A pioneering Egyptologist, Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie (1853–1942) excavated over fifty sites and trained a generation of archaeologists. Originally published between 1902 and 1904 for the Egypt Exploration Fund, this three-volume set of reports documents the excavations that Petrie initiated at one of ancient Egypt's most sacred sites, the necropolis at Abydos. These reports follow on from the findings published in The Royal Tombs of the First Dynasty (1900) and The Royal Tombs of the Earliest Dynasties (1901), both of which are reissued in this series. Volume 2 accounts for the discoveries made during the 1902–3 clearing of the site of ten successive temples, spanning the period from the first dynasty to the twenty-sixth. More than sixty pages of plates illustrate the discoveries, which range from first-dynasty ivory figures to thirteenth-dynasty stelae. A chapter by Francis Llewellyn Griffith (1862–1934) sheds light on the inscriptions.

Assisted by: Francis Llewellyn Griffith