Moamen Saad Mohamed

Biography

Moamen has been working in archaeology across various multi-period sites throughout Egypt since 2003. Often he is the senior archaeologist or supervisor for the site and he regularly teaches large student classes (often over a hundred students or junior inspectors) in all aspects of archaeological investigation.

As Assistant to the General Director of Upper Egypt for the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Moamen was responsible for collating all the latest research on archaeological investigations in Egypt, undertaking and directing his own excavations, and writing and publishing archaeological reports with the Egypt-French Centre in Karnak. He worked on several high-profile excavations, including the Temples of Karnak, Khonsu, Luxor, the tomb of Shimai, at sites in Qift and Qena, on the Avenue of the Sphinxes, at Gebel el-Silsila, and the tomb builders’ village at Giza. He has worked for ARCE at various sites in Luxor as an archaeologist.

The topic of Moamen’s Master thesis was the foreign policy and political propaganda of the 18th Dynasty. He completed his PhD in 2019 at South Valley University, Qena, where he studied and completed, for the first time, a comprehensive corpus of the so-called Nile Stelae at Gebel el-Silsila. His dissertation was titled Rock shrines and Nile Stelaes at Gebel el Silsila West during the Ramesside Period.

Moamen has international experience in museum and archival studies as he has participated in training courses at the British Museum and the EES in London respectively.  In addition, he participated in a 2019 training programme in China for Culture and Heritage Protection.

Moamen was the director of the Scientific Research Department at Karnak. During his time there, he organized the first Karnak Conference for new research, studies, and discoveries. He also created a YouTube channel to highlight the department’s activities and a webpage that focused on educational initiatives. He offered free lectures to the public and to foreigners by coordinating pools of volunteers. He also supervised site improvement projects at Karnak, as the Chairman of the Antiquities Inventory Committee. In addition, he worked for the Swedish Mission at Gebel el-Silsila as an Archaeologist, Egyptologist and epigrapher, and where he was responsible for the GIS mapping.

Currently, Moamen is the Director at the Department of Antiquities at Luxor International Airport, where he leads and supervises a team of Inspectors from the Ministry and implements a strategy to ensure that antiquities do not leave the country with passengers.

At the British Museum
During his time on the International Training Programme in 2008, Moamen was based in the Department of Egypt & Sudan and his partner placement was spent at the National Museum Wales.

Legacy Projects
In March 2010 Moamen attended the Cairo Conference Towards a global network where he presented a paper on what he had gained, both professionally and personally, from attending the ITP and his career development since the programme.