As with other cultures, the home was the centre of social life. Ancient Egyptian homes were built to a generally common layout using a limited range of natural materials. Most houses in ancient Egypt were built using readily available and abundant materials.

Facts About Ancient Egyptian Houses

  • Ancient Egypt’s earliest recorded houses date back to the Stone Age Pre-Dynastic period around 6,000 B.C.
  • Early ancient Egyptian homes were built from wattle and daub, a process using interwoven sticks to create a framework for a wall, which was then covered with mud or clay and allowed to dry
  • It was common in ancient Egypt for people to live with other families in a multiple room house sharing a communal courtyard
  • “Adobe” is derived from the ancient Egyptian word “dbe” meaning “mud brick”
  • Adobe mud-bricks used a mixture of mud and clay moistened with water and baked in the sun
  • The ancient Egyptians mastered the technique of mass-producing mud-bricks on an industrial scale
  • Whether the home of a wealthy individual or a poor family, ancient Egyptian homes featured similar layouts and floor plans

The most common material used for building ancient Egyptian homes were sun-baked mud bricks. Amongst the wealthy elites, stone was occasionally used in building their more imposing and substantially larger homes. Unlike the majority of other civilisations, wood was scarce and expensive thanks to the rigours of Egypt’s desert climate, so its use was restricted to structural supports, doorways and ceilings in homes.

All Natural Building Materials

Ancient Egypt’s arid climate and intense sun significantly influenced how ancient Egyptians designed and constructed their houses. Early examples of Egyptian houses were constructed from a mixture of papyrus and mud. However, the annual Nile floods, which inundated the surrounding area for three months of the year, caused substantial damage to homes and washed many houses away.

By experimenting, the ancient Egyptians learned to trap the heat from the sun to bake hardy mud-bricks. Using a mixture of mud and clay dug from the Nile’s riverbank and moistened with water to form a thick slurry, they eventually mastered the technique of mass-producing mud-bricks on an industrial scale.

The ancient Egyptians shovelled this mixture into banks of pre-formed wooden moulds shaped like bricks. The filled moulds were then set out in the open and left to dry out under the scorching Egyptian sun.

Due to the degree of highly repetitive labour required to produce mud-bricks en mass, the task was usually delegated to children and slaves.

Each day this conscripted workforce would transport the mud and clay, fill the moulds, set them out to dry before finally transporting the finished mud-bricks to the construction site.

The ancient Egyptians found mud-bricks were highly durable and far sturdier building materials than mud and papyrus as building materials. However, while sturdy, over the eons, wind and rain eroded even the sturdiest mud-brick buildings, creating the gentle mounds we see today on Egyptian archaeological sites.