Loot People

Vocabulary flashcards covering the key individuals, scholars, dealers, and historical figures from Chapters 1 and 2 of Loot.

Zahi Hawass

Secretary-General of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities; charismatic, U.S.-educated (Ph.D. from University of Pennsylvania), and media-savvy advocate who launched aggressive campaigns for the loan or return of 5 iconic Egyptian masterworks, banned Upper Egypt excavations, and implemented site management controls.

Ludwig Borchardt

German archaeologist who discovered the bust of Nefertiti.

Hermann Junker and Wilhelm Pelizaeus

Found and financed the bust of Hemiunu.

George Reisner

Excavator for Harvard/MFA who discovered the bust of Ankhaf.

Janice Kamrin

American archaeologist, Barnard student, and chief assistant to Zahi Hawass ('chief of the khawaga brigade') who directed the Cairo Museum's computerized collection database initiative and focused on practical collections management and security.

President Mubarak

President of Egypt during the events of the book.

Kent Weeks

American archaeologist based in Luxor for four decades, director of the Theban Mapping Project, and site manager for the Valley of the Kings who characterized Zahi Hawass's repatriation demands as calculated showmanship designed to build internal control and cultural awareness.

Betsy Bryan

Johns Hopkins archaeologist, friend, and defender of Zahi Hawass.

Gerry Scott

Director of the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE).

Ed Johnson

Archaeologist and lawyer working on permits to prevent the theft of artifacts.

Phillipe Coste and Alex Sorrentino

French ambassador and cultural official who met with Zahi Hawass.

Ahmed Badr

Tour organizer for an upscale Egyptian tour company.

Nigel Hetherington

British expert on cultural heritage.

Philippe de Montebello

Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1977–2008) who championed encyclopedic displays while negotiating landmark restitution agreements with Italy (returning the Euphronios krater) and Turkey.

Captain Pierre-Fran^ois Bouchard

French officer who found the Rosetta Stone.

Ptolemy V

Egyptian pharaoh whose coronation day is commemorated in the inscription on the Rosetta Stone.

Savants (brought with Napoleon to Egypt)

A group of scholars accompanying Napoleon, including Dominique Vivant Denon (engraver, painter, writer, early archaeologist, and Louvre planner), Nicolas Jacques Conte (balloonist), Baron Dominique-Jean Larrey and Costaz Desgenette (doctors), Francois Parseval-Grandmaison (poet), C. L. Berthollet (chemist), and Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (zoologist).

Ibrahim Bey

Local Mamluk leader in Egypt.

Rear Admiral Horatio Nelson

British naval commander who defeated Napoleon in Egypt.

Jean-Francois Champollion

French scholar who spent two decades deciphering and cracking the hieroglyphic code.

Giovanni Belzoni

Italian former circus strongman ('Patagonian Samson') turned explorer, collector, and thief hired by British Consul Henry Salt; transported massive pharaonic monuments (including the colossal bust of Ramses II from the Ramesseum) and excavated the tomb of Seti I in the Valley of the Kings.

Captain Ishmail Gibraltar

Agent dispatched by Egypt's ruling Pasha to recruit foreign experts who could modernize and improve Egyptian life.

Henry Salt and Bernardino Drovetti

The British consul general and the French consul in Egypt who spearheaded the wholesale looting of ancient Egyptian antiquities.

Mehmet Ali

Ottoman ruler of Egypt who sought to modernize the country and curry favor with Western powers.

Gaston Maspero

French head of antiquities in Egypt during the discovery of the Nefertiti bust.

Auguste Mariette

Founder of the Egyptian Antiquities Service and founder of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Lord Cromer

British consul in Egypt who asserted that Egyptians were not sophisticated enough to study or understand their own history.

Ahmed Kamal

First Egyptian to be fully qualified as both an archaeologist and an Egyptologist.

Gamal Abdel Nasser

Leader of the 1952 nationalist revolution in Egypt, after which native Egyptians gained full control over the Antiquities Service.

Gustave Lefebvre

Gaston Maspero's deputy, a French papyrologist and epigraphist who conducted the division (partage) of Thutmose's workshop finds on January 20, 1913.

James Simon

Ludwig Borchardt's financial benefactor who donated the bust of Nefertiti to the Berlin museum.

Howard Carter

British archaeologist who discovered King Tutankhamun's tomb.

Andras Galik and Balint Havas

Hungarian artists who incorporated the bust of Nefertiti into a contemporary sculpture presented at the Venice Biennale international art show.

Dietrich Wildung

Director of the Berlin museum holding the Nefertiti bust.

Kurt Siehr

Legal scholar and lawyer who defended Egypt's legal claim for the repatriation of the Nefertiti bust.

Stephen Urice

Director of the Project for Cultural Heritage Law and Policy who argued against Kurt Siehr regarding Egypt's repatriation claim for Nefertiti.

Lord Elgin (Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin)

British diplomat who, between 1801 and 1812, removed roughly half of the surviving sculptures from the Parthenon in Ottoman-occupied Athens and shipped them to England, selling them to the British nation in 1816.

Henry Salt

British Consul-General in Egypt during the early 19th century who financed Giovanni Belzoni's excavations to amass Egyptian antiquities for the British Museum.

E.A. Wallis Budge

Longtime Keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities at the British Museum who aggressively acquired papyri, mummies, and cuneiform tablets throughout Egypt and Mesopotamia.

Emile Prisse d'Avennes

French archaeologist and writer who extracted major architectural reliefs and monuments from Egypt, shipping fragments to the Louvre.

Austen Henry Layard

British archaeologist who excavated Assyrian royal palaces at Nimrud and Nineveh near Mosul in the 1840s, transporting colossal winged bulls and lions to London.

Sir Charles Fellows

British explorer who surveyed Lycia in Asia Minor during the 1830s and 1840s, stripping the Nereid Monument and transferring it to the British Museum.

Louis Palma di Cesnola

Union Army veteran, U.S. Consul to Cyprus, and the first Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art who looted thousands of Cypriot tombs and sold his massive collection to the Met.

Giacomo Medici

Italian antiquities dealer running an illicit trafficking network based in Switzerland; a 1995 police raid on his Geneva warehouse uncovered thousands of polaroids documenting freshly excavated, unrestored antiquities that helped convict him and secure restitutions.

Robert Hecht

American antiquities dealer based in Paris and Rome who was co-indicted and tried alongside Marion True in Italy for trafficking looted classical antiquities, including the Met's Euphronios krater.

Robin Symes

Prominent London antiquities dealer associated with the Medici-Hecht trade network who placed high-value, unprovenanced classical antiquities into elite private collections and major museums.

Maurice Tempelsman

International businessman and collector who acquired contested high-value ancient artifacts, including the Morgantina silver collection.

Shelby White

New York philanthropist, collector, and Met trustee who, alongside her late husband Leon Levy, built one of the world's largest private classical antiquities collections, much of which lacked documented provenance and faced legal challenges.

Michael Steinhardt

Wall Street hedge fund manager and prominent private collector of ancient art.

John Rowe

CEO of Exelon Corporation and avid Egyptophile who kept a 2,200-year-old painted wooden mummy sarcophagus in his executive office until pressured by Zahi Hawass in 2006 to loan it to the Field Museum.

Neil MacGregor

Director of the British Museum who championed the 'universal museum' philosophy, arguing that world artifacts should remain in London to tell a single, shared narrative of human civilization.

Marion True

Former Curator of Antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum who was criminally indicted and tried in Rome for purchasing looted Italian artifacts, despite instituting stricter acquisition guidelines in the 1990s.

Thomas Hoving

Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1967–1977) who ushered in an era of aggressive, high-stakes antiquities acquisitions, notably paying $1 million for the unprovenanced Euphronios krater in 1972.

Carlos Picon

Longtime Curator in charge of the Greek and Roman Art Department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Henri Loyrette

Director of the Louvre Museum in Paris who rejected Egypt's 2007 loan request for the Denderah Zodiac ceiling citing its fragility and structural concerns.

Christiane Ziegler

Former Senior Curator of Egyptian Antiquities at the Louvre who led long-term excavations at Saqqara, unearthing mummies in burial shafts.

Michael Brand

Director of the J. Paul Getty Museum following Marion True's tenure who finalized the August 2007 agreement returning 40 disputed antiquities to Italy.

James Wood

President and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust during the settlement of Italian cultural property claims.

Maurizio Fiorilli

Italian state prosecutor who led legal actions against Giacomo Medici, Robert Hecht, Marion True, and prominent American museums to reclaim looted cultural heritage.

Ozgen Acar

Turkish investigative journalist who traced smuggled Turkish antiquities worldwide, exposing the illicit origins of the Met's Lydian Hoard and securing its return to Turkey.

Lord Colin Renfrew (Colin Renfrew, Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn)

Cambridge archaeologist and scholar who condemned Western museums and private collectors for buying unprovenanced antiquities, demonstrating that the market fuels the destruction of archaeological context.

Jack Davis

Archaeologist and scholar who campaigned for ethical stewardship, archaeological context, and systemic reform in excavation practices.

Melina Mercouri

Greek actress and 1980s Minister of Culture who transformed the restitution of the Parthenon/Elgin Marbles into a high-profile international moral campaign.

Nikolas Zirganos

Greek investigative journalist who uncovered illicit antiquities smuggling networks operating between Greece, Italy, and elite auction houses.

Dimitrios Pandermalis

Director who oversaw the New Acropolis Museum in Athens.

The Kalam family

Family historically involved in selling and trafficking Egyptian antiquities.

Cemal Pulak

Underwater archaeologist who excavated the Uluburun shipwreck and worked at the Yenikapi site in Istanbul, where 24–34 sunken ships were preserved by Istanbul University and the Institute of Nautical Archaeology at Bodrum.

Peter Hopkirk

British journalist who revealed a covert purchase by the Metropolitan Museum of Art involving artifacts smuggled into the United States.

Kazim

Director of the Usak Archaeological Museum imprisoned for over a year on allegations of stealing from the Lydian Hoard before trial, though local residents maintained his innocence.

Oscar White Muscarella

Metropolitan Museum of Art curator who blew the whistle to the New York Times regarding the museum's acquisition of looted antiquities, resulting in his firing, subsequent reinstatement, and demotion.

Coskun Mavioglu

Official associated with the Usak Archaeological Museum.