Profile: The non-Egyptian Egyptologist

Picture taken from pbs.org

When she’s not analyzing of what could have been the possible lives of the petrified bodies found below Egypt’s sands, she resorts herself to reading fiction and tasting cuisines of the world.

Imagine taking an undergraduate level course on Egyptology where you have to mummify animals. Yes, real, live, animals. Salima Ikram, professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo (AUC), co-taught a course on the rituals taken during a burial of the ancient times. 

Ikram, who was born in Lahore, Pakistan, fell in love with Egypt every since she was nine-years-old. How many of us can say that we’ve already decided what we want at age nine, and actually accomplished it.

“It’s never a career that will make you rich but you do it because you love it,” said Salima in an interview given to the Caravan in early 2012.

From there on, she worked on several internships, jobs, scavenger hunts, traveled around and even underwent a year of study abroad at the AUC.

Picture taken from cd-cc.si

Her adventure started at the age of eight when her parents gave her a book called “The Timelife Book of Ancient Egypt”. At the age of nine, she visited Egypt with her family and was mesmerized by the country’s great history. 

Soon into her life as an undergraduate student, she joined Bryn Mawr College at the United States receiving a degree in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology and another degree in History. She later joined Cambridge University in England where she received her M. Phil. in Archaeological Method and Practice as well as Museology. She didn’t wait long and decided to pursue a Ph.D.

During her undergraduate year, she was able to yet again, travel to Egypt as a study abroad student at AUC for one fruitful year.

Ikram’s stay at the AUC confirmed what she wanted to do and so ventured into that path. In addition to having Egypt as a working environment, she did manage to intern at museums in the United States.

However, this road is not always paved smooth and straight. 

“Always challenging working as an archeologist, because of funding challenges. Also, to balance the work in the university particularly administrative duties,” she said in her interview in early 2012.

In the long run, all her efforts paved off to be where she is now, an associate professor in the department of Egyptology at the AUC. Not to mention her marvelous adventures into different countries like Greece, Turkey and Sudan where she was one of many to work on important excavating projects.

She managed to work in museums and historical sites around Egypt, not only Cairo. Ikram would be recognized as one of the co-directors of the project Animal Mummies in the Egyptian museum, where she also gave her students the opportunity to participate in.

All the time she spent in being familiar with Egypt’s ancient past made Ikram a successful figure in the field of history. She has been interviewed several times and has a Bio page on the National Geographic. 

In this bio, she had been asked about her most cherished experiences to which she replied, “Finding new rock inscriptions, being the first to enter a tomb that has been sealed for over 2,000 years, trying to piece together the precise process of mummification.”

So what makes her so engrossed and dedicated in this field of work?

Picture taken from dailymail.co.uk

“Their (Egyptians) worldview and aesthetic sense resonates strongly with me, and it is never dull trying to find out how they lived, what they believed, and the technologies that they invented or adapted.”

History will continue to benefit from the discoveries made about this marvelous and vast ancient civilization, so long as historians like Ikram do what they do, for the fun of it.