1820s: date uncertain: survey by John Gardner Wilkinson, published in his Modern Egypt and Thebes, being a description of Egypt, including the information required for travellers in that country, volume II (London, 1843), 337-340
1837: survey by Howard Vyse and Perring, published in their Operations carried on at the Pyramids of Gizeh in 1837, volume III (London, 1842), 82-83 Comment: first record of the present canal across the site
1840s: survey and excavation by the expedition under Richard Lepsius, published in his Denkmaeler aus Aegypten und Aethiopen I (Berlin, 1849), plates 46-49, with posthumous publication of his notes in Denkmaeler Text II (Berlin, 1904), 11-30 Comment: this is the most accurate published account of the site, from a time when the ruins of the Hellenistic and Roman village survived over the area of the Labyrinth (Lepsius interpreted those ruins as part of the original complex)
1862 August: excavations around the site by Vassalli, published in the journal Recueil de Travaux 6 (1885), 37-41
1888-1889: excavations and survey by William Matthew Flinders Petrie, published in his reports Hawara, Biahmu and Arsinoe (London,1889) and Kahun, Gurob and Hawara (London, 1890): his letters home are now in the Griffith Institute, Oxford (the 'Petrie Journals'), and his pocket books (the 'Petrie Notebooks') are in the Petrie Museum (published with Secure Data Services in the Petrie Museum Archives CD-ROM, 1999) Comment: the main achievement of Petrie lies in his survey of the pyramid and its inner chambers, and in his discovery and rescue of the famous encaustic mummy portraits from the Roman Period burials north of the pyramid. In other areas the quality of his work falls below modern standards, reflecting the early date in the history of archaeology and in his own career. His survey of the area around the pyramid is inadequately recorded, and most of the tombs were emptied by workmen without Petrie himself ever seeing the finds in place.
1892: exploration of the Roman Period cemeteries at Hawara by R. v. Kaufmann, mentioned as the discoverer of a group burial containing eight mummies, in Renate Germer, Das Geheimnis der Mumien, Ewiges Leben am Nil (Berlin 1998), 150-151
1911: excavation of the Labyrinth area and the Hellenistic and Roman Period cemeteries by William Matthew Flinders Petrie, published in his The Labyrinth, Gerzeh and Mazghuneh (London 1912), and Roman Portraits and Memphis IV (London 1911) Comment: in this season Petrie uncovered some of the most remarkable sculpture fragments, as well as more structures within the area of the Labyrinth