 In order to stop the looting the Department of Antiquities expropriated the land on which the Qurnis lived and decided to move them to a new settlement, to be designed and built by Hassan Fathy himself.New Qurna was built in the 1940s and early 1950 to house the then residents who strongly resisted the move.A series of housing built in and around the mountain grottoes located about 200m north of the Ramesseum at Sheikh ‘Adb el-Qurna.