Omaima Eldeeb – 2016-2020 – Flinders University PhD Scholar

Omaima Eldeeb is a graduate of Alexandria University’s, Faculty of Arts (2008), where she studied Greco-Roman Archaeology. She has worked as an underwater archaeological inspector in the Central Department of Underwater Antiquities in Egyptian Ministry of Archaeology from 2012 until 2016. She earned her MA (2014) at the Alexandria Centre for Maritime Archaeology & Underwater Cultural Heritage, where her thesis focused on how to apply in-situ preservation methods to underwater cultural heritage and at the same time provide public access to UCH. In 2020 Omaima completed her PhD at Flinders University.

“It is an absolute privilege to have been an Honor Frost Foundation (HFF) supported scholar. My PhD thesis and research project would have been impossible without the generous financial support from the HFF. My PhD study focussed on the amphorae/ceramics collections from ancient shipwrecks along Egypt’s Alexandria coastline. In my study I applied a network analysis approach to investigate Alexandria’s changing commercial ties and trade networks from the Hellenistic period until the late Roman period.

My PhD study aimed to track the changes in the maritime trade network overtime between Alexandria and the rest of the Mediterranean Basin. It provided a better understanding of Alexandria’s economy and how it was integrated within the broader Mediterranean world. It quantified the economic implications of these interactions and other commercial connectivity. Furthermore, employing a network analysis approach as an interpretive framework, the temporal, spatial and cultural data extracted from the various assemblages was used to draw conclusions on maritime trade and its impact on ancient Alexandria.”

Omaima is now planning to publish her thesis as a monograph.