Beni Hasan rock tombs — Middle Kingdom necropolis of the Oryx nome

What you are looking at

The Beni Hasan necropolis is a row of thirty-nine rock-cut tombs carved into the limestone cliff on the east bank of the Nile, roughly twenty kilometres south of Minya city. The tombs belong to the nomarchs and senior officials of the sixteenth Upper Egyptian nome — the Oryx nome — and span from the end of the Eleventh Dynasty to the middle of the Twelfth, a period of roughly one hundred and fifty years between approximately 2050 BC and 1900 BC. The site is the densest single concentration of provincial Middle Kingdom funerary art that has survived, and four of its decorated tombs are routinely open to visitors. Two more open on prior arrangement with the Mallawi inspectorate.

The paintings that have made the site internationally famous belong to the tombs of Khnumhotep II (BH 3), Amenemhat (BH 2), Khnumhotep I (BH 14) and Baqet III (BH 15). The famous procession of Asiatic traders in the tomb of Khnumhotep II — the line of bearded men in striped woollen tunics led by a chief named Abisha — is one of the most reproduced images in Egyptology and is in fact still legible on the wall of the tomb. The wrestling registers in the tomb of Baqet III, more than two hundred and twenty wrestling positions illustrated in red and black, are the largest single corpus of representation of wrestling technique from the ancient world.

The cliff itself is reached by a short climb up a modern wooden staircase from the visitor centre at the base. The tombs are at the top of the climb in a single row; the open tombs are clearly marked, and an SCA inspector is present at each. The interior light is low; bring a small torch if you want to read the painted hieroglyphic columns. Flash photography is not permitted inside the painted tombs.

The ticket office is at the base of the cliff, immediately next to the visitor centre and the bus parking area. The standard ticket admits a visitor to all four routinely-open tombs; a single combined ticket covers the whole site and is purchased in Egyptian pounds at the kiosk. At the last verification (4 March 2026), the standard adult foreigner ticket was EGP 200; the student ticket with valid international student card was EGP 100; the Egyptian national ticket was EGP 10. A photography permit (for cameras, not phones) is sold separately at EGP 50. Phones with their flash disabled are admitted free.

Opening hours: 09:00 to 16:00 daily in the standard schedule. The site closes earlier during Ramadan; the practical advice for the Ramadan window is to arrive by 11:00 at the latest. The site is open on Egyptian public holidays except the first day of Eid al-Fitr and the first day of Eid al-Adha.

Transport from Minya city is straightforward. The standard route is a road taxi from the Corniche, southbound on the desert highway, signposted for Beni Hasan; the drive takes approximately forty-five minutes one way. There is no scheduled public service to the site. Subscribers visiting Beni Hasan as part of a wider Minya-base itinerary should also read the Tuna el-Gebel file and the El-Ashmunein file; the three sites can be combined into a single long day, in the order Beni Hasan → El-Ashmunein → Tuna el-Gebel, or split across two days.

• Newberry, P.E. Beni Hasan I–IV. London: Egypt Exploration Fund, 1893–1900. The foundational publication of the painted scenes. Standard set available at the Egyptian Museum library, Cairo.
• Kanawati, N. and Evans, L. Beni Hassan series, multiple volumes. Australian Centre for Egyptology, 2014 onward. Modern epigraphic re-reading of the four open tombs; volumes I (BH 17), II (BH 15) and III (BH 14) published to date.
• Tawfik, M. "Beni Hasan visitor access study 2010–2022." Verdi Heritage Studies subscriber monograph, 2022. Patterns of opening and closing, statistical study of access conditions across twelve years.
• El-Khadragy, M. (ed.). Provincial cemeteries of the Middle Kingdom. Asyut University Press, 2019. Synthesis volume; chapter 4 on Beni Hasan.
• SCA Mallawi inspectorate bulletins, monthly, 2015 onward. Translated excerpts in the subscriber archive under the "BH-bulletins" tag.