The cemetery near the canal, situated between the hermitages in the western part of the site and the plateau where the monastery buildings stood at the foot of the gebel in the east, was first surveyed in 1988 and then excavated in 2004 and 2006. The number of tombs has been estimated at about 120. No evidence of tomb superstructures appears to have been preserved on the eroded ground surface, even though the existence of such superstructures is suggested by fragmentary funerary stelae discovered in secondary context in the monastic compound and believed to come from this cemetery.