He grew up in Ain Shams, a suburb of Cairo, where his father had a house with a few acres of land (13 "feddans") that were used to cultivate fruits and vegetables.

The subject of his doctoral degree was King Ahmose I, founder of the Eighteenth Dynasty, who expelled the Hyksos from Egypt.

His teachers in Germany included Herman Grapow (with whom he stayed in touch till the latter's death in 1967) and Kurt Heinrich Sethe.

Labib was chosen as acting director of the Egyptian Museum in the summer of 1964 to investigate the disappearance of a piece of Tutankhamun's treasures.

Through his contacts, he managed to build a rest house that was spacious and well furnished (built by the German Archeological Institute, Cairo).

Pope Cyril VI of Alexandria used to visit the place and even stayed there, to hold an early service in the site of the ancient Cathedral of Saint Menas.

Labib was also involved with excavations in "Tel-Atrib", near the city of Banha in Lower Egypt; the site of a great Cathedral before the Arab invasion.

Labib believed that this philosophy is Egyptian in origin (rather than Greek) and presented a paper on the subject to the First International Congress of Coptology in Cairo in 1976.

A Coptic exhibition was held in Villa Hegel in Essen (West Germany) in 1963 to which Labib was an invited guest.

[1] On the occasion of Labib's 70th birthday, the Committee of the Nag Hammadi Library organized a special celebration and published a book in his honor, to which twenty-one international distinguished Coptologists contributed.