Manfred Bietak

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Manfred Bietak (b. 6. October 1940, Vienna) is an Austrian archaeologist. He is the current Professor of Egyptology at the University of Vienna and Director of the Austrian Archaeological Institute in Cairo (Professor der Ägyptologie an der Universität Wien und Leiter des Österreichischen Archäologischen Institutes in Kairo). He has been in 2004 a visiting professor at Harvard.

He studied archeology at Vienna state University and took part 1961 - 1965 in the conservation expedition of the UNESCO at Sayala in Nubia and did also excavations there.

Bietak is best known as the director of the Austrian excavations at two sites: the Nile delta site of Tell el-Daba'a, site of Avaris, the capital of the Hyksos period; and of neighbouring Piramesse, the Nineteenth Dynasty capital of Egypt.

Since March 1999 he is the First Speaker of the "Synchronisation of Civilisations in the Eastern Mediterranean in the Second Millennium BC - SCIEM 2000" at the Austrian Academy of Science. Member of: Austrian Academy of Science, Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, Foreign Fellow of the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, Membre titulaire de l'Institut d'Égypte, Member of German Archaeological Institute and Honorary Member of the Archaeological Institute of America.

He is the author or co-author of several scholarly books, and he also serves as editor for the Egyptological journal Ägypten und Levante ("Egypt and the Levant"). 14 books and 200 reports in scientific papers are listed.

In 2006, there was a three-volume festschrift published in his honour.[1]