Old Gourna Village was the the impetus for Hassan Fathy's New Gourna Village. The idea for the new village was launched by the Egyptian Department of Antiquities as a solution to the problem of relocating the entire entrenched community of entrepreneurial excavators that had established itself over the royal necropolis in Luxor. The villagers resisted relocating to the new village and made every effort to stay where they were.

Source:

Steele, James. 1989. The Hassan Fathy Collection. A Catalogue of Visual Documents at the Aga Khan Award for Architecture. Bern, Switzerland: The Aga Khan Trust for Culture.