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Paper short abstract

This paper examines how residents of an ancient Egyptian necropolis live with and within history, when local homes become a “universal common” and the land of the living becomes the land of the dead. The tombs’ oral and material traces reveal micro‑histories of multi‑temporal, personal narratives.

Paper long abstract

This paper argues that ethnographic attention to micro‑histories adds complexities and deepens universal heritage narratives. Based on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Upper Egypt and collaboration with a team of archaeologists, it explores the histories of Pharaonic tombs through material and oral‑history approaches, highlighting the paradoxical relationship between life and death.

The paper takes its starting point in a 3,500‑year‑old Pharaonic tomb. Besides serving as a burial site, the mountain tomb was until recently part of a vibrant village demolished in 2009. It was inhabited by local communities who resided there for centuries and built their houses as extensions of ancient tombs.

The tomb primarily testifies the violence of history‑making: the ancient erasure of its owner Qen‑Amon’s name and face, colonial‑era antiquities theft, and the spatial cleansing and eviction of the village’s 20,000 inhabitants to create an open‑air museum. Ethnographic exploration of Qen‑Amon’s tomb, however, uncovers micro‑histories beyond the dominant heritage narrative. It reveals intricate, multi‑temporal traces of the past and exposes ontologically different categories and tensions that characterize the Upper Egyptian heritage landscape: what locals call the “door of the stone” (bāb al‑ḥaǧar) is a lived and intimate space, while archaeologists refer to it as a “grave” (maqbara), emptied and cleaned for research and tourism. Oral histories from displaced and remaining residents show how living with, in, or on top of history unfolds in the present.