The wrestlers
Painted sequences of holds.
Markh at English Wikipedia — Public domain · Olaf Tausch — CC BY 3.0 · Wilhelms — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Kurohito — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Olaf Tausch — CC BY 3.0 · Leon petrosyan — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Kurohito — CC BY-SA 3.0 · A.D. Riddle — Public domain
Tombs cut into a cliff on the east bank of the Nile south of Minya, made for the governors of the Oryx nome in the Middle Kingdom, the Eleventh and Twelfth Dynasties, some four thousand years ago. Their entrances line up in a single row high on the cliff, about thirty-nine tombs in all. Beni Hasan is known for painted scenes of daily life with few equals in Egypt: wrestlers in dozens of successive holds like frames of a film, men and women playing ball, hunting in the marshes, craftsmen at work. The tomb of Khnumhotep II holds a famous scene of a caravan of Asiatic nomads arriving in Egypt in colourful clothes. Some tombs have many-sided columns carved from the rock, which historians call proto-Doric for their likeness to the Greek columns that came centuries later. A foreign visitor's ticket costs about two hundred Egyptian pounds according to the ministry list, open from eight to five, with four tombs usually open. A long stairway climbs to them, with a superb view over the green Nile valley from the top.
Painted sequences of holds.
In Khnumhotep's tomb.
From the cliff top.
East bank of the Nile, about twenty kilometres south of Minya city
Usually four are open, among them Khnumhotep II's and Baqet III's with the wrestling scenes; allow one to two hours.