Hesham stayed at the Trust’s Kensington house during October 2023.

I spent October 2023 in London researching topic of my Phd thesis at Ain Shams University: ‘The baths and water management in Hermopolis Magna during the Roman Period’.

In the study room in the Department of Greece and Rome, British Museum

My thesis focuses on reinterpreting and classifying the Roman baths in Hermopolis Magna, the remains of which lie next to the modern village of el-Ashmonin. I received a Centenary Award from the Egypt Exploration Society (EES) in both 2022 and 2023 for my research. The awards enabled me to carry out excavations in one of the most important potential Roman bath sites in the city, which is located east of the el-Ashmonin cemetery, where a great public bath from the late Roman period was discovered.

For further information about the fieldwork please see the following webpages:

https://www.ees.ac.uk/the-roman-baths-of-hermopolis-magna
https://balneorient.hypotheses.org/3209

The main aim of my visit to London was to study the archival documents kept in the British Museum arising from the Museum’s Archaeological expeditions to el-Ashmonin between 1980 and 1989, and to examine some of the archaeological finds in the departments of Egypt and Sudan, and Greece and Rome in the Museum, as well as the Petrie Museum at UCL, for the purpose of comparisons with the material found during my own excavations.

In the study room in the Department of Egypt and Sudan, British Museum

With Dr Jeffrey Spencer in the Department of Egypt and Sudan, British Museum

I also wanted to arrange meetings with specialists, most importantly Dr Jeffrey Spencer who led the excavations of the British Museum in Hermopolis in the 1980s. I also met Dr Aurelia Masson-Berghoff, curator in the Greco-Roman Department in BM who helped me a lot in re-evaluating and interpreting the pottery finds and sherds that I found during my excavations. I also met some of the curators of the Department of Egypt and Sudan, including Drs Marcel Marée, Elisabeth O’Connell and Ilona Regulski, the Director of the EES, Dr Carl Graves, Dr Anna Garnett, curator of the Petrie Museum at UCL, and Prof Stephen Quirke, and Dr Claudia Naeser of the Institute of Archaeology at UCL.

With Dr Aurelia Masson-Berghoff in the Department of Greece and Rome, British Museum

With Dr Anna Garnett outside the Petrie Museum, UCL

In addition to my research visits in London, I also made many visits to museums, archaeological sites, and famous landmarks in London. The Robert Anderson Trust contributed a lot to my scientific and academic career with that visit and added a lot to my thesis. I am very happy with their support for me through this scholarship, and I hope that many of my colleagues in archaeological field in Egypt benefit from this experience.