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Updated: May 19, 2025
Indeed, at first she refused outright to allow us to accompany her, because, she said, only those who were born in the village of Kurna had made such offerings since the days when the Pharaohs ruled, and that if strangers shared in this duty it might bring misfortune. We answered, however, that if so the misfortune would fall on us, the intruders.
Here we dwelt in comfort, since, notwithstanding the scarcity of the times, Marcus was richer than he seemed and lived well. As for the village of Kurna, its people all told did not amount to more than thirty souls, Christians every one of them, who were visited from time to time by a Coptic priest from some distant monastery in the mountains.
The ancient city whence Sinbad the sailor set forth is now seven or eight miles inland, buried under the shifting sands of the desert. Busra was a seaport not so many hundreds of years ago. Before that again, Kurna was a seaport, and the two rivers probably only joined in the ocean, but they have gradually enlarged the continent and forced back the sea.
"I think it will be best that we should return to Kurna. Heliodore must play her part as the spirit of a queen till we can hire some boat and escape with her down the Nile." "Never," she cried, "I cannot, I cannot. Having come together we must separate no more. Oh! Olaf, you do not know what a life has been mine during all these dreadful months.
Above Kurna the river is no longer lined with continuous palm-groves; desert and swamps take their place the abode of the amphibious, nomadic, marsh Arab. An unruly customer he is apt to prove himself, and when he is "wanted" by the officials, he retires to his watery fastnesses, where he can remain in complete safety unless betrayed by his comrades. On the banks of the Tigris stands Ezra's tomb.
One was the bar at the mouth of the river, which made it impossible for deeply laden vessels coming up the Persian Gulf and drawing many feet of water to pass without unloading in part into another vessel. The other was that strip of river between Kurna and Amara known as the Narrows, where river boats with supplies stuck constantly, especially when the floods fell and the water was low.
As a matter of fact the Persian Gulf and the oil fields were safe so long as the English held Kurna and Basra, and the Arabs were of no special consequence. The real reason for the expedition was probably that about this time matters were moving badly for the Allies. Serbia was in trouble in the Balkans, Gallipoli was a failure, something it seemed ought to be done to restore the British prestige.
Beyond them is the very heart of this "land of sand and ruins and gold"; Medinet-Abu, the Ramesseum, Deir-el Medinet, Kurna, Deir-el-Bahari, the tombs of the kings, the tombs of the queens and of the princes. In the strip of bare land at the foot of those hard, and yet poetic mountains, have been dug up treasures the fame of which has gone to the ends of the world.
By this time the Turks had collected a considerable army north of Kurna, and on May 31st an expedition was made to disperse it. On June 3d the British captured Amara, seventy-five miles above Kurna, scattering the Turkish army.
The touch of comedy in the dream of beauty was the queer, mud-brick village of Kurna, with its tomb dwellings of the poor, and immense mud vases shaped like mushrooms, standing straight up on thick brown stems before the crowded hovels.
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