Associate Professor Ahmed Hamden

Dr Ahmed Hamden is an associate professor of Egyptology and head of the Tourism Guidance Department at October 6 University in Egypt. He is currently an AfOx TORCH Visiting Fellow at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Oxford, as part of the Africa Oxford Visiting Fellowship Programme. 

Ahmed is the Educational Coordinator of the international partnership programme between the IMC UAS Krems University (Austria) and October 6 University (Egypt). In 2007, Ahmed was an Academic visitor at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oxford through an Egyptian Ministry of Higher Education award. He returned to the University of Oxford in 2019 through the University of Oxford for three weeks as an Academic visitor at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. In 2011 and 2012, Ahmed was an Academic Visitor at the British Museum in London, Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan through the Trust of Robert Anderson Award.  

Ahmed’s research focuses on creating a catalogue of Egyptian scenes and objects inscribed with the royal-ka during the ancient Egyptian Old Kingdom. He has analysed the texts accompanying scenes and interpret them in parallel with the iconographical motifs of the royal-ka through different periods. This has significantly furthered our knowledge about its functions and role in different contexts. Completing the catalogue presented with published and unpublished sources will enable us to understand the reasons for personification, their obscure religious functions, their roles in particular themes, and their correspondence with other divinities and symbols. 

While at the University of Oxford, Ahmed will work on the project “Some Metaphors for Transferring Royal Legitimacy in the Old Kingdom”. Ahmed’s work will be crucial for understanding the religious role of the king and changes in the meaning of kingship during the Egyptian Old Kingdom, a period associated with the establishment of royal ideology and transformations of government.