The Fraser Tombs are a

necropolis A necropolis (plural necropolises, necropoles, necropoleis, necropoli) is a large, designed cemetery with elaborate tomb monuments. The name stems from the Ancient Greek ''nekropolis'', literally meaning "city of the dead". The term usually im ...

located northeast of Al Minya,

Upper Egypt Upper Egypt ( ar, صعيد مصر ', shortened to , , locally: ; ) is the southern portion of Egypt and is composed of the lands on both sides of the Nile that extend upriver from Lower Egypt in the north to Nubia in the south. In ancient ...

. They sit around south of Tihna el-Gebel village, which was an ancient limestone quarry. The rock-cut sepulchres date to the Fourth and Fifth Dynasties of the

Old Kingdom In ancient Egyptian history, the Old Kingdom is the period spanning c. 2700–2200 BC. It is also known as the "Age of the Pyramids" or the "Age of the Pyramid Builders", as it encompasses the reigns of the great pyramid-builders of the Fourth ...

. These tombs were first discovered in the fall of 1853 by the German Egyptologist

Heinrich Brugsch Heinrich Karl Brugsch (also ''Brugsch-Pasha'') (18 February 18279 September 1894) was a German Egyptologist. He was associated with Auguste Mariette in his excavations at Memphis. He became director of the School of Egyptology at Cairo, producin ...

and first described by the British civil engineer

George Willoughby Fraser George Willoughby Fraser (baptized 5 August 1866 – 24 November 1923) was an English civil engineer who operated at the service of the Egypt Exploration Fund. His parents were Sir Thomas Fraser and Matilda Wildman. As part of his work f ...

, whose name was given to these tombs.Warren R. Dawson, Eric P. Uphill: ''Who was who in Egyptology.'' 3rd revised edition, by Morris L. Bierbrier. The Egypt Exploration Society, London 1995, , p. 157. The tombs belong to a long necropolis of the ancient town of Mer-nefer(et) (also Per-Imen-mAt-chent(j), TA-dehenet, or Akoris). The tomb owners were stewards of the royal estate. In the Fifth Dynasty, they were

Hathor Hathor ( egy, ḥwt-ḥr, lit=House of Horus, grc, Ἁθώρ , cop, ϩⲁⲑⲱⲣ, Meroitic: ) was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion who played a wide variety of roles. As a sky deity, she was the mother or consort of the sky ...

priests and there is a temple to Hathor nearby. Four of the fifteen (numbered) tombs contain statues and carved

hieroglyphics Egyptian hieroglyphs (, ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt, used for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with some 1,000 distinct characters.There were about 1,00 ...

dating from the Old Kingdom. The most important of the sepulchres is the second tomb which is probably the tomb of Ni-ankh-kay (Neka-Ankh), which has the shape of a

mastaba A mastaba (, or ), also mastabah, mastabat or pr- djt (meaning "house of stability", " house of eternity" or "eternal house" in Ancient Egyptian), is a type of ancient Egyptian tomb in the form of a flat-roofed, rectangular structure with inwar ...

. The decoration of the small and long offering room consists of statues of his family. A written authorization or will was discovered in the tomb of Ny-ka-Ankh stating "they shall act under the authority of my eldest son, like they act for my own property". The Supreme Council of Antiquities of Egypt says there are many tombs and ancient ruins in Tihna el-Gebel which are available to the public. The Fraser Tombs are open to the public but are rarely visited by tourists, perhaps because the only way to reach them is by taxi, with a police escort, due to heightened security in the area. An excellent video of the exterior of the area is a 360° video available and narrated on YouTube, and available as virtual reality on

Google Cardboard Google Cardboard is a discontinued virtual reality (VR) platform developed by Google. Named for its fold-out cardboard viewer into which a smartphone is inserted, the platform was intended as a low-cost system to encourage interest and developme ...

, Google's virtual reality platform.

References

{{reflist, 30em Tombs of ancient Egypt Geography of Egypt Buildings and structures of the Fifth Dynasty of Egypt