‘Anthro… What?’ from the Road to Fayoum

*Updated with the answer. Congratulations to Giulia Cimarosti of Travel Reportage and Kathlyn Clore for figuring it out.*

Was booting down the road to Fayoum, Egypt today (love that I can say that) and I saw these structures.  I was curious as to what these were, as their architecture wasn’t quite like anything I’d seen from the Egyptian homes. So we hopped out of the landrover and a closer look.

So do you know what these are, if not homes?  Any guesses?  We will post hints on facebook, twitter and google+, until someone guesses their actual purpose.

Your first hint?  These structures go on for miles and miles.

The Answer:

So what are these communities of seemingly empty structures, sitting in the desert like a ghost town?  Well, the term ‘ghost town’ is quite fitting for them, as this is Fayoum’s City of the Dead.  In essence it is a great big cemetery of family plots, set up in a dense grid of tomb and mausoleum structures. Our guide was unsure if people of Muslim, Christian or Jewish decent were buried here, or if the cementery was multi-denominational, although we suspect it was.

PS. In Full Disclosure: As always, the opinions and thoughts shared here are our own and honest ones. We are bought out by no one. In the spirit of disclosure, it should be noted that on this trip, our expenses were paid by Egyptian Tourism, as a guest to the country and the UNWTO Media and Tourism Conference.