[6][7][8] At the time of Bent's death in 1897, the couple resided at 13 Great Cumberland Place, London, and Sutton Hall, outside Macclesfield, Cheshire, UK.

[11] To this end, in 1891, he made, along with his wife and the Glaswegian surveyor Robert McNair Wilson Swan (1858-1904), a colleague from Bent's time on Antiparos in 1883/4,[12] the first detailed examination of the Great Zimbabwe.

Famously, Victor Loret and Alfred Charles Auguste Foucher denounced this view, and claimed that a non-African culture built the original structures.

In 1895-1896, he examined 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 Sabaean influence.

[16] While on another journey in South Arabia and Socotra (1896–1897), Bent was seized with malarial fever, and died in London on 5 May 1897, a few days after his return.

[17][6] Mabel 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, which she recorded the results of their last expedition into those regions.

[18] Several plants and seeds the Bents brought back from Southern Arabia are now in the Herbarium at Kew Gardens; one such specimen being Echidnopsis Bentii, collected on his last journey in 1897.