The popular image of the landscape of ancient Egypt is one filled with impressive stones monuments such as royal pyramids, colossal statues, and massive stone temples.
The amount of effort put into creating temples in which the gods lived and tombs in which the dead lived for eternity is one of the most remarkable features of ancient Egyptian culture. But what about the places where ordinary Egyptians lived? Because of their geography (in the flood plain of the Nile rather than on the desert) and the materials used to build them (mud-brick rather than stone) the houses, palaces, towns and cities of ancient Egypt are much less easy to find and to study. However, good sources of evidence do exist which can help us understand the built environment inhabited by the Egyptians, from the villages which housed the workers on the royal tomb projects to the ‘lost’ cities of ancient Egypt which were some of the largest in the ancient world, but which are only now beginning to be properly understood by modern archaeologists.