Mamdouh Mohamed Gad Eldamaty (Arabic: ممدوح محمد جاد الدماطي; born 6 December 1961) is an Egyptian Egyptologist who has served in the government of Egypt as Minister of Antiquities from 2014 until 2016.
On 16 June 2014, it was announced that he was to be appointed as Minister of Antiquities,[1] a position he held until March 2016 when he was replaced by Khaled al-Anani after a cabinet reshuffle.
The thesis of his Master's Degree was "St-Meskhnet hall at Dendera Temple, linguistic and cultural study" under the supervision of Abdelhalim Noureldin and partnership of Ola El-Aguizy.
This new contact proved to be quite useful as Winter encouraged the young Egyptologist to continue his studies under his supervision at the Department of Egyptology at Trier University.
Thanks to the help and support of his Professor and guarantor, Mohamed Saleh, an entry visa was issued and he started his German-language courses at Cologne University as soon as he arrived in Germany.
He commenced his Trier residence by learning German until he acquired the Deutsche Sprachprüfung für den Hochschulzugang which qualified him for regular study at the university.
Having concluded his PhD, he returned to Egypt in September 1995 but kept visiting Trier frequently in the years 1996, 1997, 1999, 2002, 2004 and 2007 in order to follow recent publications and studies on Egyptology.
During his directorship, the Museum witnessed several far reaching activities, developing its cellar (April 2001), restoring old records of the Museum (May 2001), preparing for the second chamber for royal mummies (June 2001) and establishing a restoration laboratory for papyrus, in cooperation with Corrado Basile, Director of Istituto Internazionale del Papiro, Syracuse in Italy (March 2003).
In July 2001 he presented a concept for the centennial of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, which included several projects to promote and develop the old institution.
These activities were performed in late 2002 in the time of the successor of Gaballa, Zahi Hawass, who gave this ceremony special attention.
In this post, he supervised all Egyptian students in Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway.