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Introduction
The Old Kingdom cemetery at Tehna is cut into the cliffs on the east bank of the Nile, approximately 250kms south of Cairo and some 12kms north of the city of Minya (fig. 1). It lies within the 16th nome of Upper Egypt, the Oryx nome, and is one of two Old Kingdom cemeteries in that province, the other being at Zawiyet el-Maiyetin to the south. The continued importance of the province is evidenced in the great Middle Kingdom tombs at Beni Hassan to the south and the necropolis of Akoris to the north in the Graeco-Roman period.
The Old Kingdom tombs at Tehna are known as the 'Fraser Tombs' after the original excavator of the site, George Fraser, who, with the permission of the Egyptian authorities, went to the site in 1893, cleaning and restoring fourteen tombs. Fraser published these in an article in 1902, with brief descriptions of the tombs, and hand copies of some of the wall scenes and inscriptions in Tomb 13 with architectural diagrams of Tombs 13 and 14. A further tomb, given the number 15, was cleared in the early twentieth century by Gustave Lefebre who, with Alexander Moret, reported on the tomb in Revue Égyptologique in 1919. 2
This information provided an insight into the administration of one of the earliest provincial sites of the Old Kingdom. Inscriptions, architecture and decoration provide evidence that these tombs date from the end of the Fourth to the early Fifth Dynasties. The importance of this information, led the writer to apply for permission to re-record the cemetery, in order that the fullest information on the tomb owners be available to scholars. Permission was granted by the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Egypt and subsequently this work commenced in 2007. Four seasons of one month's duration undertaken in January-February 2007 to 2010 have seen most of the tombs recorded with wall scenes and inscriptions in facsimile, architectural diagrams and photography.
The site
No evidence remains of the settlement which must have originally existed close to the cemetery. A broad and fertile flood plain covers the area from the Nile River to the foot of the escarpment where the tombs are found (figs 2 and 3). Clearly this is where the...