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Salima Ikram is Professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo, and has also worked as an archaeologist in Turkey, Sudan, Greece, and the United States. After double majoring in history as well as classical and Near Eastern archaeology at Bryn Mawr College in the United States, she received her MPhil in museology and Egyptian archaeology and her PhD in Egyptian archaeology from Cambridge University. She has directed the Animal Mummy Project, co-directed the Predynastic Gallery Project, and is co-director of the North Kharga Oasis Survey. She also participates in several other archaeological missions throughout Egypt. She has lectured on her work all over the world, and publishes in both scholarly and popular journals.
Shortly after the onset of the Egyptian revolution in January 2011, the police and many of the associated security forces abandoned their posts, creating a vacuum that has had a devastating effect on Egypt’s antiquities. With great alacrity, villagers who lived near historic sites started appropriating land, while others with more nefarious intentions, such as tomb robbers and organized mafias, began the process of plundering.
