Shukaku: That is a common bug in Pharaoh, it's called the Black Hole bug. It is almost always caused when a tile gets "corrupted", generally if a building is placed in a way which it wasn't designed to be built (such as music stages). It can happen at any time, the only solution is to simply ignore the bug and continue on or reload a save from before it happened. There is nothing you can do to remove the corrupted tiles when they've appeared, but it can give you a challenge.

bonnit: Im quite far in the pharaoh game and this is the first time i have seen this but i am getting blacked out tiles on my map, it barely allows me to select it but apparently if i right click the right bit there is a common residence under there, it wont let me delete it, rebuild over it and a computer restart hasnt changed anything

i also tried changing the resolution and nothing helped, any ideas? im using windows 8 if that has any bearing

Ramayaben: Same happened to me! It's really such a huge shame to read that there's no solution :( Those black tiles are ruining my city. They appeared when I accidentally erased a house and I undo the action.

Thorfinn: I've played all the way through twice, several times through middle kingdom, and repeated several of the missions, and have not yet run into this, or not that I've noticed.

What maps give this? And what tiles does it blank out?

Oh, they are common residences. I missed that.

But what maps does this happen on? Is it a problem with deleting, then undoing, or what?