread and under the next.

Wood, stone and metalworking

Local acacia and sycamore supplied wood for furniture and coffins, while cedar from Lebanon served larger constructions such as ships and architectural work. Carpenters cut and shaped wood with flint, copper and bronze tools. For larger figures and coffins, they pegged several pieces together, then sanded the surfaces; some were plastered and painted. The choice of timber and the need to join separate pieces shaped how an object could be made. Stone-vessel makers roughly shaped stone with stone tools, then hollowed it with a drill borer, perhaps a bow-driven tube; this craft had reached a high level by the Naqada Period, Egypt’s main predynastic phase, about 4000–3100 BCE.

Metalworkers used charcoal fires, bellows or blowpipes to raise heat. Blowpipes appear in Fourth Dynasty tomb scenes; dish and skin bellows are documented from the Middle Kingdom. After smelting, workers poured molten metal from a crucible, a heat-resistant vessel, into an open mould. Lost-wax casting required a detailed wax model covered in clay: firing melted the wax out, molten metal filled the space, and workers broke away the cooled clay mould. In hollow casting, a clay core remained inside the object and reduced the amount of metal needed.

A New Kingdom workshop at Amarna

At M50.14–16 in the southern city of Tell el-Amarna in Middle Egypt, excavations uncovered a domestic workshop complex used during the Eighteenth Dynasty. A work yard south of two houses contained hundreds of partly unfinished beads and jewellery pieces made of glass, faience and agate. Faience, a quartz-rich material given a bright surface glaze, could be moulded and fired; Amarna finds place this production among household and industrial activities in the neighborhood.

Metalworking left another set of traces: 39 crucible fragments and 130 copper-alloy fragments from M50.14–16 indicate melting, casting, hammering and sheet working. Cylindrical ceramic vessels with heat-altered layers were studied as equipment for glass production. In a 2019 experiment, researchers coated copper blowpipes in clay to funnel air into a fire; the resulting hot spot exceeded 1,100°C, and the team made a small number of beads using modern glass.