By Kees van der Spek
Until eventually their fresh demolition, the colourful mud-brick hamlets of al-Qurna village, located one of the Noble Tombs of the Theban Necropolis at the Luxor West financial institution, have been domestic to a colourful neighborhood.
Inhabiting a spot of extensive Egyptological examine for over centuries, it was once inevitable that Qurnawis should still turn into a part of the background of Egyptology and the advance of archaeological perform within the Theban Necropolis. yet they've got as a rule been considered as employees for the excavation groups or buyers within the illicit antiquities exchange. the fashionable humans inhabiting the traditional burial grounds have themselves not often been considered.
By demonstrating the multiplicity of monetary actions which are performed in al-Qurna, this learn counters the villagers' stereotypical illustration as tomb robbers, and restores an realizing of who they're as humans residing their lives within the shadow of valued cultural historical past.
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Extra resources for The Modern Neighbors of Tutankhamun: History, Life, and Work in the Villages of the Theban West Bank
Sample text
For some, they are “the only living link with the people of ancient Egypt. They are directly descended from the embalmers, craftsmen, painters, sculptors and artists who lived here three thousand years ago” (Zakaria Goneim, quoted in Cottrell, 1950: 144, 120–21). This view also implies that Qurnawi are the descendants of the ancient tomb robbers (Breasted, 1916: 525; Carter and Mace, 1923: 70) who “have lived off the dead for millennia” (Stewart, 1997: 89), effectively making no distinction between ancient Egyptian illicit activities in the necropolis and contemporary ones (Roberts, 1993: 98).
Despite much of the present tense in the following narrative, it is of crucial importance that the reader keep in mind that the social life as it played itself out in the archaeological surroundings of the ancient cemetery, now—and largely due to those same tourism development plans—no longer exists. It exists to the extent that it still can in the new settlements several kilometers to the north of the Theban Mountain. But following the relocation of Qurnawi away from the foothills and the immediate environment of the tombs, something unique was lost.
Commonly known as the Theban Necropolis—Thebes’ City of the Dead—the west bank cemeteries opposite modern-day Luxor are not just an ancient burial ground. The necropolis—despite its 1979 UNESCO World Heritage listing4—has also long been a place for the living. Unlike the archaeologists who uncovered their secret, the ‘Abd al-Rasuls were not visitors, but locals. Until the recent demolition of their village and the removal of the community from the ancient cemeteries, the ‘Abd al-Rasuls and their descendants inhabited the undulating stretch of foothills that makes up the lower, eastern slope of the Theban Mountain, between the so-called Tombs of the Nobles and below the ridge that on its western side gives access to Egypt’s world-famed Valley of the Kings, final resting place of the boy-king Tutankhamun.