Sarah Belzoni in temples. Her husband would leave her alone for period of weeks or months and she would be left to speak with the local women around her in whatever language they spoke. She spent this time documenting the lives of the local women, eventually publishing "Mrs. Belzoni's trifling account of the women of Egypt, Nubia, and Syria" as part of her husband's 1820 work "Narrative of the Operations and Recent Discoveries … in Egypt and Nubia". Her work was the first of its kind on the topic. In 1816, Sarah visited the chief's women at the Abu Simbel temples near
Abu Simbel Abu Simbel Abu Simbel (also Abu Simbal, Ebsambul or Isambul; or ) is a village in the Egyptian part of Nubia, about 240 kilometers southwest of Aswan and near the border with Sudan. As of 2012, it has about 2600 inhabitants. It is best known as the site of the Abu Simbel temples. The name Abu Simbel is European, a cacography of the Arabic "Abu Sunbul", due in part to assimilation. "Abu Sunbul" is itself a derivative of the ancient place name "Ipsambul". In the New Kingdom period, the region in which the temple was built may have been called