Louis Vico Žabkar (7 December 1914 – 15 September 1994)[1] was an American Egyptologist who published a number of academic works and who participated in the 1960s in the UNESCO campaign to salvage the monuments threatened by the building of the Aswan Dam.
Louis Žabkar was born on the Dalmatian island of Lastovo, which was then part of Italy.
He was born to a Slovenian father, Lieutenant Louis Franz Žabkar, who was stationed on the island, and Italian mother, Maria Carminatti.
He had mastery of German, French, Italian, Serbo-Croatian, ancient Greek and Latin, Egyptian, Coptic and Hebrew.
After teaching in the history department of Loyola University Chicago and serving as Field Egyptologist for the Oriental Institute Expeditions to Egyptian and Sudanese Nubia, he became Field Director of The Oriental Institute Expedition to Semna South (1966–67, 1968) which excavated an ancient Egyptian Middle Kingdom Fortress and one of the largest Meroitic cemeteries.