An archaeological expedition to Egypt organised by the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts

The area of almost 6.2 square miles is dominated by a royal burial ground and settlement established by Pharaoh Sesostris II (ca. 1880–1873 BC). Some one hundred years ago British archaeologist W. M. F. Petrie excavated this site for two seasons, but only superficially. By current archaeological standards of practice the documentation of the excavations is incomplete and inaccurate, yet the work on the royal pyramid and its auxiliary buildings are an important step in the development of religious architecture, and moreover, the settlement has even come to be regarded as the model of Egyptian city archaeology.

A Canadian expedition worked on the site in the recent past but their activities were brought to a halt by the death of the head of excavations in 2002, following which the entire unpublished documentation was transferred to the Egyptian Department of the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts to be studied and eventually published. In the meantime, the condition of the artefacts on the site deteriorated to such a degree that the accurate and systematic archaeological exploration of the area has become essential and especially timely. Thanks to international collaboration, the expedition organised by the Museum of Fine Arts will be the first one in the history of excavations conducted on the site that can carry out its mission supported by a comprehensive body of source material.



Since the archaeological site is the biggest known settlement-site dating from the Late Intermediate Bronze Age of Egypt, the mission has been at the centre of attention in the field. The Museum of Fine Arts wishes to place special emphasis on making the process of the archaeological project accessible and its results available to the profession and the wider public alike. To this effect, information materials in Hungarian and English and an “archaeological blog” will be available to let anyone interested take a glimpse into the process of the on-site work, and after the project is completed an exhibition will display the site’s new appearance.

The members of the expedition in the 2008 season are: Zoltán Horváth Egyptologist, project manager, Museum of Fine Arts; Máté Petrik, archaeologist-Egyptologist, Museum of Fine Arts; Ashraf Zein Elabidin El-Senussi, archaeologist from Egypt, the project’s co-director; Stephen Quirke, Egyptologist, Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology University College London; Zsolt Vasáros, architect, Research Institute for Visualization, Architecture and Archaeology (RIVAA); Marcel Hellendahl, architect from Germany, Research Institute for Visualization, Architecture and Archaeology (RIVAA); László Szűcs, geodetic engineer, Miklós Ybl College Faculty of Saint Stephen University, and Ákos Gregori, geodetic engineer, Miklós Ybl College Faculty of Saint Stephen University.