Kurna
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kurna, Gourna, Qurna or Qurnah (signifies "a promontory" or "a point of a mountain")[1] is the name of three villages located near the Theban Hills on the West Bank of the River Nile opposite the modern city of Luxor in Egypt. The three villages are Qurna, Sheikh ‘Adb el-Qurna and New Qurna. Their history is throughout interconnected.
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[edit] Historical use of the name Qurna
References to Qurna, Gurna, Kournou, Gourna, El-Ckoor’neh, Gourne, el Abouab, El-Goor’neh or many other variants in pre-1940s literature refers 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. 18th, 19th and 20th century visitors and travellers to the area are rarely consistent in their use of the name and anything between Medinet Habu and the tombs of el-Tarif can at times be found referred to as part of a Qurna community.
A reference to the "Temple of Gourna" or similar, is in most cases a reference to the Ramesseum, to a lesser degree the Temple of Seti I and rarely it is a reference to the all but destroyed Mortuary temples of Ramesses IV, Thutmose III or Thutmose IV.
Gourna is 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).
[edit] Qurna
Qurna is a small village about 100m to the 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, like Richard Pococke[2] or Sonnini de Manoncourt[3] even name a Sheikh of Qurna. Edward William Lane relates in 1825 that the village was abandoned and not a single inhabitant lived there. Comments by Isabella Frances Romer[4] suggests that the resettling started in the late 1840s. Today the village is inhabited.
[edit] Sheikh ‘Adb el-Qurna
Sheikh ‘Adb el-Qurna is a series of housing build on, around and in the mountain grottoes located about 200m north of the Ramesseum. The stretch of land has been the bitter battlefield between the original owners and the Egyptian government for the last 60 years, because it lay on top of an archeologically area, part of the Tombs of the Nobles. Edward William Lane relates that the residents moved into these grottoes from the village of Qurna, which they abandoned, when the Mamluks retreated thought the area, following their defeat by Muhammad 'Alī's forces in the early 19th century.
[edit] New Qurna
New Qurna is a village built in the late 1940s and early 1950s, laying roughly midway between the Colossi of Memnon and el-Gezira on the Nile. The main road to the Theban Necropolis runs right though it. It is purposely build to house the relocation of the residents of the above described disputed area. It was designed by Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy. The village was never completed. All what remains today of the original New Qurna is the mosque, market and a couple of houses. Most other houses in the village today are of newer origin.
[edit] References
- ^ Edward William Lane, Description of Egypt - notes and views made during the years 1825-1828, The American University in Cairo Press, 2000
- ^ Richard Pococke, A Description of the East and Some other Countries, Vol.I: Observations on Egypt, W. Boyer, London, 1743
- ^ Charles-Nicolas-Sigisbert Sonnini de Manoncourt, Voyage dans la haute et basse Egypte, F. Buisson, Paris, an VII (1798) 4 vol.
- ^ Isabella Frances Romer, A Pilgrimage to the Temples and Tombs of Egypt, Nubia, and Palestine in 1845-46, Richard Bentley, London, 1846 2 vol.
