Between 3,000 and 3,500 years ago, a village on the west bank of the Nile became the center of one of the world’s oddest and most macabre industries. The place known today as Deir el-Medina (the ancient Egyptians prosaically called it Pa-demi, or "the town") was the home of craftsmen who built and decorated tombs for the Pharaohs and favored members of the Egyptian ruling class. In a society that was obsessed with death and what comes after, the tomb builders were entrusted with a task of great importance — creating luxurious crypts where their rulers could continue to enjoy their privileged existence as they journeyed into the afterlife. The tomb builders also were charged with making those burial places secure from grave robbers, who coveted the jewels, gold and artifacts that the Pharaohs took with them in death. The village’s 70 houses were surrounded by a 20-foot-high mud-brick wall and guarded by a cadre of special guards, the Medjay, whose job apparently was to ensure that the details of the royal preparation for the afterlife remained secret.

But that effort ultimately came to naught. Unlike most of the population of ancient Egypt, most of the village’s men learned to read and write in Egyptian hieroglyphics, so that they could understand tomb plans and the inscriptions they made on the walls. They wrote legal documents, receipts, letters and love poems, some on sheets of papyrus and others on stray shards of limestone that the Egyptians used as the equivalent of scrap paper. ("Set your heart very firmly on writing, a useful profession for the one who does it," wrote one tutor to a pupil. "Your father had hieroglyphs, and he was honored in the streets.") Nearly 30 centuries later, those fragments were found by archaeologists, who used them to piece together the life of the village in intimate detail — everything from how the inventory of copper chisels fluctuated during a tomb project, to labor disputes and one craftsman’s work absences due to marital difficulties.

The construction of a large, elaborate royal tomb was a complicated undertaking that required a variety of skilled workers and artists. Since the Pharaohs wanted to remain undisturbed by grave robbers in the afterlife, their burial places were designed with mazes of secret passages and trapdoors. Once draftsmen had created a plan and had it approved, quarrymen began digging into the limestone hillside to carve out a passage. They were followed by carpenters, who built moveable scaffolds so that plasterers could finish the walls. Next, draftsmen wielding rulers and strings dipped in red pigment outlined decorative art on the walls, and sculptors carved them into three-dimensional bas-relief scenes, which painters then detailed in bright colors. When the artwork was complete, priests performed a ritual intended to bring the images of gods and other beings in the artwork to life.

Instead of formal training, Deir el-Medina’s tomb builders mostly learned their trades from their families, who passed various skills down from generation to generation. Mastering a trade such as tomb painting, however, required hard work as well as pedigree. Painters spent years learning to work with dyes made from copper compounds, sulfides of arsenic, dolomite and charcoal to create the brilliant hues that the Egyptians favored. Artists also had to possess a rudimentary knowledge of chemistry, since sometimes the dyes had to be heated to a precise temperature to bring out the desired color.

The tomb builders' craftsmanship is all the more amazing because of the primitive tools and materials they had to use. Quarrymen had to use stone hammers and adzes — a chisel-like head, usually made of copper, mounted at a right angle to the wooden handle to cut into the hills. Even so, they managed to carve passages that usually were true to the plans, down to a fraction of an inch. They didn’t have hard-setting plaster of the sort later invented by the Greeks, and had to make do with a less sturdy mix of gypsum and quartz to finish the tomb walls. (Fortunately, Egypt had a dry climate that helped preserve their handicraft.) Wood was scarce in ancient Egypt, so carpenters had to use it sparingly. They used crude saws with straight teeth rather than the more efficient bent ones that modern saws have, so cutting beams and pillars was hard work. To make the job even more difficult, the tomb builders had to labor in dark passageways, ineffectually lit by lamps filled with olive oil.

Though tomb builders labored for years on their projects, sometimes they were confronted with tight deadlines. When the Pharaoh Merneptah died unexpectedly in 1199 B.C., for example, workers discovered that his black-granite outer coffin would not fit through the ornate passageways that they’d built years before. They tore apart the passageways and raced to rebuild them in time for a royal funeral whose date was dictated by the positions of the stars and planets. (Ultimately, they cut their losses by discarding part of his casket instead.)

Although the Egyptians invented the hour as a unit of time (which they measured by making marks on the side of a burning candle), the concept of a 40-hour workweek was unknown to them. Instead, tomb workers labored long and hard every day during a project, sometimes even sleeping at the construction site. Without modern safety gear, the work was dangerous. In one letter found by archaeologists, a draftsman named Pay writes to his son about one of the biggest hazards — eye injuries from dust and pieces of stone. "May you bring me some honey for my eyes and also some ocher ... " he wrote. "Hurry! ... I am wretched. I am searching for my sight and it is not there." Pay may have been asking his son to fill a prescription from a village doctor; honey is a mild antiseptic, and ocher, a pigment used in paints, also has analgesic and anti-inflammatory properties.

The Egyptian economy didn’t use currency, and so tomb builders, like everyone else, were paid in food or goods that they in turn used to barter for other things they wanted or needed. Despite their esoteric skills, the tomb builders weren’t compensated as highly as soldiers, who got meat instead of the fish that the craftsmen received with their grain. The Egyptians believed that workers should be treated fairly, but in practice, that didn’t always happen; In 1153 B.C., a crew of tomb builders actually staged what may have been the first strike in labor history, refusing to work until corrupt officials stopped shortchanging them on their grain rations. But workers also got away with slipping in some moonlighting during the regular workday. Many of the tomb builders augmented their income by making crafts. Deir el-Medina’s carpenters, for example, also built beds, chairs and tables, while painters hired themselves out to decorate private tombs. Some tomb workers even kept cattle.

Because of all that hard work, the tomb builders and their families enjoyed a relatively high standard of living for commoners in the ancient world. Workers and their families lived in mud-brick houses that generally measured 15 feet by 45 feet, with ceilings made of trunks and branches from palm trees, and whitewashed walls sometimes decorated with plant or animal designs. Their homes were furnished with baskets woven from reeds and pottery. They dressed in loose linen garments and wore papyrus sandals in hot weather, and donned leather slippers and wool cloaks when it got cool and windy in the desert. Despite their arduous work schedules, they found time to play harps and flutes, kept cats and monkeys as pets, and enjoyed parties and festivals at which they served home-brewed barley beer. One continual downside to life in the village was a shortage of drinking water, since the village had no natural supply. Instead, a nearly continuous procession of donkeys brought tall earthenware jars of water into the village.

Though the village population consisted largely of families who’d known one another for generations, relations weren’t always peaceful. There were quarrels about work assignments and sometimes thefts. The village had a courthouse where hearings were conducted on accusations of minor offenses such as unpaid debts. More serious crimes were referred to royal authorities in Thebes for prosecution. One of the most heinous offenses on the books was grave robbery, which was punishable by death.

When they weren’t working on the Pharaohs’ tombs or moonlighting to increase their incomes, the tomb builders worked on their own burial places. They buried their dead in cemeteries in the hillsides just outside the village. One of the few completely intact, well-preserved tombs found by archeologists is the burial place of the family of Sennedjen, a tomb worker who lived and died somewhere around 1300 B.C. The decorative art in the main chamber includes a famous image of Anubis, the slim, black jackal god who oversaw embalming, taking care of the tomb builder’s own mummy.