Archaeologist Monica Hanna recently received a Beacon Award from Saving Antiquities for Everybody for her work in highlighting the looting of antiquities in Egypt. This article looks at how she used twitter to help to publicise the looting to the outside world.

Monica Hanna

From:
New York Times

Taking on Art Looters on Twitter
By TOM MASHBERGAPRIL 9, 2014

Monica Hanna stood inside the Malawi National Museum in Minya, Egypt, last August, armed only with a cellphone and her Twitter account, as looters ran rampant. Nearly all the objects she had loved since childhood — mummies and amulets, scarabs and carved ibises — were gone. In their place lay shattered glass, shards of pottery, splintered wood and the charred remains of a royal sarcophagus.

The thieves had stolen all but a few dozen of the museum’s 1,100 artifacts, leaving behind some statues and painted coffins that were too heavy to cart off. Dr. Hanna, a 30-year-old archaeologist, sent out a tweet pleading for help. Soon, she, some colleagues and local police officers were hauling the surviving relics to a truck as men fired automatic weapons nearby.
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