“A thousand offerings” refers to the ancient Egyptian standard offering spell to the dead. In its simplest form it read “a thousand offerings of bread and beer to [name] that he may live”, and was designed to provide the articles stated to the deceased so that they had things to eat and drink (bread and beer being the staple foods) in the afterlife. The ancient Egyptians believed sustenance was required for continued existence, even in death.  They also believed that words, both written and spoken, had the power to make things real; to make something from nothing.  That’s why in many texts and tableaux you will see dangerous snakes spiked with knives. 

Beer in ancient Egypt is very different from the beer we have today. All the barley and yeast residues (called “lees”) were left in the beer, making it more like gruel than anything. Due to the way the beer was fermented, it was also not very alcoholic. Beer was made at home, paid to workers and sold at markets. Evidence suggests that during periods of intense work (for example, during harvests) workers ate and drank nothing but beer for several days at a time.

The Town is based on the archaeological site of deir el-Medina which lies to the west of the Valley of the Kings. Several foreign names can be found in records of workmen, so it would not be inconceivable for our dear travellers to find work there. The town was built especially for the miners and artisans of the royal Theban tombs and their families. It is thought that these workers were better paid and more literate than the general population.

Water was carried the several miles from the Nile to the village by state employed water carriers and placed in the town well, thus making water extremely precious. Workers were also paid in water.

Soap did not actually exist in ancient Egypt. I made that up.

Workers were also paid in food, particularly vegetables, fish and wheat and barley. Dental evidence indicates that foods had a lot of sand in them, which ground away at the teeth.

There was no cash currency in ancient Egypt, and so all payments were paid in kind.

Make-up, more usually called kohl, was worn by both men and women as protection against insects and the sun’s glare.

The Festival I describe is based on the festival of my favourite ancient Egyptian goddess, Sekhmet. The story goes that one day the goddess became angry with humanity and sought to destroy them. She was stopped by another god who got her drunk. Thus the festival of Sekhmet involved everyone celebrating by getting really really trashed.

Houses at dier el-Medina tended to have four “rooms”. The front room was the largest, the second room usually contained a long bench.  The third was undeterminable and probably either a storeroom or a bedroom, and the fourth was the kitchen, which had no roof but contained an oven and a grinding stone. Some homes had brick-lined cellars in which jars of grain, beer and wine have been found.

The Ancient Egyptian calendar was made up of 12 months of 30 days, each week being 10 days, plus 4 festival days in which new year celebrations took place.

Ancient Egyptian conceptualisations of fertility appear to centre around the idea that the male seed is the sole producer of children, and the mother is something like the nurturer. I could mention some myths of creation through masturbation, but I don’t want to bore you.

Rain was so rare in ancient Egypt that there appears to have been no actual word for it, just “water from the sky”. It was seen as misfortunate, which it probably was because buildings and clothes weren’t designed to get wet.

The temple, which lies very close to the east walls of deir el-Medina, is actually dedicated to the goddess Hathor, but for the sake of the story I re-dedicated it to Ma’at.  Ma’at is the goddess of truth and justice and was represented by a feather. She was a guardian figure of the town, which is often referred to as “the place of truth” (ma’at is not only the name of the goddess, but also the actual word “truth” in the ancient Egyptian language. If you consider both the iconography and language, it can be said that truth is represented by a feather).

Yes, the ancient Egyptians really did have scissors. Sort of.

The phrase “to become unmoored from the shore” is a euphemism I came across whilst translating one of the pyramid text spells. I couldn’t figure it out, and for hours and hours sat wondering why the deceased king was taking a boat ride all of a sudden when he’d just been talking about how great his tomb was. As it’s from a religious text, I have no idea if it was used in everyday life, but I liked it so I used it. 

The nearest market to deir el-Medina was located on the western bank of the Nile near Thebes (modern Luxor). I mention several other markets in the fic, which I imagine as being smaller local markets for the townspeople, and are thus much closer. The journey from deir el-Medina to the Nile banks is not a short one, taking perhaps 20 minutes or more in a car if memory serves. Doing the journey in the heat of the day is unthinkable. (Personally, I died just sitting in the car on the way there. Warm water never tasted so good.)