Renee Friedman is the current director of the Hierakonpolis Expedition.
A graduate of the University of California, Berkeley in Egyptian Archaeology (MA 1981, PhD 1994), Renee has worked at many sites throughout Egypt since 1980. With special interest in the Predynastic, Egypt’s formative period, in 1983 she joined the team working at Hierakonpolis and went on to become the co-director with Barbara Adams in 1996.Since 2002, Renee has been the sole director, and has fielded a team every year to undertake excavation, conservation, survey and research on various aspects of the desert portion of the site. Formerly the Heagy Research Curator in the Deptartment of Ancient Egypt and Sudan at the British Museum, she is now a research associate of the Griffith Institute, Oxford and member of the University of Oxford’s Faculty of Asia and Middle East Studies. The author of many scholarly and popular articles especially about the site of Hierakonpolis, she has also edited and co-edited several books on various related topics (see Publications). She also co-authored the popular book Egypt Uncovered (1998, US), Egypt (UK), and helped to produce the associated 5 part television series (Discovery Channel, S4C),This was the first of many TV programs to feature the work at Hierakonpolis, amongst which her favorite is The Real Scorpion King—check it out.
In April 2023, Renee was interviewed for the Oral History of American Egyptology Project of the Ancient Egyptian Heritage and Archaeology Fund. Talking about her 40+years on the site and other events of her career, you can view it on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/z2yOj9tnL74?si=6HjmS9u1qzUpD_5z
or the Ancient Egyptian Heritage and Archaeology Fund website with all the other interviews:
https://www.ancientegyptarchaeologyfund.com/projects/oral-history-project/