Tuna el-Gebel — Greco-Roman necropolis of Hermopolis Magna

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Tuna el-Gebel is the western necropolis of the ancient city of Khemenu, known to the Greeks as Hermopolis Magna and to modern visitors through its excavated remains at El-Ashmunein, eight kilometres east. The site is a long, low desert plateau immediately west of the cultivation, on which the inhabitants of Hermopolis buried their dead from the late Pharaonic period through the late Roman empire. Two layers of the site are usually shown to visitors: the temple-tomb of Petosiris (an Egyptian priest who died around 300 BC and whose tomb is built and decorated as a fully Egyptian temple in miniature) and the catacomb galleries of the sacred ibis and baboon burials, both animals associated with the god Thoth of Hermopolis.

The temple-tomb of Petosiris is one of the most important monuments of the early Ptolemaic period anywhere in Egypt. The decoration on the inner walls is a deliberate fusion of Egyptian funerary iconography and Greek style — the figures are drawn with Egyptian conventions but wear Greek dress, and the agricultural scenes carry Greek mythological touches that read as a programmatic statement about the cultural position of the priestly elite of Hermopolis in the decades after the Macedonian conquest. The scholarship on the iconographic programme is large and continuing; Karim Abdelmonem's bilingual reader on the temple-tomb (2022) is in the subscriber archive.

The catacombs lie a short walk north of the temple-tomb. They are a complex of subterranean galleries cut into the desert plateau, containing tens of thousands of mummified ibises (the bird sacred to Thoth) and a smaller number of mummified baboons (likewise sacred to Thoth). The animal mummies were dedicated as offerings by pilgrims to the cult of Thoth at Hermopolis; the system of dedication and burial was industrial in scale and operated from approximately the seventh century BC into the early Roman period. A small section of the catacombs has been opened to visitors with a permit; the rest remains restricted to the ongoing German excavation.

North of the catacombs, near the limit of the modern visitor circuit, stands one of the northern boundary stelae of Akhetaten — the city of Tell el-Amarna sixty kilometres to the south. These stelae mark the western and northern limits of the territory dedicated by Akhenaten to the god Aten in year 6 of his reign. The Tuna el-Gebel stela (designated stela A) is weather-damaged but still legible and is one of the easiest to visit of the surviving boundary inscriptions.

The Mallawi National Museum is the regional museum for Minya governorate and holds a substantial collection of material from Tuna el-Gebel, including a fine group of late-period bronze ibis statuettes, a series of cartonnage mummy masks from the Petosiris cemetery, and several smaller stelae. The museum suffered a break-in during the political disturbances of 2013 and approximately one thousand objects were stolen; the building reopened to the public in 2016 after restoration and after a meaningful (though incomplete) restitution of the looted material. Three galleries are open; the lower storage rooms are not on the visitor route.

Opening hours are 09:00–16:00 daily except Friday morning, with the museum reopening after Friday prayer at 13:00 in the standard schedule. The ticket is sold separately from the Tuna el-Gebel ticket and costs EGP 100 for foreign visitors at the last verification. The museum is in Mallawi town centre, a short drive from both Tuna el-Gebel and the El-Ashmunein site, and is a natural mid-day stop on the standard Minya-base itinerary.

Opening hours at Tuna el-Gebel are 09:00–16:00 daily, with the same Ramadan-window caveat that applies to Beni Hasan. The standard adult foreigner ticket at the last verification (27 February 2026) was EGP 180; the student ticket EGP 90; the Egyptian national ticket EGP 10. The catacomb permit ticket adds EGP 100 on top of the standard. The photography permit is EGP 50.

Transport from Minya city is by road taxi, approximately fifty minutes one way, signposted from the desert highway south of Minya. The combined visit of Tuna el-Gebel and El-Ashmunein is the standard one-day plan: leave Minya at 08:30, arrive Tuna 09:30, depart Tuna 12:30 for lunch in Mallawi, arrive El-Ashmunein 14:00, return to Minya for 17:00. Visitors with the catacomb permit should reverse the order — El-Ashmunein first, Tuna second — because the catacombs are most comfortable in the cooler afternoon. The Beni Hasan tombs are normally a separate day.

• Lefebvre, G. Le tombeau de Petosiris. Cairo: IFAO, 1923–1924. The foundational publication.
• Abdelmonem, K. (tr.). The Petosiris Temple-Tomb: A Reader. Verdi Heritage Studies subscriber monograph, 2022.
• Heggenberger, N. Greco-Roman Animal Cemeteries of Hermopolis. Verdi Heritage Studies subscriber monograph, 2023. Detailed treatment of the ibis and baboon catacombs.
• Kessler, D. and Nur el-Din, A.-H. "Tuna el-Gebel: rituals for sacred animals." In Divine creatures: animal mummies in ancient Egypt, American University in Cairo Press, 2005.
• German Archaeological Institute Cairo. Annual season reports on the Tuna el-Gebel excavations, 2010 onward. Subscriber bibliography under "TG-DAI" tag.