A team of Italian archaeologists led by Ernesto Schiaparelli discovered the tomb of Kha and Merit, an ancient Egyptian foreman and his wife, in the workmen's village of Deir el-Medina.

Ernesto Schiaparelli was an Italian Egyptologist.

The tomb of Kha and Merit, also known by its tomb number Theban Tomb 8 or TT8, is the funerary chapel and burial place of the ancient Egyptian foreman Kha and his wife Merit, in the northern cemetery of the workmen's village of Deir el-Medina. Kha supervised the workforce who constructed royal tombs during the reigns of the pharaohs Amenhotep II, Thutmose IV and Amenhotep III in the mid-Eighteenth Dynasty of the early New Kingdom of Egypt. Of unknown background, he probably rose to his position through skill and was rewarded by at least one king. He and his wife Merit had three known children. Kha died in his 60s, while Merit died before him, seemingly unexpectedly, in her 20s or 30s.

Ancient Egypt was a cradle of civilization concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in Northeast Africa. It emerged from prehistoric Egypt around 3150 BC, when Upper and Lower Egypt were amalgamated by Menes, who is believed by the majority of Egyptologists to have been the same person as Narmer. The history of ancient Egypt unfolded as a series of stable kingdoms interspersed by the "Intermediate Periods" of relative instability. These stable kingdoms existed in one of three periods: the Old Kingdom of the Early Bronze Age; the Middle Kingdom of the Middle Bronze Age; or the New Kingdom of the Late Bronze Age.

A workmen's village is a settlement of workers, foremen, scribes, architects, etc. usually located in the area of a major ancient site in Egypt, and mostly connected to the construction and decoration of tombs.