On Jan. 28, 2011, as anti-regime protesters clashed with riot police in and around Cairo’s iconic Tahrir Square, forcing police to withdraw from the streets, looters took advantage of the security vacuum to break into the nearby Egyptian Museum. They reportedly ransacked the ticket office, raided the museum shop for jewelry and snatched valuable artifacts from display cases.

The museum theft sent shock waves across the country, raising concerns about the security of Egypt’s precious cultural objects and monuments. Curators and archaeologists sounded the alarm at the threats facing the country’s antiquities — including looting, institutional corruption and land grabs (encroachment on antiquities’ land by the government or private citizens for building or agriculture) — which they feared had been amplified by the lawlessness following the Arab Spring. 

Their fears were not unfounded. On Aug. 14, 2013, looters broke into the Malawi Museum in the Upper Egyptian city of Minya, destroying nearly 500 artifacts and stealing more than 1,000 objects, including coins, jewels and statues dating from the time of the pharaohs to the Islamic period.

The vandalism appeared to be an act of revenge, taking place hours after the violent dispersal by police of two Cairo sit-ins demanding the reinstatement of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, unseated several weeks earlier following military-backed protests. On Jan. 24, 2014, a powerful blast from a car bomb targeting Cairo’s Security Directorate in the populous Cairo neighborhood of Bab El Khalq caused extensive damage to the facade and much of the interior of the adjacent 19th century Museum of Islamic Art.