Maarten visited London in June 2023. For a full list of scholars awarded places to carry out research in London in 2023, please see here.

In June 2023, I had the opportunity to spend a full month in London to conduct essential research for my PhD dissertation in several UK museums and archives. This research stay was made possible through the kind support of the Robert Anderson Trust, on whose Kensington premises I could reside. I would like to take this opportunity to share some of my experiences from that wonderful month.

At the Petrie Museum.

A research stay in London was absolutely necessary, and proved to be truly beneficial, for my PhD research, which focuses on the reign of an ancient Egyptian king, called Mentuhotep II. This king is rather well-known in ancient Egyptian history for his presumed role in unifying the country after a period of political fragmentation and for fostering religious policies that would remain in use during the remainder of ancient Egyptian history. In my dissertation, I hope to re-evaluate certain hypotheses about his reign by analysing the unpublished decorated wall fragments from his funerary temple in Deir el-Bahari (Luxor, Egypt). It has been estimated that around 3,000 such fragments were found during the excavations of the British Egypt Exploration Fund in 1903-1907, of which around 1,000 were taken out of Egypt at the time of the excavations. These fragments were then divided between more than 40 museums and universities, most of them located in the UK and North America. In the past few years, I have gathered information about the fragments now located outside of Egypt, which is why I could not miss out on an opportunity to study – at least part of – the more than 270 decorated wall fragments from Mentuhotep’s temple in the British Museum.

Such a large number of fragments made it certain that I would spend most of the month in the British Museum, whose staff brought out block after block from the storage rooms for me to study, photograph and measure. On days that the British Museum was closed for researchers, I studied fragments from the same temple in UCL’s Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology and the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery. My study of these blocks will facilitate the identification of scenes adorning the walls of Mentuhotep’s temple, and help the analysis of their contents. The latter is of crucial importance for my research, as wall decoration of royal monuments was an established means by which Egyptian kings communicated their political and religious programs.

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

Apart from the decorated wall fragments, I am also interested in archival documents (photographs, notes, drawings) to improve our understanding of the Egypt Exploration Fund’s excavations in the temple of Mentuhotep II. I am especially keen on finding out how these works progressed and what was found where and when, as this information allows us to securely assign certain wall fragments to specific parts of the temple. During my stay in the UK, I was able to consult the archives of the Egypt Exploration Society and the British Museum in London, of the Griffith Institute in Oxford, and of the Brunel Institute in Bristol, which provided me with a wealth of archival information about the modern history of the temple site.

Despite my busy research schedule, I also thoroughly enjoyed staying in the Trust’s house in Kensington, where I connected with a very welcoming community of residents. Not only was I able to enjoy the Trust’s Annual Summer Concert, but I also had the opportunity to practice Portuguese with José, one of the two excellent musicians staying at the house, and Arabic with Ali and Yasser, two fellow Egyptologists who were also staying at the house in June. Incidentally, Yasser is studying another very interesting temple built by Mentuhotep II in Abydos, north of Luxor. As you can imagine, this led to many late evenings filled with interesting and thought-provoking discussions. Lastly, I cannot end this testimonial without thanking Dr Chris Naunton. His continuous support and his very kind interest in my work immensely contributed to the success of my research stay. In short, I can only conclude that my month of June was a very enriching and exciting experience that I can wholeheartedly recommend to any scholar.