Back in the day, I was a huge fan of playing Tomb Raider on the family Gateway Desktop (…you know, the one that came in a cow-printed box) and the Brendan Fraser masterpiece, The Mummy. Maybe it’s from watching all the Indiana Jones movies at a young age with my dad, but there’s something AWESOME about the idea of being a globe-trotting archaeologist/antiquities expert with a taste for danger. I’ve always romanticized it.
Those adventures are largely the stuff fiction. But in Egypt an illegal, black market antiquities market is booming. According to VICE, an estimated $3 billion dollars worth of artifacts have been stolen from across the country since Arab Spring in 2011. On this Friday’s upcoming episode of VICE on HBO, the documentary series will explore the dynamics of this crazy market.
But spoiler alert: There is no Lara Croft. You’ll have to wait for The Rise of Tomb Raider this December to raid lost ancient cities on your Xbox, Bros.
The quest airs at 11PM this upcoming Friday on HBO.