'Mud Things' in Qurna

The most visible indications of human habitation of the tombs in the early periods were the free-standing mud structures built outside the tomb entrances. Mud structures similar to these were a feature of all Upper Egyptian villages but there are very few descriptions of them in the 19th century writings. Perhaps this is because most travellers and writers were so familiar with them that they were no longer worthy of comment; they were, as it were, invisible by their very visibility and normality. E.W.Lane, perhaps the most scrupulously detailed of all the early writers, didn't mention them in his description of Qurna - their absence would have been worthy of comment. Fortunately some visitors did write about them and they are clearly represented in all the early drawings and photographs. They still exist in some houses, but, apart from the ovens, most have been destroyed or broken and are just crumbling away.

In a land where there is little useable and cheap timber, mud is an excellent alternative for many constructions. It also does not require complicated tools, nails, or joints. Containers can be made for almost any purpose, often multi-purpose, and any size or shape, with minimum skill and at no cost except time. They can be easily adapted, and when no longer needed the material can all be used again for another construction, or if abandoned it returns over time to the earth from which it is made - they do not litter the hillside with rusting metal or garish plastic. More than all this, they are both individually and in groups, things of sculptural beauty. They have a strange quality of looking at the same time so hand-moulded that you can almost feel the strength and confidence of the maker, while also appearing to have grown out of the ground like some organic happening.

The drawings by Robert Hay in the 1820s, Prinsep's painting of 1842, the photographs of the Maison d'Arabe, c 1900, and Hassan Fathy's of Qurnet Murai all show a variety and range of these useful things. The big circular open-topped ones are beds, generally called 'menaama', Arabic for a sleeping compartment. Fathy writes, "there are beds like large mushrooms where the children can sleep safe from scorpions (from which they derive their name beit el agrab)". Fathy also shows a large, rectangular, flat mud bed supported on huge, fat, circular legs. But the tall structures were also used for sleeping by adults, shown by a variant further South in a delightful drawing by Denon.

On cold winter nights you could light a fire in the small oven compartment underneath and be very warm and cosy. And they were invaluable as children’s playpens – keeping the babies out of harm’s way while mum was busy. Most of the ‘mud things’ are for storage of one thing or another, grain bins and cupboards. When you live your life in spaces occupied also by goats, chickens, dogs and other animals, it is important to be able to keep your food stuffs and few other possessions from being eaten. Richardson describes some structures when writing of his visit in 1816-18, "they generally build near the door a round hollow tower, shaped like some of the ancient Egyptian borders, of unburnt brick, or stone plastered over with mud, with openings in its side, in different places, to serve for presses and other conveniences. It is closed at the top, and shaped like a funnel or open bowl, from which the camel eats his grass, cut straw, beans or other provender.”

It is difficult to believe that the Qurnawi made special camel-high mangers to take the back ache out of eating for their beasts, but may be. It is more likely that Richardson happened to see one of the few times that a family put the camel's food in one of these multi-purpose bins, or even that the camel was stealing a quick snack observed only by a visiting Englishman, who, knowing no better, let him eat his way through the family's food store. Belzoni, in one of his less censorious moments, when writing of local marriage customs, notes, "They make a kind of box of clay and straw, which, after two or three days' exposure to the sun, becomes quite hard. It is fixed on a stand, an aperture is left to put all their precious things into it, and a piece of mummy case forms the door." The round ones are called 'sowaama' in Arabic (sing. 'soma'), and the square ones, less used in Qurna, were called 'sufat', and 'bayata' were small ones with lids and an opening at the bottom for bird houses. Many of the large grain bins were multi-storey, often with added compartments at the side. In some later houses, lines of different containers formed complete internal walls, or one or two were incorporated into a wall. In the tombs themselves assorted mud constructions are built on and against the walls, as cupboards, shelves, mangers, pigeon nesting boxes, chicken houses or whatever necessary. They often appear to be growing, free form, out of the stone walls.

In the same way as the mud-bricks for buildings are not just plain unadulterated mud, the raw material for the container structures is not either. The best description of the process is given by the archaeologist who excavated the remains of the Coptic Monastery on the summit of Sheik abd el Qurna. "They were made as they are today, of a mixture of Nile mud, manure and straw well-rotted together until the straw and the manure have permeated the mass with a sort of vegetable glue, and the straw fibers have made a binding material. When dry this mixture is so hard and tough that thin walls will not only support themselves but large objects made of it can readily be moved about. The larger bins seem to have been made on the spot, although the smaller ones may well have been brought from elsewhere, as is often done by the fellah women today."

The round bread ovens are the most used mud structures today. The basic oven is usually bought in the market or from a passing merchant, and then moulded into its place in the yard, out the back, or on the roof, or in the corner of an open roofed room. The owner often ensures good bread and safe cooking by warding off the evil eye with making hand prints in the mud surface. Some people even decorate them further with anthropomorphic touches that turn them into faces, but in the main all the mud structures are undecorated. Gas fired bread ovens are slowly taking the place of these traditional ovens, though the bakers swear that the flavour of the bread is not so good.

The disuse and disappearance of the sowaama and the menaama in part reflect changing life-styles, and partly fashion, greater wealth and availability of alternative materials. Most families now buy their flour ready milled, and many do not even make their own bread regularly. There are very few local working camels, and those there are eat off the ground. Most people now live in 'proper houses' with rooms separated from their animals who might eat everything unless put away safely. Rooms in houses have become more single purpose and 'proper' beds and cupboards are now made from timber by the local furniture maker, and are brightly painted and decorated with garlands of carved flowers. Many people still sleep on the floor, or on a general purpose 'dekka', heavy wooden sofa, or on a simpler and cheaper palm bed, 'sirir', but a timber bed, as with European families until quite recently, is a status symbol as well as a piece of furniture. Re-used metal, wood and plastic containers are now used for storing all manner of things that previously went in a mud cupboard.

The disuse and disappearance of the sowaama and the menaama in part reflect changing life-styles, and partly fashion, greater wealth and availability of alternative materials. Most families now buy their flour ready milled, and many do not even make their own bread regularly. There are very few local working camels, and those there are eat off the ground. Most people now live in 'proper houses' with rooms separated from their animals who might eat everything unless put away safely. Rooms in houses have become more single purpose and 'proper' beds and cupboards are now made from timber by the local furniture maker, and are brightly painted and decorated with garlands of carved flowers. Many people still sleep on the floor, or on a general purpose 'dekka', heavy wooden sofa, or on a simpler and cheaper palm bed, 'sirir', but a timber bed, as with European families until quite recently, is a status symbol as well as a piece of furniture. Re-used metal, wood and plastic containers are now used for storing all manner of things that previously went in a mud cupboard.

When villagers move house today they do not often take the mud structures with them on the back of the cart. The tractors and demolition men who pull down the houses show no more respect for these remnants of an earthen past than for the solid houses themselves. Lucky artists and photographers are taken to see them by those few villagers who have realised that, yet again, the foreigner values something which to the villager is now just so much rubbish. But this time they are not dislodged from the hillside and shipped to foreign lands. May be that will come soon. It will only take an enterprising Qurnawi to make nice new ones and the cycle begins again.