Step 6 of 10

Identity marks

Related Images

  • Fig. 1 – Trowel with a workman’s mark – British Museum, London – [EA 5409](https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/Y_EA5409)
  • Fig. 2 – Loincloth with a workman’s mark – Museo Egizio, Turin – [S. 8613/26](https://collezioni.museoegizio.it/en-GB/material/S_8613_26)
  • Fig. 3 – Head rest with workman’s mark – Musée du Louvre, Paris – [E 16280](https://collections.louvre.fr/ark:/53355/cl010035218)
  • Fig. 4 – Jar ring with incised workman’s mark – Musée du Louvre, Paris – [E 16462](https://collections.louvre.fr/ark:/53355/cl010009437)
  • Fig. 5 – Jar stopper with workman’s mark – Musée du Louvre, Paris – [E 1654](https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010025478)5
  • Fig. 6 – Ostracon with workmen’s marks – Musée du Louvre, Paris – [E 32940](https://collections.louvre.fr/ark:/53355/cl010051549)
  • Fig. 7 – Ostracon with workmen’s marks of the ‘right side’ of the crew – British Museum, London – [EA 5071](https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/Y_EA50716)6

Let’s go back to the line that records day ten. After the number of the day, there is a hieroglyphic sign, but it isn’t just a hieroglyph. Rather, it is an identity mark, a symbol that represents a specific workman. Here we touch upon a fascinating aspect of the community of Deir el-Medina. Archaeological evidence shows that not too long after the foundation of the community, some 300 years before this ostracon was made, the workmen’s community already employed a system of identity marks. Every workman possessed his own mark, which he could use to mark his personal property. The marks are often scratched into ceramic pottery and sometimes into tools used by the workmen (Figs. 1 – 5).A research project at Leiden University conducted in 2012-2015 was able to elucidate much about how identity marks were used at Deir el-Medina. The results are summarised in a very accessible and captivating book: Ben Haring, 2018, From single sign to pseudo-script: An Ancient Egyptian System of Workmen’s Identity Marks.

Interestingly, series of identity marks were also written on ostraca, sometimes in combination with tally marks, as simple forms of administration (Figs. 6 – 7). This local, administrative practice continued into the time of our writer. The identity mark used in the line of day ten represents a man called Mose, which means ‘the-one-who-is-born’. His identity mark is actually the hieroglyphic sign 𓄠, used to write his name. But as we will see in the next step, some identity marks are not borrowings from script at all.