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.

Once the political centre of Lower Egypt, the city of Tanis was in ruins by the time pioneering archaeologist W. M. Flinders Petrie (1853-1942) arrived in the late nineteenth century. He recruited more than a hundred workers from nearby settlements to help with his excavations there. Now reissued together, these two reports of Petrie's discoveries were originally published separately in 1885 and 1888. His colleague Francis Llewellyn Griffith (1862-1934) contributes epigraphic analysis and translations. Each report contains much illustrative content, such as maps and photographs of the sites as well as drawings of the finds and hieroglyphic inscriptions. The 1888 publication also covers work carried out at Nebesheh and Defenneh, neither of which had been previously studied by archaeologists. Alexander Stuart Murray (1841-1904) discusses the important discoveries of painted vases at the latter site. Many of Petrie's other Egyptological publications are also reissued in this series.