Controlling Workforces at the Palace: Some Perspectives on Administrative Practice at Kom Medinet Gurob

There are few institutional archives extant from ancient Egypt, which makes even rather fragmentary examples important for the modelling of both scribal practices and broader questions of socio-economic structures. This paper presents some key documents, both published and unpublished, from Petrie’s excavations at Kom Medinet Gurob, where he found parts of a palace archive. The focus is on administrative practice, particularly as regards the organization and control of workforces, as well as on contextualising the documents in view of the patchy record of New Kingdom institutional management.