Four studies on the daily practice of the scribes of Deir el-Medina. Under the heading "duplication", the first chapter looks into the use of drafts or mother copies, and the second deals with the work of five individual scribes. Under the heading "classification", the third chapter presents a survey of the words used by the scribes when referring to their products, the documents, and the fourth looks at the method of reconstructing ancient classifications by the clustering of texts with identical headings.
Together, these chapters reconstruct the individual and collective habits of those who have produces the mass of texts found at Deir el-Medina, the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens.