Ahmed Kamal (Egyptologist)

Ahmed Kamāl (Arabic: أحمد كمال, July 29, 1849[1] – August 5, 1923, also known as Ahmed Kamal Bey (Pasha)) was Egypt’s first Egyptologist and pioneer in his own country. Kamal was of Turkish origin.[2]

Research

His 1899 work on ancient Heliopolis.

He trained under the German Egyptologist Heinrich Brugsch.

He was a curator at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and a staff member of the Supreme Council of Antiquities. He was jointly responsible for the Egyptian collections’ classification and significantly involved in the museum's removal from both Boulaq to Giza and Giza to the Tahrir Square at Cairo's city center.

He took part in several excavations at Dayr al-Barsha, Gabal at-Tayr, Tihna el-Gebel, Gamhud, Atfih, Mayr, El-Sheikh Sa'id, Asyut, Dara, Amarna as well as in the Nile Valley. In Dara, he discovered the only known attestation of pharaoh Khui.

Important publications

• Kamal, Ahmed, Stèles ptolémaiques et romaines, two volumes, Le Caire, 1904–1905, (Catalogue général des antiquités égyptiennes du Musée du Caire).
• Kamal, Ahmed, Tables d'offrandes, two volumes, Le Caire, 1906, 1909, (Catalogue général des antiquités égyptiennes du Musée du Caire).
• Kamal, Ahmed Bey (1912). "Fouilles à Dara et à Qoçéîr el-Amarna". Annales du Service des Antiquités de l'Égypte.

References

1. Abou-Ghazi, Dia', Ahmed Kamal. 1849–1923, Annales du Service des Antiquités de l'Égypte, volume 64 (1981), p. 1
2. Reid, Donald Malcolm (2015), Contesting Antiquity in Egypt: Archaeologies, Museums, and the Struggle for Identities from World War I to Nasser, The American University in Cairo Press, p. 171, ISBN 978-9774166891, Ahmad Kamal, was of Turkish extraction...

• Abou-Ghazi, Dia', Ahmed Kamal. 1849–1923, Annales du Service des Antiquités de l'Égypte, volume 64 (1981), pp. 1 – 5, portrait plate.
• Dawson, Warren R. ; Uphill, Eric P. ; Bierbrier, M. L., Who was who in Egyptology, London : The Egypt Exploration Society, 1995 (3rd edition), p. 224.