Searching for the history of Qurna
on Thebes.
an illustrated talk given at the
American Research Centre in Egypt, Cairo, November 2000
Most of this evening’s talk will look at some details
of the history of Qurna and suggest areas for further research in various
disciplines, but I feel it is necessary to say how and why I started my
personal search. As you have heard I was at one time an archaeologist,
interested not in any one particular
period but in the changes that habitation
over many and different periods makes to an area. I worked in historic cities and then became
the Director of an urban environmental education centre in an historic
city. The aim was to try to involve
people in the creation of the future city using an understanding and appreciation
of their built and social history as major tools.
In recent years I have been trying to develop a
contemporary cultural visits programme in Egypt, and in connection with that
have spent many months in Qurna since early 1994, and was making an extended stay of four months in
Qurna in the spring of 1997. I was just
there to learn, and watch and listen, but
the events of 1997 in the village gradually involved me both emotionally
and intellectually.
The hamlets that make up the village of Qurna are in
a UNESCO designated World Heritage Site.
The site has the largest collection of world class monuments in one
small area in the world. Not only is it
a major part of Egypt’s cultural heritage and consciousness but it is of
international importance to history, archaeology, art and architecture. It is also a place of great national economic
importance as a focus of tourism. Qurna
is thus greatly affected by national and international trends and policies
while at the same time strongly manitaining its Upper Egyptian cultural and
social traditions. Thebes has been
intensively studied and analysed for centuries - Qurna and the Qurnawi have
received very little similar attention.
You will be familiar, as I was, with the long held
wishes of the Antiquities Authorities to
remove the villages of Qurna on the Theban Necropolis. Villagers living on top of pharaonic tombs is
what is known world wide about the Qurnawi, and at the end of Ramadan in 1997 a
large number of empty properties were demolished in a major programme. It was very visible to anyone, and was also
emotionally shocking to the entire community and to me as someone very much on
the fringes.
My reaction was to want to record it before it
vanished. I recognised the cultural
importance of Qurna, and I thought it was an unrecorded village. My researches lead me to believe that this
must be the most recorded village in the world; but the records are to a large
extent a by-product and were not done for the sake of the village we see - its people
or its built fabric.
For the majority of visitors the local people are
most well known as tomb robbers, as the stories are still repeated in guide
books and more academic works on the Theban Necropolis. While some tales are true, and many are based
on truth, they are only a small part of a much larger and more complicated
picture. As a small rural community
which has had a disproportionately large role in Egyptian history, the Qurnawi deserve better.
In this talk I will first give some general background
to Qurna and the Qurnawi. Some of the
people have a much longer history here than the hamlets they now live in - so
we will look at their previous settlement and how and why they moved. We will examine some of the written records
and the visual evidence both in man made drawings and photos and on the
ground. Oral history, family history,
administrative history are all part of the fabric. We will look at specific buildings and places
as parts of the larger picture. And I
will suggest areas for further study which would be fruitful and interesting.
We must bear in mind that there are dangers in
accepting evidence from the travellers sources.
Each brings his or her own backgound and perspective. They often only see a minute part of the
picture and they don’t understand and misinterpret what they see. Most did not speak Arabic and only stayed a
few days. But taken as a whole, they can
be compared and sifted, and a true picture can emerge. The same is true for some of the artists’
work, though the teams of draughtsmen working here are renowned for their
accuracy. The early photos do not lie,
but again only tell parts of the picture.
As with almost everything connected with Qurna it is
difficult to separate fact from fiction, myth from history, reality from
unreality and magic. Despite the mass of
archaeological work there is no archaeological record of the last 1300 years or
so, and no consistent written records either.
It seems generally agreed that the history of rural and village Egypt and
that of the fellahiin are the least studied subjects in the many millenia of
this essentially rural, village and peasant country. However, in Qurna at least we can start to
piece a recent history together from what is known about the general areas
south of Qus and Qena, and the evidence
on the ground and fragments that have been recorded as a by-product.
Before we take a closer look at Qurna as it can be
seen, I must stress that it is hard to over-estimate the importance of the
spiritual world and all its manifestations to the Qurnawi. It underlies all thought and action. It is not the subject of this paper, but
must not be forgotten. Religious
observance and local religious allegiancies involve a large amount of time,
energy and debate. The ground is full of
jinns as is the mountain with its caverns.
The physical remains of such beliefs and observancies are of great
importance in our search. I am not
myself a believer in magic, but we must try to understand and appreciate the
magical, mystical and religious significance of the geographical features of
this landscape over many millenia right up to the present.
In case there are some here who don’t know Qurna, let
us look at it, but to try to understand the habitation patterns we must try to
see the area as post pharaonic residents
saw and felt it. ** There is the Qurn itself, the holy mountain,
the natural pyramid, and the range of hills of which it is a part. The importance of high places, the
relationships between them, the spaces created by the landscape are all
important, not only in the ancient periods but all through until now.
There is the wide fertile plain, beginning sharply
where the wady from King’s Valley enters the Nile. Here the inundation covered the agricultural
land ** and lapped against the huge ruins of stone
and mud-brick buildings of an almost totally forgotten past - the buildings
full of spirits and also useful building materials. **
Then there are other large mud brick groups of buildings with rooms,
courtyards and even towers, some on the earlier sacred sites, some on the
heights of the sacred hills and on the sides of these hills. In the rocky shale of the land to the north
and west of the plain there are numerous caverns which make extensive and
convenient homes. Approaching from the
river, the long rows of doors of many of the subterranean dwellings in Tarif
are some of the most noticeable features of the whole west bank landscape. There are very few trees, except the palm
groves by a temple and a few isolated trees and a few acacia bushes. On the sides of the hills and further in the
wadis there are yet more caves convenient for long term storage or short term
emergencies. There were many such
emergencies, such as a high inundation or a flash flood, or more commonly when
the authorities came to collect taxes or to take the young men to the army or
the corvee, or the marawding Bedawin from the west came looting and
stealing. The life of the average
Qurnawi has always been hard and full of fear.
It has been stated that the West Bank here was
deserted for some centuries, but given the abundance of easily made or aquired
dwellings and the excellent agricultural land, despite the small population of
Egypt estimated at about 3 million in the 7th and 15th centuries, there is no
reason to suppose that this area was ever devoid of habitation. Indeed there are good arguments to be made
for continuous occupation with original populations joined by Arab, Bedouin and even a few people from balad es-Sudan.
We will see what we can find in the written and
recorded material about the location and relocation of the village.
The original mud-brick village of Qurna was in and
around the temple of Seti 1, ** (here in the famous drawings by Pococke in
1738 ) on the edge of their fields, but where they could see both to the sacred
sites around, and down to the river to watch constantly for trouble
coming. It is recorded on this site by
all the earliest European travellers
from the late 17th century onwards. Also
recorded is the constant Qurnawi fear of
the authorities.
The Denon drawing
** clearly shows the village in
the courtyards of Seti 1 and the large free standing mud structures which were
such a visible feature of Upper Egypt.
quote from Denon ++
At the time of E.W.Lane’s precise records of 1827 it
was also deserted, the families moved to the hillside tombs where there was new
work and recently appreciated antique ‘rubbish’
filled the holes in the ground.
Except for one or two tombs which were used as long term, secret deposit
accounts, where the head of the family would go once a year or so to retrieve
one piece of gold or silver, those tombs that were open had long ago lost any
article of intrinsic worth. The items left had no value to the Qurnawi until
foreign collectors gave them value, and once that happened it was in the
Qurnawi interest to stake their claims
and move house.
Lane drew a detailed map of the area which included
the site of the village. ** His description of going to Seti 1 from the
river can be followed on the map: ‘the
track is hemmed in on each side by a low wall built to protect the crops from
the cattle which occasionally pass this way, on our left are several enclosures
of low walls, containing palm trees: on our right is a modern burial place, with some tombs of
sheikhs’.
In the drawing on the right ** by
Hay you can see the inundation reaching the deserted village, on the left are
the walls of Ginena, the palm groves where most of the original village
families now living in the Nobles Tombs area own palm trees. It is a remaining link between the families
who relocated for economic reasons in the early 19th c and their former
home. You can also see the huge temple
walls, and the large mud brick ruins of Coptic buildings on the upper slopes of
Dra Abu’l Naga.
We must remember that the Qurnawi could and still can
relocate very fast if they wish - everything can be packed on a donkey or a
camel and you can move house very fast in a few hours. Thus it is impossible to know when this
desertion happened, and whether seasonal , temporary or relatively
permanent. By the 1850s it is clear that
there are people living here again, and we have tales of Qurnawi families in this area giving hospitality to visitors.
Frith photographed here in the 1850s. **
These remarkable stereoscopic photos show a typical very simple house
which could be anywhere, but Frith takes two sets, the second moving slightly
to reveal the edge of the temple of Seti 1, thus placing it exactly. Today this spot is occupied by a house that
was damaged but repaired after the 1994 floods.
** It stands on the area of the
temple entrance which the archaeologists would dearly like to excavate.
The temple itself was cleared in the early 20th
century and has been excavated by the Germans for many years. The floods of 1994 destroyed many of the
houses to the east of the temple. The
final clearance of houses to the south of the temple a few years ago by the
Antiquities authorities ** has removed the chance to investigate the
history of the village further in that area.
When the people moved to the hillside they lived in
the tombs, and built mud structures outside, and then simple shelters to
enclose additional areas. ** This painting of 1842 shows a typical hillside
dwelling of that period. It was painted
by a merchant taking the overland route home from India to Europe . He made a detour from Qus to Thebes.
We think of Qurna as that area between the Medinet
Habu and the road to the Valley of the Kings, but things looked and felt
different two hundred years ago. The
18th and 19th writers record that there was also a sizeable population living
in the tombs in Tarif, north of the Muslem cemetery,, and this population was
refered to as a general part of the village of Qurna and just a section of the
dwellers on the Theban Necropolis. The
river in the 18th and early 19th century ran close to where the canal is now,
it has shifted east. There were no post
pharaonic buildings of any size on the Tarif shelf, and the tomb entrances,
raised high above the river, would have looked very distinctive, and yet would
have been seen as only a part of the whole Necropolis area. **
Rhind’s map of 1855 clearly shows many and varied tombs here to the
north of old Qurna. In modern times the area has been built over and the tombs
are invisible to the casual viewer .
A very worn note on a fragment of a manuscript map by
Hay or Catherwood is the only use I have found to the name Tarif being used for
this Old Kingdom tomb area. These tomb
dwellings were described and drawn by a number of visitors, although they have
often been wrongly attributed, probably because of amalgamated copies by
lithographers. This drawing by
Denon ** is clearly of Saff el Dawaba ** or
one of the other Saff tombs in Tarif, though it is superimposed on the facade
of the Nobles’ Tombs area. Denon came
and went a number of times and his descriptions of where he went and what he
saw and when need to be analysed carefully.
He describes going to the North of the wady road, gives a detailed
description of the Saff tombs and it is in this area he meets his most hostile
reception. We must also remember when
reading stories of the hostility of the Qurnawi that any non-local on
horseback, dressed a la Turque, as Denon would have been, would automatically
be viewed as a serious threat.
In the 1840s an English woman Mrs Romer, wrote of
Taref, « The entrances to these sepulchral chambers very much resemble the
catacombs of the new cemetery of Kensal Green, and I should imagine that the
mummies have been disposed in the same manner that the coffins are placed
there. But not a single mummy is now forthcoming, the living
having succeeded to the dead, and the Arab villages are established in the
burial vaults of the old Thebans. »
Kensal Green is a Victorian suburb of west London.
Pococke in 1737 and Sonnini in the late 1770s amongst
others had letters of introduction to the Sheikh of Qurna, who they record as
living in the village by Seti 1. Many
writers report that the Sheikh tells stories of hostility between the people of
Qurna and those of the next village south, that of Beyrat - a hostility or
rivalry that still exists today. It is
important to know that the area to the south, bordering the Colossi of Memnon,
was not Qurnawi territory, but Beyrati, and the two villages have quarrelled,
feuded and even warred for centuries. So
when visitors such as Denon went to view the Colossi or Medinet Habu in the
company of the Sheikh of Qurna, they were likely to get a hostile reception
from the Sheikh and people of Beyrat, not because they were Europeans, or
because the local communities were intrinsically unpleasant, but because the
visitor had broken all laws of local
decency and respect and had re-opened old wounds. Add to this the probably magical properties of the Colossi, and local poverty,
and you begin to get a more elaborate and more accurate picture.
The Sheikh of Qurna is also in fear of people who
live in tombs on the hillsides. In the
18th century there were people living in some of the Dra abu’l Naga tombs,
probably settled or semi-settled Bedouin.
It is possible that a very few people lived in ruins in the Sheikh abd
el Qurna area, while settlement on Gurnet Marei all appears to be the most
recent.
So far we have been looking at the written sources,
those of travellers and diarists from abroad.
We must also look at, and emmerse ourselves in, the relationships
between places, spaces and people. These
relationships involve topology, theology, social anthropology, archaeology, other -ologies and non -ological disciplines. And they also involve power and the visible
and invisible manifestations of power.
There is nothing accidental about the position of
crucial buildings and structures, nor about the simplest ones. Hatshepsut’s Temple ** is an obvious example, but the
relationship between that and the tomb of Sh Abd el Qurna, ** no less so. This Sheikh commands a height, from it you
look DOWN on to the temple, ** a religious statement, and you also have , of
more worldly significance, a clear view
** around the village, farmland
and to the river. Now above all these ** you
have the ugly modern block houses of the Egyptian security police - a statement of power if ever there was
one. - but without the beauty and much else.
Similar ideas are behind the position, form and function of much smaller
and more fragile constructions. ** This sleeping platform is high on the slopes
of Sheikh abd el Qurna above Sennufer.
It is more than just a sleeping platform open to the skies of god, and
keeping off the worst of the dusty winds -
it is a watch tower ** with advantage over the whole lower area of
the village and below to the river. It
probably also has a good sized cupboard underneath. We will come back to the meaning of the
placing of buildings later.
An obvious relationship of importance is that between
the people living on the hillside and the tombs they live in, on and around. -
the relationship between the living and the long dead. ** It
is clear in the picture to the left how useful these ancient spaces are, as
stables as well as bedrooms and store-rooms, toilets, bathrooms and in some cases
smart sitting rooms complete with electric light and modern furniture. ** But the picture to the left shows the
great disadvantage, - the report by the
Metropolitan museum 1925-26 shows the last resident of this desirable tomb
house just before he was moved out and the tomb returned to the dead, the
archaeologists and the Antiquities Service.
Since the early19th century there have been laws about the ownership of
monuments, antiquities and land. The
first detailed study of the history of these laws applying to Qurna is a
section of the thesis currently being written by Kees Vanderspek.
During the life of the villages on the hillside there
has always been an interplay between travellers, visitors and the Qurnawi. In the tourist season the day-time lives of
many members of the family would have centred round providing for and making an
income from the tourist. The tourist
would employ donkey-boys, water carriers and guides, and they would buy
souvenirs hand crafted in the valley from traditional materials by local men
and women. These were not forgers, but
craftspeople. If they could pass off an
object to an unknowing visitor and get more for it, who should be called the
ugly names? The foolish tourist or the
clever craftsman? But the name forger
has been given to the craftspeople of Qurna over centuries. Sadly, just as more people are beginning to
recognise and appreciate the best of this craft, the mass tourist trade with
its poor and non-discerning millions is killing this local industry with mass
produced rubbish. The tourist took
photos, ** a little piece of a Qurnawi was taken away, a
little fragment of personal history went to Europe to be shown around and then live in a drawer .
We know so much from the travellers’ writings about
the effects of their visits on them, and what they thought of Thebes and of
Egypt. What is known about the effect of
these non-comprehending, impolite, alien visitors upon the consciousness of the
Qurnawi? The long-dead are studied
rather than the living, the long dead are written about in a thousand guide
books, while the living are also seen as foreign objects but not ones which
should be understood. From the earliest
explorer/antiquarian tourist visitors to the most modern sex tourist, the effect of these come and go
people on the host population has had remarkably little study.
The relationship between the authorities, the
archaeologists and the Qurnawi is dramatically portrayed on the left ** - a photo of c. 1912 in Seti 1
temple. ** On the right is part of one of the many
expensive but unimplemented studies for the management of the Necropolis. There is further historical work to be done
here, but more importantly there needs to be a new comprehensive
management plan as requested by UNESCO.
We will now move from the mundane to the spiritual
world.
There were a small number of 19th century
antiquarians who did write in more detail about Qurna. One in particular has been quoted and
re-quoted for over 150 years as an authority on the people and the village. He was the one man above all others working
here, who really disliked the local people, and probably because of this
antipathy misjudged what he saw and didn’t see much. It is from Belzoni, (for it is he) that the
story comes that the Qurnawi were people of no faith and had no mosque. The Mosque with its wells is clearly shown on
the contemporary map drawn by Wilkinson
** and that also by Lane **. It is one large space with two side rooms -
one informant says it was domed. It
was so old that by the early 20th century it was already a ruin, ** but
remained a place of worship and prayer.
A new mosque was built on the site a few years ago **.
I would like to argue that the position of the mosque is where it could
be seen from nearly all the previous
major religious sites. It can be seen
from the monasteries on Qurnet Marei, Sheikh abd el Qurna, and Dra abul Naga,
and probably also from the towers of Deir el Bahari. It was also visible from the valley
temples. It was a strategic site.
The Hay drawings of the cemetery show four old sheikh tombs, ** two
of which still stand . One of the ruined
sheikhs, although in this case a Sheikha,
** is still a distinct place of prayer. Clearly
by 1826 the cemetery is already large and old. The history of the cults of these shrines are
also complicated and full of myths, but
imbedded is the history of Qurna.
** Study by a knowledgeable
Arabic speaker and an Islamic architecture specialist could add immensely to
the Qurna history. ((Horst Jaritz,
architect and Egyptologist says that one of them is of Fatimid date –10-12th
century AD))
Perhaps a reason why Belzoni didn’t see the mosque
was because he was looking for a minaret, and it didn’t look like a mosque to
him. ** Until two years ago the mosque of Omda Jabr
near Seti 1 was just a simple place of prayer and meeting. However, the strengthening of the old local
cult by its recent association with a charismatic young sheikh from Zagazig has
led to the building of a new mosque
** as a rival to that of Sheikh
Tayib just along the road. The Tayibs,
though now the most powerful family in Qurna, have only been there about 100
years and there are many local power tensions .
There are a number of small prayer stops throughout
Qurna, initially visible only because of a few mats and perhaps some low
walls. ** This one is in the Asasif. One of these has recently grown into a large
mosque in Qurnet Marei, an area which did not have its own. **
There are also many zawia,
** of which the religious as well
as the social significance needs record and study. The recent
supporters of Sheikh abu’l Qumsan, a peasant sheikh who has become
popular also as a sort of snubbing of the AlAzhar Tayib family, gave the money
for a big new tomb in 1997 ** which replaced the simple mud-brick building. This lovely old free-standing minbar ** is
in the cemetery where the Eid prayers would have been held. Such is the speed of loss of knowledge that
the common story goes that this is the tomb of the camel of one of the Sheikhs
who died after bringing his master back from afar - a story told in all
seriousness.
The moulid of Sheikh Taia takes place next week. We should look quickly at the interior of
tomb of Sheikh Abd el Qurna with its
little mud lamps. **
We have looked at some of the written sources, and at
some relationships on the ground in the cemetery and holy places. Let us now look at domestic dwellings on the
hillside and the people who lived in them.
The Hay drawings of 1826, **
drawn with a prismatic device called a camera lucida, give the most
clear record of life on Sheikh abd el Qurna early one November morning. ** To
the south on the hillside ** there is a large mud-brick building with
large arched doorway and a smaller door.
It is clearly inhabited, as visitors are at the door. For how many years it had been used as a
dwelling is a guess that can only be answered by detailed archaeology - perhaps
one day. From a painting by Wilkinson in
the Louvre we can see into a huge courtyard with various mud structures, and at
least two tomb entrances in to the hillside at the back. This huge building is probably a Coptic ruin,
and I understand that there are Christian signs on the walls of the tombs etc,
but I have found no specific mention of it in any of the early accounts. **
When Maxime du Camp took this photo in the 1850s it was still there as
you can see. ** However, by the time of this post card vew
of about 1900 the building has been rebuilt on the same footprint. It is the first of the range descending the hillside
to be built in this way. ** The Baraize maps of the early 20th century show that the house
belonged to one Todros Ayoub. Here we
have a Copt living in an ancient Coptic building. This area all along Sheikh abd el Qurna was
until very recently predominantly Coptic, with many weaving families. **
A range of buildings here was bought in the 70s or 80s by the Abd er
Salaam family and the ancient Coptic house is now next to the Sennufer coffee
shop.
By the 1820s there was a relatively large population
living in the hillside tombs, those in the Nobles tombs area mainly having
relocated from Qurna village. They lived
in the tombs themselves and on the ledges and courts in front. **
They made a wide range of furniture from the fibre-glass like fermented
mud and dung mixture used for thousands of years. They farmed and kept a variety of animals,
and the men and boys were employed by the collectors and excavators. **
Increasingly they also provided for the growing tourist trade.
In 1830 Joseph Bonomi recorded that ‘ the number of
cultivators in the village of Qurna who pay the land tax is 224, and perhaps
the whole number of men may be 330. To which add 350 women and about 350
children, and that may be a tolerably
fair calculation of the present inhabitants’ Just over 1000. Probably so, but it is impossible to judge
whether Bonomi was refering to the population on the hillside or that of the
whole administrative district of Qurna, whiich would have included Tarif as it
still does. The answer probably lies in
the tax records in Cairo. This needs a
good Arabist and interested historian.
I have made a very rough calculation based upon the
people seen in the Hay Panorama and come to a rough estimate also of 1,000 -
for the people on the hillside only.
The agent for the British, Giovanni D’Athanasi says
that some years before he arrived, therefore in the early 19th century there
had been 1800 houses, reduced to 216 by
‘ the war of extermination that the mamelukes waged against them’. Again, what area is he talking about and what
does he mean by a house? The answer
probably exists, deep in the records in Cairo.
There is much work to be done.
In the 1820s some of the Europeans working
permanently there built houses. The
British Consul-General Henry Salt built one
** for his man on the spot,
Giovanni D’Athanasi, known as Yanni.
This was probably the first new building on the hillside since the 8th
century. It became the residence and
meeting place for many of the professional collectors, antiquarians,
draughtsmen and visitors. It shows
in one of the Hay drawings as a large
range of buildings on the hillside ** (just above the tomb of Nahkt). It is best known in this drawing taken from a
photo in 1855. ** This shows the house like a small castle
surrounded by courtyards. Gardner Wilkinson’s house with its towers is higher
up the hill, and below Yanni is the tomb house of Sheikh Osman with its mud
structures.
At the start
of the 20th century, ** as in this photo
of 1910, it was owned by the Lazim family, part of the same large family of
Osman Omar Lazim, as the old Sheikh.
** Today the house is very
ruinous, ** but is lived in by an elderly Hagga Nefiisa
and her goats. Let us hope that before
it falls completely, it could be repaired and kept as one of the first new
buildings and one which has made a significant contribution to the
archaeological and built history of the area.
((Hagga Nefiisa died the night of May 5-6 2001. One of the largest group of mourners for many
years carried her body to the cemetery, and women and men came and went to the
house all day. She was ‘the last of the
Omar Lazim women’.))
A photo in a collection in the UK taken in about 1910
shows the dwelling and probable occupant of the Omar Lazim house just to the
north of Yannis. ** There is a little boy in the bed! This was on the direct donkey route to Deir
el Bahari and probably kept nice and tidy for photos. The soma’a has an unusual base - square instead
of the usual round. - and it is indeed very new and neat. The Qurnawi refer to their pretence of work
especially for the tourist as Qurna Cinema.
The house below Yannis is still much the same today
and has a fine collection of mud structures.
**
Italy’s man on the spot, Piccinnini, had, by 1828, built himself ** a
much smaller place on the hillside at Dra abu’l Naga. This was stuffed full of antiques.
Jason Thompson has written about the house built by
Sir Gardner Wilkinson on Sheikh abd el Qurna,
** seen here from the side in a
little sketch by Nestor l’Hote in the 1830s.
These two pencil sketches ** are
part of a long drawing by Wilkinson showing the front of his house - the
courtyard with its minor outbuildings in 1827, before the building of the
tower.. Note the very singular mud
structure - certainly not built by a Qurnawi, and the Classical jardiniere.
The long-term impact of the European houses - the
first group just mentioned, and the later ones of the Metropolitan House, the
De Garis Davis house, Carter Houses one and two, the German houses one and two,
and the Old Chicago House - has never been discussed or researched. How much, if any, of the style of Qurnawi
houses on the hillside as we know them were derived from Yanni’s? How did the stewardship of these buildings
after their original owners had left affect the various families? How has the use of piped water only by the
Metropolitan House and the German house
** formed the attitudes of the
Qurnawi towards foreign missions and by association towards all foreigners, at
least those living in the area? There
are many themes which can be explored around these building and their
functions. They are themselves a part of
the historical and archaeological heritage.
One visitor staying on Sheikh abd el Qurna in 1834
tells a story that one night, looking over the valley in the heat, he met an
old dervish and they sat and smoked and chatted. The Dervish had returned to Qurna after long religious
wanderings and »built himself a humble residence, with an oratory
attached, and close to the latter, a large apartment in which he collected
together the children of the neighbourhood, that he might teach them to read
and write and initiate them in the truths of religion. He made no difference between the sexes, but taught equally girls and boys . »
St John may or may not have actually met his Dervish,
but he is there in the oral history.
The dervish was called Abd er Rahman, and he started
the first khutaab in the village. This area
** now around Hagg Rifai all
belonged to Sheikh Abd er Rahman. Hagga
Rifai took me to the zawia that was the school.
** Outside there is a small
square mud-brick structure ** which she did not tell me about. But another Hagg who trusts me more tells me
that this is the library of Abd er Rahman and is never opened. It is a venerated place. Abd er Rahman is said to have arrived in
Qurna after a period when there was no Sheikh and he taught them to understand
prayer. He was probably a Sufi who
returned in the late 18th century, bringing his ‘Koranic learning and organised
mysticism’ to an illiterate Arabic speaking rural community, mixed in origin,
many still with Coptic and indeed pagan beliefs and customs. Whether the arrival of Sheikh abd er Rahman
actually led to a late wave of conversions from Copt to Muslem, only much
greater work in the village would perhaps tell. But that is my hunch.
A major area for further study is building research
and record.
From 1992 to 1994 a major social and architectural
survey was conducted in Qurna ahead of a
plan for the relocation of the village.
Most of the architectural survey work on the individual properties on
the hillside was done by Diaa el Din, a young architect from Cairo, then
working for a consultancy firm. This
major study has never been available to the public as it was a commissioned
piece, albeit never properly paid for.
The basis therefore for any architectural survey work on the houses
exists. It is not necessary to re-invent the wheel, but it can be
upgraded and have new tyres and paintwork.
Most of the houses are worthy of detailed record and study. - no two or
two groups are alike. Here I am only
going to show some oddities, and some special categories. Some have high towers reminiscent of the
Wilkinson and Yanni buildings. ** The first floor hoist entrance is, I
believe, unique to the village, but I could well be wrong.
These two zawias
** are just two of the many, some
in use and many ruined that are all over the area. Associated with specific families, they have
inter-linked social and religious functions and are a major topic for further
research - along with Suffism and local
customs and magical traditions.
Most of the houses have flat roofs and ceilings using
massive timbers, but a few houses have rooms
** with the ceilings formed from
a series of mud brick arches. These are
used in sites where the wood eating ants (or are they termites) destroy the
timbers. This house in Suallim,
west of Seti 1 is a good example.
** Built about 40 years
ago it also has the usual handy
pre-existing cellar. ** The area
of Suallim was settled very late, as people feared the number of jinns
that resided here.
Most of the houses have square corners, but some
follow the contours, ** like this one
high up above Sheikh Tayib’s house in Hasasna with its beautiful internal rooms
and its obligatory tomb. **
Construction materials and techniques are quite
varied! **
The mud things, menama, soma’a, safat and others ** are
so much a feature here as in other parts of Upper Egypt and are the most
environmentally sustainable furniture and also a sculpture gallery at the same time. Winlock and Somers Clark seem to be the only
archaeologists who took a professional interest in them, and there has been a
recent study of them in Sohaq. For the
most part they have been cleared away as so much rubbish. But they are remarkable whether they
stand alone, ** attached to the walls of tombs, or are incorporated
into the building structures. **
The right hand slide
** just illustrates how simply
and surruptitiously things change and
thus must be recorded before they go.
The mud-brick dome of Sheikh abu el Qumsan was first encased ** by
the new fired brick dome, and then demolished
from inside it. ** The original dome had stood less than 50
years but fear of further major rain, and generous donations to the shrine led to a speedy
re-build.
The old flour mill between the mosque of Sheikh Tayib
and Omda Gabr is now disused and gradually getting ruinous. **
This was an important industrial building in its time. The house of the Kaimakan, ** or regional overseer, and later an
Antiquities building is another one-off which has played its part in the area’s history.
Those were large
buildings whose disappearance would be noticed. ** No
less important to the understanding of the pattern of Qurnawi habitation on the
hillside is this range of homes in the Asasif.
** It is said that the Qurnawi
ruin their environment, but I would argue that they are very gentle on the
earth, or have been until very recently.
** The left hand photo was taken
some 100 years ago and shows a range of tomb houses with their mud things. **
The right hand photo was taken
two years ago just after their Coptic families had moved to As-Suyul or
further. Note again that they are
Coptic. If you carefully examine the
stratigraphy at the back you can see that hardly a stone has been misplaced in
a hundred years, despite babies, goats, donkeys and even tourists. I believe this is remarkable.
I have argued that the history and archaeology of the
existing and post Roman communities has been neglected. This is nothing new. The teams of draughtsmen and artists employed
by Wilkinson and Hay, the many travellers and antiquarians here at that time
would have seen a huge ruin at the top of Dra abu’l Naga. ** On
their wanderings they could not have missed it.
But it was not built of stone, and it was not Pharaonic, and thus of no
interest. This sketch, which is tiny and
in one of Wilkinson’s many notebooks is the only record I can find of this
major standing building. There are a few
other sketches of window details in a notebook of Bonomi’s or Hay. **
Nearly 200 years later this major Coptic monastery has still not been
excavated. I was delighted to learn the
day before yesterday that the Germans have plans to excavate it, but are
waiting the skilled personnel to do the work. I congratulate them and look
forward to it. ** This is just a gathering of surface sherds of
the wonderful pottery corpus that they will have to work on.
Anyone recording here must be alive to the importance
of the seemingly insignificant.
This single stone ** on a shelf of Sheikh abd el Qurna is a simple
object. Put there how many decades,
centuries or millenia ago is unknown. It
is highly unlikely that its simple foundation platform of mud would give a
date. But this seat is worn smooth by a
million sitting bottoms. ** From
this vantage point you can see the whole village and valley. You can see the Turks coming for
taxes, you can see the tourist crossing who might want a guide or a cup of tea,
you can see who is coming and going over a huge distance. This is the Qurnawi equivalent of the barrack
blocks so visible on the heights of all the hills today. And the Qurnawi didn’t need bright electric
lit steps up the holy mountain. If this
one stone is cleared without record, a
small but important piece of history goes with it. Such is fragility of Qurnawi history.
But there has been nothing gentle about what has
happened here - the massive uses of manpower to uncover and take away the
history and artefacts from here. The
Nestor l’Hote sketch ** shows teams of Qurnawi employed to drag a
huge Sphinx to the river, the sphinx is now in Russia. **
The Metropolitan Museum certainly provided work for the working man to
do - but at what cost to the fragile archaeology beneath? Hindsight is a great thing, but a similar
thought process is still at work here .
And how have the employers viewed their employees? Their fellow human beings? Their
hard working, miserably paid, labour force sweating in the sun? They were ignored or vilified in
archaeological report after report.
Petrie and others, for partially justifiable reasons, imported labour
from Quft. ** These photos by Schiaparelli show how he
presents the Qurnawi to a Western readership and public - as criminal
specimens. And one page full of mug
shots is just of young boys.
Have things really changed? Talk to archaeologists working today and
see. The answer is sometimes yes, and sometimes most definitely No.
In other situations and other places people study
attitudes of management and labour forces, people study inherent racism and the treatment of identifiable
semi-pariah groups , people study appropriate labour relations and working
conditions and industrial injuries.
People write papers and manuals on the importance of training and the
sharing of knowledge and skills. What
makes this labour force and this work so immune from study and
even open discussion?
There is work for so many disciplines, if they dare
to touch it.
To return to gentler waters.
There are collections of travel photos all over the
world, and many will show Qurna. The
majority of shots will show tombs and temples but some travellers rejoiced in
taking photos of local people and
places. The first cameras were here 145
years ago, and there exists a huge pool of information. ** It
may be possible to find the family of
this dark skinned donkey boy. Do they
know if and why they came from the Balad es Sudan? Are they yet another Coptic family? And if so
was that part of their southern heritage?
This old man ** working the Saqieh is the father or
grandfather of Osman Taia Daramali, now aged 74. Osman now lives in a house below Yannis, and his son, Abdu, of
about 27 is one of the most skilled
restorers who works with the Germans and the Swiss. I will give him the photo of the man I think
is his grandfather when he returns from Germany next week. I will also ask him if he knows that Bonomi
recorded in 1827 that it was in his family well that local people disposed of boys’
foreskins after circumcision - it was a very magical well.
I have found a grandson of the man in 1910 working
this saqieh, ** of the Shabaniyeh. And here lying under the trees is the very
saqieh, ** which I hope can at least be put together
again next to a copy of the photo and a description of the working of these
important structures.
Hay made a drawing
** of a family busy at their
daily tasks early one morning in 1826 in the Asasif. After searching for ages I have found the
multiple tomb site, ** much changed but still recogniseable. It has been recently excavated. I cross my fingers that there are some
records which correspond to what we can see are the recent uses of this space
and the lives of its most recent inhabitants.
Now that I have located the place I can start the search for the family
shown here and they too can have pictures of their distant relatives, whose
names they probably remember. ((In fact
I am now doubtful about exactly which group of tombs it is, one of two possibles
– needs a little more work !!))
Nestor L’Hote drew this portrait of Sheikh Awad, ** in
the 1830s. Fortunately in the Awad
family men at least live long lives.
The four elderly men in this photo
** are four of his great grandsons, two of his
direct grandsons are also still alive.
Jason says that there is also a photo taken some 20 years later of
Sheikh Awad, I look forward to giving that to his descendents also. ((Tea Party Celebration held March 2001,
outside the Omda House, beside Hagg Abd er Satar’s shop, to introduce Mrs Neville
Rolfe (great grand-daughter of Joseph Bonomi) to the family of the friend of
Bonomi, Sheikh Awad. Attended by at
least 50 members of Awad family, age range 92 (Hagg Adli) to young children. Everyone given commemorative certificates in
Arabic and English with photos and drawings and short biogs of the two
men. Good fun had by all.))
The collection of photos can most easily be done
abroad, and there could be a project to identify and put together the history.
On the ground in Qurna there is work to be done on a
detailed story of the Hagg painters alive and dead. **
Mohammed Abd el Melek, now head of Kings Valley Primary School, has
given up painting. He says that it is
because he is old, but I gather that there is a much longer and more interesting
background to it all. ((Spring 2001 – he
has started painting again.)) Despite
the beautiful work done on Egypt’s Hagg paintings in general, a study should be
done here on those in the Theban west bank in particular. They carry on a most special tradition, even
if it has a broken line. ** The same can be said for the sculptors, who
work in a variety of stones and also in wood.
They go unrecorded, and with the advent of machines in the village, and
of fake stone and the terrible souvenirs now being made - these too are a dying
breed. The end of a very long and
wonderful one. Perhaps recording and
properly acknowledging them will help to turn a major tide.
This document is also part of Gurna’s history. ** It
was kept safely in a locked cupboard and I was given a copy - for which I am
immensely grateful. It was kept safely
as it is a record of what the Government said would be built as the new village
when the people were persuaded, by the very beauty and fine quality of their
new homes, to leave the mountain. This
never happened, and looks like never
happening, but the people still keep the proof that it was promised. This is a historical and important record.
What was built instead was barrack type
accommodation ** on the one hand, and a toy-town nonsense
piece of corruption on the other. **
After the major demolition of vacated houses in March
1997 some people tried to raise public interest in the decent treatment of the
Qurnawi. ** I put together an exhibition for the Qurnawi
to use as a tool for discussion, which looked at the problems and various
solutions. ** It is clear that there are large numbers of
the resident population on the hillside who wish to move to better
accommodation where there is piped water.
It is also clear there is a small minority, who for various reasons, do
not want to move ever. Perhaps there is
some way that both these can be accommodated.
In the meantime there has been a huge tract of land
graded to the north, ** where the fatalistic Qurnawi call upon the magic of the
ancients to help yet again. **
My tiny gesture is to bring back some small parts of
Qurnawi history partly as I believe that it is the right and respectful thing
to do to a community who I believe have been treated with two centuries of
disrespect, and partly because I think it would be good to have these lovely
drawings shown to local people and tourists alike only feet from where they
were drawn. ** And partly because this whole project has been tremendously
interesting and fun. Sheikh Awad is
great grandfather also of the man who owns the Omda House where the exhibition
will be shown.
I believe it is important for all those who have over
the years expressed love for Qurna as a place or sympathy for the Qurnawi as a
community to try to do the right thing.
The forces pulling in the opposite direction are very strong. ** It
is only too likely that this artist’s vision of the Theban Theme Park will
indeed happen. We will have to call on
very powerful magic indeed to stop it.
Peter Pan asked, « Do you believe in fairies? « Just remember that Tinkerbell did not die!
Caroline Simpson, Cairo November 2000
Given at the American Research Centre in Egypt.
Illustrated with slides shown in the text as **
Caroline Simpson