Qurna (also Gourna, Gurna, Kurna, Qurnah or Qurneh; Arabic: القرنة) are various spelling for a group of three closely related villages (New Qurna, Qurna and Sheikh’ Adb el-Qurna) located on the West Bank of the Nile River opposite the modern city of Luxor in Egypt near the Theban Hills.
The new Qurna was designed and built in the late 1940s and early 1950s by Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy to house people living in the old Qurna, which is now uninhabited. New Qurna was added to the 2010 World Monuments Watch List of Most Endangered Sites to bring attention to the site’s importance to modern town planning and vernacular architecture due to the loss of much of the original form of the village since it was built.
Location of Qurna
Al Qurna is a village in Egypt, situated northwest of Al Baairat Village and southwest of El-Assasif in Thebes.
Historical use of the name Qurna
Kurna signifies “a promontory” or “a point of a mountain”. Émile Amélineau identifies it with ancient Pekolol (Coptic: ⲡⲕⲟⲗⲟⲗ). The name Gourna was first mentioned by Protais and Charles François d’Orléans, two Capuchin missionary brothers travelling in Upper Egypt in 1668. Protais’ writing about their travel was published by Melchisédech Thévenot (Relations de divers voyages curieux, 1670s-1696 editions) and Johann Michael Vansleb (The Present State of Egypt, 1678).
References to Qurna, Gurna, Kournou, Gourna, El-Ckoor’neh, Gourne, el Abouab, El-Goor’neh or many other variants in pre-1940s literature refer to a spread-out urban sprawl of housings stretching from approximately the Ramesseum (Mortuary Temple of Ramesses II) to the Mortuary Temple of Seti I on the east side of the Theban Hills, including the current place names of Sheikh’ Adb el-Qurna, el-Assasif, el-Khokha, Dra’ Abu el-Nage’ and Qurna.
During the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, visitors and travellers to the area were rarely consistent in using the name. Anything between Medinet Habu and the tombs of el-Tarif can sometimes be referred to as part of this community.
A reference to the “Temple of Gourna” or similar is the Ramesseum, to a lesser degree, the Temple of Seti I. It rarely references the all-but-destroyed Mortuary temples of Ramesses, Thutmose III or Thutmose IV.
The villages
New Qurna (or New Gourna)
New Qurna was built between 1946 and 1952 by Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy midway between the Colossi of Memnon and el-Gezira on the Nile on the main road to the Theban Necropolis to house the residents of the Qurna. This site served to relocate the villagers, but it also served as an experiment. The goal was to make low-cost buildings as well as environment-friendly structures. With Old Qurna, there was not much vegetation due to difficulties accessing water. New Qurna was designed to improve Old Qurna and solve hardships in accessing water.
New Qurna was built near the Nile River, resulting in more use of vegetation. Due to the village’s lack of electricity, cooling and heating techniques were implemented within New Qurna. The weather would still feel cool within the houses with the weather. When the weather is excellent, the homes will stay warm. The design, which combined traditional materials and techniques with modern principles, was never completed, and much of the fabric of the village has since been lost; all that remains today of the original New Qurna is the mosque, market and a few houses. UNESCO World Heritage conservation wishes to safeguard this important architectural site. The World Monuments Fund included New Qurna in the 2010 World Monuments Watch List of Most Endangered Sites.
New Qurna downside
Many of the buildings that were built had foundations of salt stones. Due to the high humidity, the salt stones would dissolve, causing the structure of the houses to fail. Villagers would need to adjust and fix their homes every few months for the house to remain intact.
Qurna (or Old Gourna)
Qurna is an abandoned village about 100m east of the Temple of Seti I. Until the early 19th century, the community included at least parts of the Temple of Seti I. Several travellers, including Richard Pococke or Sonnini de Manoncourt, even name the Sheikh of Qurna. Edward William Lane relates that in 1825, the village was abandoned, and no one inhabitant lived there. Comments by Isabella Frances Romer suggest that the resettling started in the late 1840s. Hassan Fathy alleges that the inhabitants of the village lived in poverty and thus robbed ancient tombs as a means of subsistence.
Families of the villagers settled down on top of the selected tombs where they would build their houses. Villagers built alongside the tombs, as the tombs became a part of the house. Looted items would either be sold or kept around the villagers’ homes. To stop the looting, the Department of Antiquities expropriated the land on which the Qurnis lived and decided to move them to a new settlement designed and built by Hassan Fathy himself. No two houses in the village are the same. Kurnis constructed and shaped the houses and furniture, including chairs, tables, and beds. New Qurna was built in the 1940s and early 1950s to house the residents who strongly resisted the move.
Sheikh’ Adb el-Qurna
A series of housing was built in and around the mountain grottoes about 200m north of the Ramesseum at Sheikh’ Adb el-Qurna. Edward William Lane relates that the residents moved into these grottoes from the village of Qurna, which they abandoned when the Mamluks retreated through the area following their defeat by Muhammad’ Alī’s forces in the early 19th century. The stretch of land has been the bitter battlefield between the original owners and the Egyptian government for the last 60 years. It lay on top of an archaeological area, part of the Nobles’ Tombs.
