The first thing that comes to mind when we think of Ancient Egypt is monumental buildings – tombs and temples. Whether we like it or not, our image of antiquity in the time of the pharaohs is based on the perspective left behind by representatives of the elite. Meanwhile, settlement archaeology also gives us insight into the lives of other social classes, opening up opportunities for us to learn about the reality of ordinary people. In this article, we therefore travel to Tell el-Retaba in the first half of the 1st millennium BC – a settlement located on the Egyptian border – to see for ourselves how its inhabitants lived.