By Kees van der Spek
Till their contemporary 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 study for over centuries, it used to be inevitable that Qurnawis may still turn into a part of the historical past of Egyptology and the improvement of archaeological perform within the Theban Necropolis. yet they've got often been considered as employees for the excavation groups or purchasers within the illicit antiquities exchange. the fashionable humans inhabiting the traditional burial grounds have themselves hardly been considered.
By demonstrating the multiplicity of monetary actions which are performed in al-Qurna, this examine counters the villagers' stereotypical illustration as tomb robbers, and restores an figuring out of who they're as humans dwelling their lives within the shadow of valued cultural history.
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Additional resources for The Modern Neighbors of Tutankhamun: History, Life, and Work in the Villages of the Theban West Bank
Example text
However, before making that argument, it is valid to ask how we came to the point where we had to resort to the certain postulated ethnically defined psychological identity, that is ‘Bedouin’ and ‘Arab,’ of Qurnawi in describing an aspect of their subsistence base, rather than presenting their economic activities in the context of the dynamics operating between them and their physical environment. The answer to that question is to be found in the specific ways in which the historically emerging archaeological appropriation of the landscape, the attendant gradual development of antiquities legislation, the implementation of practical protective measures, and the evolution of western heritage values more broadly in their totality have come to dominate all other forms of landscape use, including people’s place within it and their relationship to it.
Maybe the music never stopped, as suggested by the continuity of religious practice in today’s differently interpreted Muslim Theban landscape. Indeed, the musical sounds that may accompany Muslim religious expression in the necropolis include the haunting nighttime melodies and chants of the modern devotional Sufi dhikr performed at the annual mulid of Shaykh ‘Abd al-Qurna, and the other commemorative dhikr that regularly punctuate the Theban night sky. As audible yet seemingly timeless elements of local spiritual expression they are not too far removed from the sacred sounds that during pharaonic times similarly came wafting down the hillside from differing points at any given time.
What space can they be said to occupy intellectually in order to have become integrated into the range of both local and international dynamics at whose mercy they find themselves? What is it that characterizes their social environment, which has always found itself measured by the yard stick of foreign intellectual endeavor? We shall turn to the latter aspect first. ” may be assumed to have been historically answered with a simple response. The people of al-Qurna, inhabiting the cluster of hamlets built amid the ancient tombs of the Theban Necropolis on the Luxor west bank, have generally been taken to make tomb robbing and illicit dealings in antiquities their principal economic specialization.