This book presents the hieroglyphic texts from the long, prosperous and relatively well-sourced reign of Ramesses II (c.1279–1213 bc). The previous volume (II) made available the ‘official’ and royal records issued or engraved in the king’s name, personifying (as he did) the effective government of ancient Egypt for his time. Here, by contrast, we have records that concern primarily, or were left us by, the king’s subjects at all levels of society, from viziers and viceroys at the head of the royal administration (along with priesthoods and the military) down through society’s echelons to the workmen who laboured in the royal tombs in Western Thebes (based in Deir el-Medina village) and the humble folk that served them. For Deir el-Medina, both collective (‘official’) records and the mementos of individuals and families have been kept together, not to split up data that in effect belong together.

First published in twenty-eight individual fascicles between 1978 and 1980 by B. H. Blackwell (Oxford), this volume is re-printed here for the first time in a single, handsome, book.