Much of our modern health advice comes and goes based on just a few decades of information and trends that may only last a couple of years. This talk takes a different approach: what could we learn about living healthier lives today from evidence that is thousands of years old?
In this talk, we’ll answer this question through a deep dive into evidence from Deir el-Medina, a New Kingdom village in ancient Egypt for the skilled artisans who cut and decorated the royal tombs. By combining evidence from human remains with the site’s rich collection of texts, we can reconstruct how Deir el-Medina’s residents experienced health, illness, and care more than 3,000 years ago.
I draw from over a decade of my research at the site studying human remains to show how the people of Deir el-Medina were healthmakers—they used their social, economic, and medical knowledge in combination to improve the health of themselves and their community. These factors—what modern public health researchers call the Social Determinants of Health—help explain why some people stayed healthier than others, both in the past and today.
By looking beyond a purely biomedical understanding of medicine, this talk reveals how community, environment, and daily life shaped health in ancient Egypt. In doing so, it offers a new way of understanding ancient Egyptian society—and shows that some of the most important lessons about health may come from the deep past.

This talk is based on her book, Healthmaking in Ancient Egypt (Brill, 2024). For more information about current work at Deir el-Medina, see https://www.ifao.egnet.net/archeologie/deir-el-medina/.