on the vexed question of their origin and on the early history of East Africa. To this end, in 1891, he made, along with his wife and the Glaswegian surveyor Robert McNair Wilson Swan (1858-1904), a colleague from Bent's time on Antiparos in 1883/4, the first detailed examination of the Great Zimbabwe. Bent described his work in The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland (1892). In 1893, he investigated the ruins of Axum and other places in northern Ethiopia, which had previously been made known in part by the researches of Henry Salt and others. His book The Sacred City of the Ethiopians (1893) gives an account of this expedition. Bent now visited at considerable risk the almost unknown Hadramut country (1893–1894), and during this and later journeys in southern Arabia he studied the ancient history of the country, its physical features and actual condition. On the Dhofar coast in 1894-1895, he visited ruins which he identified with the Abyssapolis of the frankincense merchants. In 1895-1896, he examined part of the African coast of the Red Sea, finding there the ruins of a very ancient gold-mine and traces of what he considered Sabaean influence. While on another journey in South Arabia and Socotra (1896–1897), Bent was seized with malarial fever, and died in London on 5 May 1897, a few days after his return. Mabel Bent, who had contributed by her skill as a photographer and in other ways to the success of her husband's journeys, published in 1900 Southern Arabia, Soudan and Sakotra, which she recorded the results of their last expedition into those regions. The conclusions at which Bent arrived as to the Semitic origin of the ruins in Mashonaland have not been accepted by archaeologists. Collections The majority of Bent's collections (hundreds of artefacts but relatively few on display) is to be found in the British Museum, London. Smaller collections are kept at: The Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, UK; The Victorian and Albert Museum, London, UK; Royal Botanic Garden, Kew, London, UK; The Natural History Museum, London, UK; Sulgrave Manor, Banbury, UK; Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston, UK. Overseas: The Benaki Museum, Athens, Greece; The Archaeological Museum, Istanbul, Turkey; The South African Museum, Cape Town, South Africa; The Great Zimbabwe Museum, Masvingo, Zimbabwe. Some manuscripts are archived at The Royal Geographical Society, London, UK; The Hellenic and Roman Library, Senate House, London, UK; The British Library, London, UK.