Valley of the Queens
The route from Deir el Bahri to the Valley of the Queens passes the old village of Qurna. This deserves some mentioning.
The full name is Sheik Adb´el-Qurna and the village is located on top of some of the most precious of tombs from the Middle and New Kingdom periods , the so called the tombs of the Nobles. Several noteworthy personages were buried here, like the vizier Rekhmire, Nakht,, Sennefer, to name a few. Houses are built right over some tombs, with access from their backyard. others have their entrance right by the road which passes the village.
The villagers have themselves been the guardians of these tombs. There is suspicion from authorities that they have also been the pilferers of hitherto unknown tombs, leaking out antiquities to the black market.
Apart from that, survival has mainly been on the alabaster factories which sell to passing tourists.
It was decided to move the villagers. Of course they objected, they had ben living there for many many generations. A new village was constructed and furnished with modern facilities like electricity and running water. This helped the women to decide in favour of moving over. The men still refused. Evil tongues say that they didn´t want to leave a lucrative business. The Consulate of Antiquities with Hawass at the prow wanted to examine the area properly, invent it and make it accessible for the public. They believe there might still be tombs to discover.
In December 2006 the decision was final. Bulldozers moved in and forced the remaining villagers to budge. Reports say that most of the people are now moved to new Qurna and at least the women are happy with it. The alabaster merchants are promised new factories and shops along the Qurna road.
This is a big thing which is happening in Egypt right now.
Two years ago - Qurna village. See the tomb openings above the houses?
Qurna March 2007
Some links to Qurna: '
Egypt State Information Service
What people say about it :
An image of New Qurna.
The Valley of the Queens then. It is much less visited than the Valley of the Kings. Probably it depends partly on the fact that only three tombs are open for visitors since the tomb of Nefertari has been closed for the general public. (It´s possible to get down there but you will have to pay a rather large sum of money and they only let down a limited number of visitors there. Our guide told us there are suggestions of cinstructing an exact copy of it. I so hope that this will be a reality. It seems to work very well at the Lascaux cave in France.
The ones which are open are the tombs of Queen Titi, Prince Amenhirhkepshef and Prince Khaemwaese. Since guides are not allowed to stop the flow of visitors inside the tombs as these are too narrow and easily clog up, they hold their sermons outside under a sunshade, and then you can go inside the tombs on your own. This works the same in the VoK and works well.
The tomb of Queen Titi was rather damaged and far from its former splendour. But inside Amenhirkhopshef´s colors were fantastic, the tomb seemed to be in almost original condition! There are glass protections in front of all the walls, which is just great. I hate to think of what could happen if itchy tourist fingers run amok over those ancient paintings!
Lastly we visited the tomb of Khaemwase which was no less magnific than the one of Amenhirkhopshef. We had the good luck of being almost the only ones there and could take some good time looking around.