Nekheb, the ancient Egyptian name of Elkab, refers to the vulture goddess Nekhbet. She was the principal deity of Elkab and together with the cobra goddess Wadjet, the divine protectress of the pharaoh.

From a small prehistoric encampment, Elkab developed into one the first urban centres in the Nile Valley. The site stretches out over an area of several hectares and is dominated by a monumental 10 meter high mudbrick enclosure wall. Within this enclosure lie the temples of Nekhbet and Thoth which were explored by Jean Capart and his team during the very first Belgian excavations at Elkab in 1937, as well as an important part of the Elkab necropolis, which consists of a series of cemeteries from different phases of the ancient Egyptian civilization, and various other monuments. This necropolis also extends to the desert hinterland of Elkab and the impressive sandstone hill east of the enclosure wall, which is honeycombed with hundreds of rock-cut tombs. For instance, the beautifully decorated tombs of the Paheri, Reni, Ahmose and Setau, high dignitaries of the New Kingdom, are located there. Older tombs were also discovered and excavated there by the Belgian mission. They belong to the high priests of Nekhbet who were in charge of the temples at the end of the Old Kingdom (6th Dynasty). On the top of the rock necropolis also stands a monumental mastaba tomb of the 3rd Dynasty. Various other sanctuaries are located further into the desert such a rock-cut temple of the Ptolemaic period dedicated to the goddess Shesmetet, and a richly decorated New Kingdom temple constructed under pharaoh Amenhotep III an dedicated to the goddesses Hathor and Nekhbet. In between these temples also stands the Rock of the Vultures, an isolated rock covered with thousands of prehistoric petroglyphs and Old Kingdom rock inscriptions.

Over the past decades, many of these monuments have been investigated in detail by the Belgian mission, providing a wealth of information on the religious and funerary practices of the inhabitants of Elkab. Since 2009, however, the research at Elkab has shifted its attention towards the settlement area of the sites which extends over an area of about five hectares southwest of the temples of Nekhbet and Thoth. These recent excavations have revealed well-preserved habitation remains that indicate that the origins of the settlement date back to the 5th millennium BC and his since known a continuous development until the Coptic period. The excavated remains of houses, pottery, stone tools, faunal material and other objects paint a fascinating and varied picture of the organization of daily life at Elkab. The discovery of exotic materials such as obsidian originating from Ethiopia also indicates that the site was part of an international network for the supply of precious raw materials over very long distances. The discovery of an intact crucible for copper production dating to the 2nd Dynasty (ca. 2900 BC)—the oldest complete specimen ever found in Egypt— also underlines the role Elkab must have played in the development and spread of metal production in ancient Egypt.

As such, the importance of the recent excavations at Elkab cannot be underestimated. After all, our knowledge of Egyptian civilisation is still largely based on information drawn from richly decorated tombs and temples and still far too little from the settlements themselves. The recent research carried out by the Royal Museums of Art and History in Elkab therefore contributes substantially in closing an important research gap with regard to our knowledge of ancient Egypt.