The evidence for different kinds of tools and toolmaking in the Pharaonic Period complements and helps to explain other aspects of the crafts and craftsmanship. In addition to actual preserved examples of tools, there are depictions of tools and their uses represented in great detail in tomb reliefs and paintings. A third source of information is the detailed models of objects, complete workshops, and their products that were placed in the tombs. As a result, it is possible to understand in greater depth how many different ordinary craft activities were carried out.

The scribe has left his pens, pen case, water pot, and the papyrus sheets on which he wrote. The farmer, butcher, carpenter and joiner, sculptor, quarryman and stone mason, metal smelter and jeweler, and even the maker of mud bricks have all left evidence, either as objects or representations of them to illustrate their working methods in great detail. Such a wealth of specific information about working processes has not been preserved anywhere else in the ancient world. This is probably one of the distinct hallmarks of the culture that make a study of various aspects of the ancient technologies in Egypt so revealing and so interesting.