Location and size Tiles were found in 1870 at Tell el-Yahoudieh and in 1903 in Medinet Habu. Those of Tell el-Yahoudieh are larger, with a width of circa , whilst those are Medinet Habu fall into two groups and . All the tiles are rectangular, with a base thickness of , and together with the
relief sculpture of the people, the total thickness is . The Medinet Habu prisoner tiles were originally located in three rectangular cells on either side of the palace doorways, each of in height and in width. In all the tiles, the prisoners are shown standing up. In some tiles, the soles of the prisoners' feet rest on the ground; in others they may be interpreted as running or hanging. The prisoners' arms are often tied, and in other tiles a white and black rope with acorns at the ends is shown around the neck.
Identification and provenance (Ramesses III prisoner tiles, 1189–1077 BCE) In his 1911
paper on the tiles, French
Egyptologist Georges Daressy, of the
Egyptian Museum in
Cairo, noted that the tiles have no inscriptions, so identification of the peoples shown required a comparison of the drawings with previously known temple bas-reliefs or tomb paintings, giving some uncertainty: Unfortunately, there is no inscription on these tiles fixing the name of the peoples represented; we are forced to compare with the bas-reliefs of the temples or the paintings of the tombs to find a similar type and we are sometimes perplexed. Formal excavation work at Medinet Habu by the
Egyptian Antiquities Service (EAS) ended in 1899, but work continued by local
fellahin sebakh-diggers (sebakh is the nitrogen-rich remains of ancient
mud brick, dug up to be used as fertilizer). In 1903, the fellahin discovered remains of overturned doorways, still partly covered with their original decoration in enamelled tiles. Some pieces disappeared, but most were collected by the "ghafirs" and sent by
Howard Carter, then Chief Inspector of the EAS in
Upper Egypt, to the Cairo Museum, together with four of the pillars and an
overdoor to which they had belonged. The Egyptian Museum tablets are numbered JE 36261 a-b, 36271, 36399, 36440 a-c, 36441 a-c, 36457 a-k, as well as one prior to the 1903 accessions numbered JE 27525. The Boston Museum of Fine Arts noted in 1908 that the tiles' "provenance is a matter of question". They were purchased in 1903 on behalf of the museum by
Albert Lythgoe from Luxor-based antiquities dealer Mohamed Mohassib; the purchase was made as part of a group (03.1566-03.1577; 03.1578a-i). ==Gallery==