Martin Bommas

Martin Bommas
Bommas in Radio Cairo
Born 1967 (age 50–51)
Academic background
Alma mater Heidelberg University
Academic work
Discipline Egyptology and archaeology
Sub-discipline
Institutions

Martin Bommas (born 1967) is a German Egyptologist, archaeologist, and philologist.

Academic career

He studied Egyptology at the University of Heidelberg. After having worked at the Karakorum Highway in the Northern Areas of Pakistan and the Hindukush in 1989, he started excavating in Egypt the same year. At age 23, he became field director of the German Archaeological Institute's mission on the island of Elephantine in Aswan.

Since 1998 and after having travelled for many years in Greece, Turkey and Italy, he published widely on the development of the Cult of Isis and Egyptian gods in the Mediterranean, focusing on de-coding the mysteries-related rituals based on archaeological artefacts.

He started working on religious texts at the University of Leiden, Netherlands, studying the early New Kingdom Papyrus Leiden I 346 (published 1999). In his PhD thesis he reconstructed the Temple of Khnum of the 18th Dynasty at Elephantine. In 1998, he published the long lost fragments of the magical Papyrus Harris 501 he uncovered in the Von-Portheim Stiftung, Heidelberg. Between 1994 and 2001 he worked as a senior research fellow in the DFG funded research project "Altägyptische Totenliturgien" directed by Jan Assmann. Amongst his recent philological monographs is the reconstruction of the Ancient Egyptian Ritual of Investiture (2013).

Other major projects before 2009 include both the reconstruction and re-building of the monumental gate of Amenhotep II and Ptolemy I which once stood in the southern temenos wall of the temple of Satet, and the discovery of a First Intermediate Period/ Middle Kingdom settlement north of the Sanctuary of Heqaib. From 2015 he has directed the joint University of Birmingham Egypt Exploration Society "Qubbet el-Hawa Research Project" (QHRP) in Aswan.[1] In 2016, he won the Luxor Times Top 10 Discoveries Award after QHRP discovered the causeway of Sarenput I.[2]


Teaching

After finishing his PhD in Heidelberg in 2000, he became assistant professor at the University of Basel, Switzerland. He also taught in Rome, Venice, Zurich, and Sheffield. Between 2006 and 2018, he taught Egyptology[3] at the University of Birmingham, UK.

In 2016-17 he joined the Getty Research Institute as a research fellow.

He was the Curator of the Eton Myers Collection of Egyptian Art at the University of Birmingham between 2006 and 2018.[4] As part of his work at the collection, he published on the topic of Mummy Wrappings and the Book of the Dead.[5]

In 2018, he became Professor and Director of the Museum of Ancient Cultures, at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia.

Media

He was the editor-in-chief of the Egypt Exploration Society's Journal of Egyptian Archaeology between 2014 and 2018, and he has been a member of the society since 1995. He is also the editor of the Cultural Memory and History in Antiquity (CMHA) series from Bloomsbury Publishing.[6]

Dr Bommas has participated in various media productions, such as The Verb with Ian McMillan, Jenny Uglow, Julian Glover, Amy Cooke-Hodgson and Rachel Parris.[7] In 2016, he was featured with Dr Eman Khalifa on Radio Cairo's World of Info. They were both featured in an episode with Tony Robinson, to be aired in late 2018.

References

  1. ↑ "Qubbet el-Hawa Research Project". Ees.ac.uk. Retrieved 22 October 2017.
  2. ↑ "Causeway discovered in ancient Aswan tomb - Ancient Egypt - Heritage - Ahram Online". English.ahram.org.eg. Retrieved 22 October 2017.
  3. ↑ "Dr Martin Bommas - Classics, Ancient History and Archaeology - University of Birmingham". Birmingham.ac.uk. Retrieved 22 October 2017.
  4. ↑ "Eton Myers artefacts at the University of Birmingham". Birmingham Egyptology. 31 January 2013. Retrieved 22 October 2017.
  5. ↑ Bommas, Martin. "Four examples of mummy wrappings with depictions from the Book of the Dead in the Cadbury Research Library" (PDF). Birmingham Egyptology. University of Birmingham. Retrieved 14 April 2018.
  6. ↑ "Bloomsbury - Cultural Memory and History in Antiquity". Bloomsbury.com. Retrieved 22 October 2017.
  7. ↑ BBC. "The Memory Verb, The Verb - BBC Radio 3". BBC. BBC. Retrieved 14 April 2018.
  • "Archaeologists find compelling evidence for new tombs at Qubbet Al-Hawa site in Aswan - Ancient Egypt - Heritage - Ahram Online". English.ahram.org.eg. Retrieved 22 October 2017.
  • "New discoveries around Aswan". Ees.ac.uk. Retrieved 22 October 2017.
  • "Shop landing". Ees.ac.uk. Retrieved 22 October 2017.
  • "Qubbet el-Hawa Research Project". Ees.ac.uk. Retrieved 22 October 2017.
  • "Oeientalia Vol.75". Gregorian Biblical BookShop. Retrieved 22 October 2017 – via Google Books.
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