Tin Hinan tomb

The Tin Hinan tomb is a monumental tomb located at Abalessa in the Sahara, in the Hoggar Mountains of southern Algeria. The sepulchre was built for the Tuareg matriarch Tin Hinan, an ancient Queen of the Hoggar (Ahaggar). The tomb is believed to have been constructed over a Roman fortification made by Lucius Cornelius Balbus the Younger during the reign of the Emperor Augustus.

According to Henri Lhote, the Tin Hinan sepulchre is different from the surrounding tombs in southern Algeria, and is more typical of the architecture used by the Roman legionaries to create their fortifications in desert areas. He believes that the tomb was therefore likely built on top of an earlier Roman castrum, which was originally erected around 19 BC, when consul Lucius Cornelius Balbus conquered the Garamantian territories and sent a small expeditionary force to reach the Niger river.

Pliny, the Roman historian, wrote of a Roman raid deep into the Sahara led by Cornelius Balbus. One of the places he captured was called "Balsa" (may be the ancient name for actual Abalessa). As soon as the Romans had left, their fortification would be useless to the native rulers: they had no immediate enemies here in the heart of the Sahara desert. But such an impressive building would make a fitting tomb for their great Queen Tin Hinan, some centuries later. According to Byron Khun Prorok, the Tin Hinan tomb's walls were around three feet thick at the highest remaining point, with the walls of the smaller tombs from eighteen inches to two feet in density. The edifice's outer walls of the tomb also likely occupied an area of sixty by ninety feet.

Gabriel Camps in 1965 pinpointed that the stones (even more than 3 feet thick) used in the tomb were much too heavy to be moved by desert men on the hill where they are now, and this indicates clearly that the builders were not locals but "foreigners".

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