- Time needed
- About 1 hour
- Heat exposure
- High
- Shade
- Low
- Stairs
- The tombs are on the hill above the village and are reached by a climb and by steps; the village itself has level changes throughout
The village is a single street running north to south inside a mud-brick wall, with houses opening off it on both sides. Each house is a narrow strip: an entrance room, a main living room with a column base still in the middle of its floor, one or two small back rooms, a stair to the roof, and a kitchen open to the sky at the far end, with a cellar under the floor.
- 1A front room you can still read
From the permitted paths, follow the surviving outlines of rooms, doorways and streets. These remains help you picture a compact settlement without entering fragile or restricted structures.
- 2The workmen gave themselves pyramids
The slope of the western hill, directly above the houses
- 3The well that never found water
The great shaft at the north end of the village, outside the enclosure wall
- 4A burial chamber painted like woven cloth
Inside the decorated tombs on the hillside, when they are open
1A front room you can still read
Each house is a strip off the street: an entrance room with a built platform against one wall, then a main room with a stone column base in the middle of the floor and a low bench along the side, then small back rooms, a cellar under the floor, and the stump of a stair to the roof.
Fact — the plan and its elements. Uncertain — what the platform in the front room was for. It has been read as a birthing bed, a household shrine and an ordinary couch, and specialists do not agree.
2The workmen gave themselves pyramids
A terrace of small tomb chapels, several with steep mud-brick pyramids standing over them, each with a shaft beside or beneath it going down to a painted chamber.
Fact — the chapels, their pyramids, their date, and that royal pyramid building had ended before them. Interpretation — that the workmen chose the form because the kings had given it up. No text says why they used it, and mainstream sources do not fix an interval between the two.
3The well that never found water
A very deep shaft sunk into the rock, wide at the top and stepped, dug in the hope of reaching the water table and abandoned when it did not.
4A burial chamber painted like woven cloth
In Sennedjem’s tomb, look for the family working in the Field of Reeds: an ideal afterlife with fertile land and abundant produce. Check whether this tomb is open before planning around it.
The village street is uneven, sandy and full of low walls and thresholds; the ground is broken rather than paved The tombs are on the hill above the village and are reached by a climb and by steps; the village itself has level changes throughout
Visit mode keeps the sequence, the details and the facilities. The history, the figures and the related reading are in plan mode.