Professor of Egyptology, SAPE Department, Tenure

Salima Ikram has been teaching Egyptology at the American University in Cairo since 2001. Professor Ikram double majored at Bryn Mawr College in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology, as well as in History, and spent a year at AUC as a study abroad student. She received her M. Phil. and Ph. D. from Cambridge University, England. Her M. Phil. was in Archaeological Method and Practice, as well as in Museology. Her Ph. D. was entitled: "Choice Cuts: Meat Production in Ancient Egypt" (Leuven: Peeters, 1995). Dr. Ikram has published widely on a variety of topics and has also written a series of children's books.

Her areas of specialty are Egyptian archaeology, mummification, both human and animal, cultural resource management with a focus on museums, experimental archaeology, zooarchaeology, ethnoarchaeology, and aspects of daily life in ancient Egypt. She has directed the Animal Mummy Project at the Egyptian Museum, Cairo, co-directed the Predynastic Project in the Egyptian Museum, and is also co-director of the North Kharga Oasis Survey. In addition to working all over Egypt since 1986, Dr. Ikram has also worked in Greece, Turkey, the Sudan.

Research Interests:

Mummification (human and animal), Funerary Archaeology, Bioarchaeology (particularly archaeozoology), Experimental and ethno-archaeology, Heritage Management.

Selected Publications

2009-2010. Area Editor, Blackwell’s Encyclopedia of the Ancient World. A printed and online encyclopedia.

2009. Ancient Egypt: An Introduction. New York: Cambridge University Press.

2008. The Tomb in Ancient Egypt, with A. M. Dodson. London: Thames and Hudson.

2005. (ed.) Divine Creatures: Animal Mummies in Ancient Egypt.  Cairo: American University in Cairo.

2004. Beloved Beasts: Animal Mummies from Ancient Egypt. Cairo: Supreme Council of Antiquities Press, (English and Arabic versions).

2003. Death and Burial in Ancient Egypt. London: Longman, 2003. Polish version 2006.

2002. Catalogue Général of the Egyptian Museum: Non-Human Mummies, with N. Iskander. Cairo: Supreme Council of Antiquities Press.

Dr. Ikram is currently working on a book on animal mummies, and another on tomb decoration.