Ancient Lives

John Romer takes us back - some three and a half thousand years - to Egypt's fabled Valley of the Kings, where he has done the most important archaeological detective work since Howard Carter discovered King Tut's tomb.

Located outside Thebes in a barren desert, is the village of Dier el Medina, home to generations of workers and their families who built and adorned the tombs for the Pharaohs of ancient times. Recent excavations have unearthed a wealth of material from the village, including detailed records left by it's scribes. It is these records that have enabled John Romer to reconstruct the villager's lives. Here then are the daily events - the routines and rhythms, the successes and excesses, even what must surely be the first recorded strike as ancient artists put aside their brushes to protest a reduction in their food allowance. Builders of monuments to the ineffable, these people and their earthly lives become, here, as real to us as the work they left behind. How they lived, loved, drank, robbed, played, suffered, and most importantly, created in a time when immortality was presumed.