Minya is a mid-sized city on the Nile roughly halfway between Cairo and Asyut, and most travelers pass straight through — which is a mistake. The surrounding area contains some of the most vivid ancient Egyptian remains in the country, away from the crowds of Luxor.
The rock-cut tombs at Beni Hassan, across the river, are decorated with extraordinarily well-preserved painted scenes of daily life from the Middle Kingdom period — wrestlers, dancers, hunting scenes, agricultural work, all in astonishing colour. Further south, Tell el-Amarna is the site of the short-lived capital built by the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten in his attempt to impose monotheism on Egypt; the remains of his city lie in the desert plain and are eerie in their emptiness. Tuna el-Gebel, the necropolis of ancient Hermopolis, contains a strange mixture of ibis and baboon burials alongside a well-preserved Graeco-Roman tomb complex. The ruins of el-Ashmunein (ancient Hermopolis itself) have surviving columns from a temple of Thoth and a Christian basilica built from pharaonic blocks. The unusual step Pyramid of Zawyet el-Maiyitin, just south of the city, is one of the oldest provincial pyramids in Egypt.
Minya has a substantial Coptic Christian population and a history of intercommunal tension, but it is a functioning city with reasonable facilities for travelers using it as a base for the archaeological sites.