Beni Hassan

More excitement when we arrive at Beni Hassan. Wide stone steps lead up the hill which is a kind of mesa, like Arizona. At the top there are locked metal doors in the side of the cliff.

The boss man in his long grey-blue robe, white turban and grey scarf, unlocks the door of Amenhetep's Tomb. We have to wait a few minutes for fresh air to get inside, then in we go. I AM OVERWHELMED! I gasp, and tears come into my eyes! The tomb is a large, high rectangular room completely covered with paintings of daily life in Middle Kingdom Egypt, plus some hieroglyphic writing. At the back is a small room with a statue of the king, and smaller ones of his wife and daughter, all worn down to lumps of stone, vaguely human-shaped.

The paintings are of daily life: hunting crocodiles in the Nile, archers, wrestlers, boats full of rowers, people carrying baskets and trays of food and pails of water, the army, four men sitting at a table, two building a wall, others weighing things on scales, writing at a table, stirring pots, guiding cattle with a stick, fishing. There are war scenes, hunting, a man restringing a bow, hunting dogs, a lion attacking an antelope. IT IS AMAZING! IT IS A PRIVILEGE TO BE HERE!

We go into three other tombs, all of which blow us away. One has a man in a boat fishing, another throwing stones at swans. A hippo swimming in the river. A loaded donkey - they are rarely seen in tombs -, a man with three monkeys harvesting figs for him because a fig tree will not hold a man's weight. In the third tomb, people are being punished. One is tied and lying full length on his face while another beats him. A child is being hit on the head.

Rami says they probably didn't pay their taxes. He talks about families being responsible even today for wrong things family members do. His uncle was killed in a hit and run but someone got the number of the car. 21 days later, when the driver still could not be found, the police went and beat up the driver's brother in retribution! (I thought we were in the 21st century).

In the fourth tomb there are archers, dancing women, a man weaving a sqared carpet on a wide loom. People carry baskets on yokes. There are two men with hockey sticks. A woman is suckling a baby. A man is standing on his head. 18 cows are lined up in a row, overlapping. A man has a fish on a spear.