German Egyptologist and museum director in Hildesheim and Berlin. He made valuable contributions to the study of the religion of ancient Egypt.
Roeder studied first at the University of Jena, later in Berlin with Adolf Erman. In 1904 he received his doctorate with a thesis on the preposition in the development of the Egyptian language. He worked at the Egyptian Museum in Berlin and published, among other things, inscriptions from the collection. From 1903 to 1908 he worked at the Berlin office as a research assistant and from 1913 to 1914 as a permanent employee of the Berlin dictionary. Here he first wrote for Kurt Sethe. From 1907 to 1911 he worked for the Egyptian Antiquities Service. For many years he worked under Gaston Maspero at the Nubian temples Debod, Kalabsha and Dakka, as well as at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. In 1914 he completed his habilitation at the University of Breslau, where he worked as a private lecturer and was appointed professor in December 1916.
Roeder was director of the Pelizaeus Museum in Hildesheim from 1915 to 1945. Between 1929 and 1939 he directed the excavations in Hermopolis for the museum. The second volume about these finds, Amarna reliefs from Hermopolis, he could no longer complete himself. This was done in 1969 by Rainer Hanke, who edited it for Günther Roeder.
From 1940 to 1945 Roeder was also director of the Egyptian Museum of the State Museums in Berlin. After the end of the war he taught Egyptology at the University of Göttingen.
Günther Roeder died on 6 November 1966 in Cairo at age 85.
Link to Wikipedia biography (German)