'Mud
Things' in Qurna
The most visible indications
of human habitation of the tombs in the early periods were the free-standing
mud structures built outside the tomb entrances. Mud structures similar
to these were a feature of all Upper Egyptian villages but there are
very few descriptions of them in the 19th century writings. Perhaps
this is because most travellers and writers were so familiar with them
that they were no longer worthy of comment; they were, as it were, invisible
by their very visibility and normality. E.W.Lane, perhaps the most scrupulously
detailed of all the early writers, didn't mention them in his description
of Qurna - their absence would have been worthy of comment. Fortunately
some visitors did write about them and they are clearly represented
in all the early drawings and photographs. They still exist in some
houses, but, apart from the ovens, most have been destroyed or broken
and are just crumbling away.
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An
old grain storage bin on Dra abu'l Naga |
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Grain
store and cupboard in a shed
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In a land where there is
little useable and cheap timber, mud is an excellent alternative for
many constructions. It also does not require complicated tools, nails,
or joints. Containers can be made for almost any purpose, often multi-purpose,
and any size or shape, with minimum skill and at no cost except time.
They can be easily adapted, and when no longer needed the material can
all be used again for another construction, or if abandoned it returns
over time to the earth from which it is made - they do not litter the
hillside with rusting metal or garish plastic. More than all this, they
are both individually and in groups, things of sculptural beauty. They
have a strange quality of looking at the same time so hand-moulded that
you can almost feel the strength and confidence of the maker, while
also appearing to have grown out of the ground like some organic happening.
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Shelves
for articles or domestic birds were, and still are, built in the
tomb out-houses and cellars
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The drawings by Robert Hay
in the 1820s, Prinsep's painting of 1842, the photographs of the Maison
d'Arabe, c 1900, and Hassan Fathy's of Qurnet Murai all show a variety
and range of these useful things. The big circular open-topped ones
are beds, generally called 'menaama', Arabic for a sleeping compartment.
Fathy writes, "there are beds like large mushrooms where the children
can sleep safe from scorpions (from which they derive their name beit
el agrab)". Fathy also shows a large, rectangular, flat mud bed
supported on huge, fat, circular legs. But the tall structures were
also used for sleeping by adults, shown by a variant further South in
a delightful drawing by Denon.
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The
main section of a new oven waiting to be installed
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On cold winter nights you
could light a fire in the small oven compartment underneath and be very
warm and cosy. And they were invaluable as children’s playpens
– keeping the babies out of harm’s way while mum was busy.
Most of the ‘mud things’ are for storage of one thing or
another, grain bins and cupboards. When you live your life in spaces
occupied also by goats, chickens, dogs and other animals, it is important
to be able to keep your food stuffs and few other possessions from being
eaten. Richardson describes some structures when writing of his visit
in 1816-18, "they generally build near the door a round hollow
tower, shaped like some of the ancient Egyptian borders, of unburnt
brick, or stone plastered over with mud, with openings in its side,
in different places, to serve for presses and other conveniences. It
is closed at the top, and shaped like a funnel or open bowl, from which
the camel eats his grass, cut straw, beans or other provender.”
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An
oven with hand-prints to ward off the evil eye and bring good luck
to the baking
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It is difficult to believe
that the Qurnawi made special camel-high mangers to take the back ache
out of eating for their beasts, but may be. It is more likely that Richardson
happened to see one of the few times that a family put the camel's food
in one of these multi-purpose bins, or even that the camel was stealing
a quick snack observed only by a visiting Englishman, who, knowing no
better, let him eat his way through the family's food store. Belzoni,
in one of his less censorious moments, when writing of local marriage
customs, notes, "They make a kind of box of clay and straw, which,
after two or three days' exposure to the sun, becomes quite hard. It
is fixed on a stand, an aperture is left to put all their precious things
into it, and a piece of mummy case forms the door." The round ones
are called 'sowaama' in Arabic (sing. 'soma'), and the square ones,
less used in Qurna, were called 'sufat', and 'bayata' were small ones
with lids and an opening at the bottom for bird houses. Many of the
large grain bins were multi-storey, often with added compartments at
the side. In some later houses, lines of different containers formed
complete internal walls, or one or two were incorporated into a wall.
In the tombs themselves assorted mud constructions are built on and
against the walls, as cupboards, shelves, mangers, pigeon nesting boxes,
chicken houses or whatever necessary. They often appear to be growing,
free form, out of the stone walls.
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Photo
by Hassan Fathy of a house in Qurnet Marei
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Photo
by Hassan Fathy of mud furniture
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In the same way as the mud-bricks
for buildings are not just plain unadulterated mud, the raw material
for the container structures is not either. The best description of
the process is given by the archaeologist who excavated the remains
of the Coptic Monastery on the summit of Sheik abd el Qurna. "They
were made as they are today, of a mixture of Nile mud, manure and straw
well-rotted together until the straw and the manure have permeated the
mass with a sort of vegetable glue, and the straw fibers have made a
binding material. When dry this mixture is so hard and tough that thin
walls will not only support themselves but large objects made of it
can readily be moved about. The larger bins seem to have been made on
the spot, although the smaller ones may well have been brought from
elsewhere, as is often done by the fellah women today."
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Old
ovens re-used for chicken and animal shelters, large disused zawiya
on el Khokha, Nobles Tombs
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The round bread ovens are
the most used mud structures today. The basic oven is usually bought
in the market or from a passing merchant, and then moulded into its
place in the yard, out the back, or on the roof, or in the corner of
an open roofed room. The owner often ensures good bread and safe cooking
by warding off the evil eye with making hand prints in the mud surface.
Some people even decorate them further with anthropomorphic touches
that turn them into faces, but in the main all the mud structures are
undecorated. Gas fired bread ovens are slowly taking the place of these
traditional ovens, though the bakers swear that the flavour of the bread
is not so good.
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A
mud-brick wall incorporating broken water pots outside the now ruined
house of the Abdullah family, Sheikh abd el Qurna
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The disuse and disappearance
of the sowaama and the menaama in part reflect changing life-styles,
and partly fashion, greater wealth and availability of alternative materials.
Most families now buy their flour ready milled, and many do not even
make their own bread regularly. There are very few local working camels,
and those there are eat off the ground. Most people now live in 'proper
houses' with rooms separated from their animals who might eat everything
unless put away safely. Rooms in houses have become more single purpose
and 'proper' beds and cupboards are now made from timber by the local
furniture maker, and are brightly painted and decorated with garlands
of carved flowers. Many people still sleep on the floor, or on a general
purpose 'dekka', heavy wooden sofa, or on a simpler and cheaper palm
bed, 'sirir', but a timber bed, as with European families until quite
recently, is a status symbol as well as a piece of furniture. Re-used
metal, wood and plastic containers are now used for storing all manner
of things that previously went in a mud cupboard.
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lithograph
from a photograph in A H Rhind’s book, Thebes – its
tombs and their tenants, 1862
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The disuse and disappearance
of the sowaama and the menaama in part reflect changing life-styles,
and partly fashion, greater wealth and availability of alternative materials.
Most families now buy their flour ready milled, and many do not even
make their own bread regularly. There are very few local working camels,
and those there are eat off the ground. Most people now live in 'proper
houses' with rooms separated from their animals who might eat everything
unless put away safely. Rooms in houses have become more single purpose
and 'proper' beds and cupboards are now made from timber by the local
furniture maker, and are brightly painted and decorated with garlands
of carved flowers. Many people still sleep on the floor, or on a general
purpose 'dekka', heavy wooden sofa, or on a simpler and cheaper palm
bed, 'sirir', but a timber bed, as with European families until quite
recently, is a status symbol as well as a piece of furniture. Re-used
metal, wood and plastic containers are now used for storing all manner
of things that previously went in a mud cupboard.
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A
range of mud-things outside the house of the Osman family in 2000.
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When villagers move house
today they do not often take the mud structures with them on the back
of the cart. The tractors and demolition men who pull down the houses
show no more respect for these remnants of an earthen past than for
the solid houses themselves. Lucky artists and photographers are taken
to see them by those few villagers who have realised that, yet again,
the foreigner values something which to the villager is now just so
much rubbish. But this time they are not dislodged from the hillside
and shipped to foreign lands. May be that will come soon. It will only
take an enterprising Qurnawi to make nice new ones and the cycle begins
again.
Caroline Simpson
Last
revision 2001
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