“They are clever, they not tell anybody they find,” says Mohammed admiringly. “Forty mummies, necklaces, gold.”Mohammed Ismail, a congenial gent in a grey gallibayah and white headdress, and his neighbours are the last of a unique breed. They live in a village called Qurna, just a donkey dash from the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. Their houses are pharaonic-era tombs and they once traded in stolen antiquities and were experts in the manufacture of fake pharaonic treasures. Under cover of more legitimate touristic pursuits - the village receives a steady stream of Westerners visiting the 3,000-year-old Tombs of the Nobles, which are interspered among Qurna’s houses - some still cling to such practices. This year, after wishing them gone for a century or more, the Egyptian government finally decided to put an end to their anachronistic way of life by destroying their bizarre habitat and frogmarching them into the 21st century.
By the time you read this, almost the entire village of Qurna will have been razed to the ground and the villagers moved to an estate of brand-new bungalows three
miles away on the edge of the Sahara Desert which has cost US$20 million. The houses they are leaving are strange, ramshackle affairs, sprouting from ancient tombs in agglomerations of mud-brick that barnacle the mountainside in shades of ochre and aquamarine. The ones they are going to are laid out in geometrical lines and have modern amenities - in particular, running water, a right denied the old village because piped water would have damaged the tombs.
Some villagers are ready to leave their ancestral homes - one woman gives us the thumbs-up sign and says that, “Inshallah”, in five days’ time her house will be flattened - but many are unhappy about the deal they have been offered. They say the new houses are not big enough for their extended families (Mohammed Ismail has to shoehorn nine people into his two-bedroom bungalow), and they claim their livelihoods, which are rooted here in alabaster workshops, crafts shops and cafes, are being taken away. Those with most to lose are preparing to stay until physically removed.
To some commentators - both in Egypt and in the international community - the eviction is not before time. To others it is nothing short of a tragedy. This is the story of the last of the tomb raiders, and it reaches much closer to home than you may imagine.

The original text, by Nigel Richardson © 2007, continues. Please contact the photographer for more details.