BENT, JAMES THEODORE (1852-1897), English trav eller, was the son of James Bent of Baildon house, near Leeds, Yorkshire, where he was born on March 3o, 1852. He was edu cated at Repton school and Wadham college, Oxford, where he graduated in 1875. He spent considerable time in the Aegean archipelago, of which he wrote in The Cyclades; or Life among the Insular Greeks (1885) . The years 1885-88 were given up to archaeological investigations in Asia Minor, his discoveries being communicated to the Journal of Hellenic Studies and other publications. In 1889 he undertook excavations in the Bahrein islands of the Persian gulf, and found evidence that they had been a primitive home of the Phoenician race. After an expedition in 1890 to Cilicia Trachea Bent spent a year in South Africa. He made the first detailed examination of the remarkable ruins at 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 the north of Abyssinia, partially made known before by the researches of Henry Salt and others, and The Sacred City of the Ethiopians (1893) gave an account of this expedition. Bent now visited at considerable risk the almost unknown Hadramut country , 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 Dhafar coast in 1894-95 he visited ruins which he identified with the Abyssapolis of the frankincense merchants. In 1895-96 he exam ined 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 Sabean influence. While on another journey in south Arabia (1896-97), Bent was seized with malarial fever, and died in London on May 5, 1897, a few days after his return. Mrs. 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, in which were given the results of their last expedition into that region. The conclusions at which Bent arrived as to the Semitic origin of the ruins in Mashonaland have not been accepted by archaeologists, but the value of his pioneer work is undeniable (see ZIMBABWE).