The Phoebe A. Hearst Expedition to Deir El-Ballas: The Non-Elite Cemeteries of the 17th - 19th Dynasties, Vol. I

This lavishly-illustrated book presents the unpublished excavations of the Hearst Expedition (1900-1901) at Deir el-Ballas, and thus makes a major contribution to the study of the material culture of the early New Kingdom. The site played a major role in the birth of the New Kingdom as a royal campaign headquarters during the wars to expel the Hyksos. For several generations afterwards, a non-elite population lived in the shadow of the abandoned palace in this provincial town. Drawing on meticulous archival research to reconstruct the tomb assemblages, this book reveals the community’s funerary practices and considers the cultural memory the residents held of their town’s illustrious past.

Victoria Jensen, Ph.D. (2019), is a Senior Research Scholar in the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She has field experience at Abydos, el-Hibeh, and Deir el-Ballas, Egypt. Dr. Jensen has published numerous articles on Deir el-Ballas.