Current Time in Qina, Egypt

Qina stands on the east bank of the Nile in Upper Egypt, capital of the governorate of the same name, about six hundred kilometres south of Cairo and sixty kilometres north of Luxor. The river makes a great bend here, and the city sits at the point where the desert valley of Wadi Qena opens from the north-east, on the ancient caravan route that crossed the Eastern Desert to the Red Sea. Green fields of sugar cane and date palms line the river, and beyond them the desert begins abruptly.

Roughly three hundred thousand people live in the city, with several million in the governorate. Sugar cane is the foundation of the local economy, processed in large mills that dominate the industrial landscape, along with grain, dates and vegetables grown on the irrigated land. Qina has been famous for centuries for its pottery, especially the porous clay water jars known as qulal, which keep water cool by evaporation and were once shipped throughout Egypt, and workshops still produce them. Trade, transport, aluminium and paper industries in the wider governorate and government administration provide further employment.

The city occupies the site of the ancient settlement the Greeks called Kaine, meaning the new town, which grew as the terminus of the desert road to the Red Sea port of Myos Hormos. Through the Roman period this route carried spices, incense and goods from India and Arabia towards Alexandria, and Qina flourished as a customs and caravan centre. It retained that role into Islamic times, when pilgrims bound for Mecca crossed the desert from here to Quseir. Under the Ottomans and in the nineteenth century it remained the chief market of the district, and it was made a provincial capital in the modern administrative system.

Its greatest attraction lies just across the river at Dendera, where the temple of Hathor is one of the best preserved in all of Egypt. Built largely in the Ptolemaic and Roman periods on far older foundations, it retains its roof, its painted ceilings showing the zodiac and the sky goddess, its hypostyle hall of columns carved with the face of Hathor, and a crypt and sacred lake. Recent cleaning has revealed colours of astonishing intensity. Within Qina itself, the mosque and shrine of Abd al-Rahim al-Qenawi, a thirteenth-century Sufi saint, is the spiritual centre of the city and draws pilgrims to its annual festival. The Coptic monasteries of the surrounding desert and the temples of Abydos and Luxor are within reach.

Life follows the rhythms of Upper Egypt, conservative and strongly rooted in family and tradition, with a large Coptic Christian community alongside the Muslim majority. South Valley University has a substantial campus in Qina, with faculties in science, medicine, arts and education, making the city a regional centre of learning. The main Cairo to Aswan railway and highway pass through, and river traffic and bridges link the two banks.

Qina is important as an agricultural and administrative capital of Upper Egypt and as the gateway to one of the most magnificent temples of the ancient world.