The buildings are simple mudbrick houses. In the earliest days there was no protective wall surrounding the town. The houses huddle close together; sometimes they reach two stories as space has to be utilized. Narrow alleys wind between the buildings, twisting passages open up into small squares or courts. Storage and living space mix with each other. Here, people busy themselves with agriculture, trade and crafts of different kinds. It is a tightly knit community where families live together in several generations, and with their relatives next door.

Contacts are frequent between other places like nearby Thinis and the more distant Nekhen. Travellers come and go, and the citizens of Abedjou often feel they live at a crossroads, nicely placed between the oases in the western desert and the lifegiving river, connecting them to far away parts of Egypt and the world beyond.

The cemetery serving the community lies just outside town, while the kings are buried in large structures a short distance out in the desert. Many people from the town work as stonemasons, wood cutters and tomb diggers when tombs for the king and his retinue are to be prepared.

In town the priesthood tends to the honoring of the local canine deity, KhentiAmentiu, 'Foremost of the Westerners', who guards the necropolis. He is worshipped at the temple precinct which comprises several small brick buildings situated at the outskirts of the town. Here, people go to place votive figurines, and to pray for their blessed dead, safe in the knowledge that the god will provide for both the living and the deceased, whether king or commoner.