The Fraser Tombs are a

necropolis A necropolis (: necropolises, necropoles, necropoleis, necropoli) is a large, designed cemetery with elaborate tomb monuments. The name stems from the Ancient Greek ''nekropolis'' (). The term usually implies a separate burial site at a distan ...

located northeast of Al Minya,

Upper Egypt Upper Egypt ( ', shortened to , , locally: ) is the southern portion of Egypt and is composed of the Nile River valley south of the delta and the 30th parallel North. It thus consists of the entire Nile River valley from Cairo south to Lake N ...

. 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 –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 Dynast ...

. 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 ...

, 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 Akoris. The tomb owners were stewards of the royal estate ( Nikaiankh I, Nikaiankh II, Kaihep). In the Fifth Dynasty, they were

Hathor Hathor (, , , Meroitic language, Meroitic: ') was a major ancient Egyptian deities, 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 god Horus and the sun god R ...

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

hieroglyphs Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs ( ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined ideographic, logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with more than 1,000 distinct characters.I ...

dating from the Old Kingdom. The most important of the sepulchres is the second tomb which is probably the tomb of Nikaiankh, which has the shape of a

mastaba A mastaba ( , or ), also mastabah or mastabat) is a type of ancient Egyptian tomb in the form of a flat-roofed, rectangular structure with inward sloping sides, constructed out of mudbricks or limestone. These edifices marked the burial sites ...

. 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 Nikaiankh 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

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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 developm ...

, Google's virtual reality platform.

References

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