Yasser stayed at the Trust’s house in Kensington in June 2023 while undertaking research towards the publication of his MA thesis on ‘The shrine of Neb Hepet Ra Montuhotep II at Abydos’. For a full list of scholars awarded places to carry out research in London in 2023, please see here.

It was my main goal to take the first steps towards publishing my MA on ‘The shrine of Neb Hepet Ra Montuhotep II at Abydos’, by translating the original text from Arabic into English, and meetings a series of specialists including Prof Stephen Quirke of UCL, Marcel Mareè of the British Museum, and Trust Director, Dr Chris Naunton.

With the Rosetta Stone in the British Museum

My second goal was to make photographic copies of some documents in the archives of the Petrie Museum and Egypt Exploration Society for comparison with similar documents from the Abydos Temple Paper Archive (ATPA) which I’m now working on as staff member and which I hope to make the topic of my PhD.

Photographing documents in the archive of the Egypt Exploration Society

The general atmosphere of the Trust’s Kensington house was very conducive to work and I made good progress with the translation of the thesis into English there.

I also registered as a user of UCL library with the help of Prof Quirke and used the library’s tools for translation. I met with Prof Quirke several times to discuss the structure of the publication and the topic of my PhD thesis. I also met Dr Naunton and discussed the possible ways of publishing my work which was very useful.

In discussion with Professor Stephen Quirke

I visited the archive of the Petrie Museum and took photos, and arranged with the curator to send me copies of further documents after they have been digitised.
I also visited the library and archive of the EES and took hundreds of photos of documents relating to the Society’s work in Abydos in the 19th and 20th centuries.
At the British museum I met Marcel Mareé and discussed with him the results and conclusions of my MA which may lead to further excavations in the sacred area of Abydos in the future.

One of the best things I had during my month of residence at the Trust’s House and making the acquaintance of Maarten Praet who was working on a very similar topic (‘The Reign of Mentuhotep II Reconsidered’) and we had several very productive discussions. In general I achieved a very good result for one month.