Pahor Labib
Pahor Labib (Coptic: Ⲡⲁϩⲱⲣ Ⲗⲁⲡⲓⲡ; Arabic: باهور لبيب Bahur Labib) was an Egyptian scholar born on 19 September 1905 in Ain Shams, Cairo, and he died on 7 May 1994 in Cairo. He served as Director of the Coptic Museum in Cairo from 1951 to 1965 and became one of the world’s leading experts in Egyptology and Coptology.
His father, Cladius Labib, was also an Egyptologist and Coptologist who learned hieroglyphics from French scholars in Egypt and helped create a Coptic-Arabic dictionary. Pahor grew up in Ain Shams, where his family owned land used for growing fruit and vegetables. He attended the Great Coptic School and Khedivieh Secondary School in Cairo. After earning his bachelor’s degree, he started studying law but switched to archaeology, passing the archaeology final with distinction.
In 1930 Labib went to Berlin for advanced study and earned a Ph.D. in 1934 from Friedrich Wilhelm University. His doctoral work focused on King Ahmose I, founder of Egypt’s Eighteenth Dynasty, and he showed that the Hyksos remained in Egypt for about 150 years and came from Canaan. He was the first Egyptian to obtain a doctorate in Egyptology. His teachers included Herman Grapow and Kurt Heinrich Sethe.
Back in Egypt, Labib became a Lecturer at the Institute of Archaeology, Cairo University, in 1935. In 1945 he was appointed Keeper of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. He later directed provincial museums, expanded the Aswan Museum, and helped transfer the Ismailia Museum to the Department of Antiquities.
In 1951 Labib was appointed Director of the Coptic Museum. He transformed it into a world-famous research center and was among the first to use the word “Coptology.” He began excavations at Abu Mena in 1951 and, with help from the German Archaeological Institute, built a well-equipped rest house there. Pope Cyril VI of Alexandria visited, and the site helped lead to the later building of the Monastery of Saint Mina. Labib also worked at Tel-Atrib near Banha, a site of an ancient cathedral, which drew visits from Pope Shenouda III.
Labib contributed greatly to the study of the Nag Hammadi texts. He helped translate them and worked with UNESCO on a committee that published many of the texts. He served as secretary, vice president, and president of this committee, with the first publication in 1956 and continuing until 1984. He believed the Nag Hammadi philosophy had Egyptian origins and spoke on this at the First International Congress of Coptology in Cairo in 1976.
A 1963 exhibition of his work opened in Essen, Germany, and Labib was an invited guest. He served on many national and international committees, helped manage Coptic and Islamic museums, and contributed to the broader study of archaeology and tourism. He was a founding member of the Institute of Coptic Studies and held positions in several scholarly organizations, including the German Institute of Archaeology and UNESCO museum groups.
Labib received several honors: the Decoration of the High Cross from Germany in 1976, the World Decoration of Denmark in 1963, and a Gold Medal from Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia in 1959. From 1976 to 1994 he was Honorary President of the International Association for Coptic Studies. On his 70th birthday, the Nag Hammadi Library committee published a book in his honor, with contributions from twenty-one international Coptologists.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 17:31 (CET).