The Gurob Papyri

(click here for a history of the site)

Petrie excavated the site in 1889-1890. Among the finds were fragmentary papyri, now in the Petrie Museum. These record the presence of the women connected with the king, and refer to textile production on a large scale. One fragment mentions the king's wife Maathorneferure, the Egyptian name of the Hittite princess married to Ramesses II according to the terms of an international peace agreement. Gurob may be a palace established by Thutmose III in the Eighteenth Dynasty for the foreign princesses he married, perhaps by similar international agreements; it would then have seen new life under Amenhotep III, for whom such marriages are also documented in other sources, and again under Ramesses II. Possibly the principal economic activity at the site was the weaving of fine textiles by the foreign women; one papyrus refers to the use of foreign women in textile production. The papyri date to the reigns of Ramesses II and his successors in the Nineteenth Dynasty, and at least as late as Ramesses III of the Twentieth Dynasty.

see the papyri