The beauty of the eye-catching ornament thats Mahmoud Abu Salim crafts carefully between his fingers somehow manages to disguise the sell-by-date of his trade.

Salim has created and sold hundreds of ornaments made of alabaster, a form of fine-grained gypsum stone, yet the artisan’s trade is now seriously threatened by a decline in tourism arrivals, rising prices of raw materials, market stagnation and competition from cheap imports.

The beauty of the eye-catching ornament thats Mahmoud Abu Salim crafts carefully between his fingers somehow manages to disguise the sell-by-date of his trade.

Salim has created and sold hundreds of ornaments made of alabaster, a form of fine-grained gypsum stone, yet the artisan’s trade is now seriously threatened by a decline in tourism arrivals, rising prices of raw materials, market stagnation and competition from cheap imports.

“I’ve had to put my workshop up for sale,” says Salim, adding that finding a buyer in the current climate of economic hardship and political instability is practically impossible.

The decline in tourist numbers has struck Qurna, situated west of Luxor upon infamous Pharaonic tombs – 670km south of Cairo – particularly hard. The village hosts more than 200 factories and workshops for alabaster art objects, in addition to many home workshops, galleries and stores which sell their goods to tourists.

3000 workers dismissed

While many workshops are still functioning, mass recent lay-offs spell difficult times ahead. “Those facilities were employing around 5000 workers, 3000 of which were dismissed after the January 25th Revolution,” says Bakri Abdel Jalil, head of Luxor Tourist Bazaars, a local tourism stakeholder.

Mahmoud isn’t the only master-sculptor feeling the squeeze. Ahmad Ibrahim, another alabaster craftsmen, was forced to sell his furniture “after my debts piled up to a level where I could no longer provide for my family.” Another alabaster master has turned his workspace into a coffee shop.

Mohammed Awadd, another struggling artisan, says the rising prices of raw materials, specifically “alabaster stone, white glue, wax, fabric and sandpaper,” are crippling his business. “There are also not enough galleries to display and sell our objects,” says Awadd – although he blames the drop in tourist numbers, not gallery owners, for the decline in demand.

Not enough tourists, too many imports

“The way gallery owners conduct business is justified due to the small number of tourists since the Revolution,” says Awadd, who inherited the skills from his grandfather and has been in the business 25 years.

Some local residents in Qurna lament that the faltering of the alabaster business is due to a change in culture.

“Ancient Egyptian craftsmen were very generous and engraved the principles of their art on the walls of temples in order for their grandchildren to follow in the same artistic footsteps, but they never thought that a day will come to see their grandchildren in such bad shape,” says Mahmoud Salim, staring at his workshop filled to the rim with unsold ornaments.

A change of culture may be partly responsible, but the influx of cheap imports has also contributed to the hardship in Qurna. The truth is the Egyptian artisans face fierce competition from Pakistani and Chinese alabaster-made art objects.

Too much to lose

But Qurna isn’t giving in yet. Salim dreams that one day he will establish a union for alabaster craftsmen to defend their rights, provide them with badly needed medical and social care and pressure the government to ban the import of counterfeit Pharaonic art objects.

“Workers in this industry do not have pensions or medical insurance and if anyone got sick, God forbid, he would stay home without any source of income,” Salim told Correspondents.

Union or no union, Salim is confident the trade will outlive his generation, just like it survived that of his ancestors. “Qurna has managed to preserve this profession for nearly 5000 years, ever since it was first mastered by ancient Egyptians. Each time it comes back stronger than before” says Salim defiantly. “We will not become extinct.”