A ghost city untouched for 2,000 years has been discovered 30 feet under the waters of the Mediterranean, about 3.5 miles off the coast near Alexandria, Egypt, French archeologists said Saturday.
Referred to in ancient texts as either Herakleion or Thonis, the city was a major port at one of the mouths of the Nile until it mysteriously disappeared. New evidence collected by his team indicates that it was destroyed and sunk by a major earthquake, according to underwater archeologist Franck Goddio.
"It is the most exciting find in the history of marine archeology," Gaballa Ali Gaballa, head of the Supreme Council on Antiquities, said Saturday at an Alexandria news conference.
Coins and jewelry scattered in the streets and ruins testify to the opulence of the residents' lifestyle and to the haste with which the city was abandoned.
Herakleion/Thonis lies close to the legendary "Canopic" branch of the Nile, whose location was lost in the mists of history but has now been rediscovered.
"We were absolutely astonished" to find the city and the riverbed, Goddio said.
Closer to shore, his team also uncovered the remains of the city of Menouthis, which was destroyed by an earthquake in the 4th century, was rebuilt and crumbled again and was submerged beneath the sea near the end of the 8th century.
The new findings, combined with the earlier discoveries of Napoleon's fleet and Cleopatra's palace in the same general area, make the Alexandria coast "the richest area of artifacts in the world today," said Ibrahim Darwish, head of the underwater department of Egypt's Supreme Council on Antiquities.
"We are used to finding the remains of a tomb, a church or a mosque, but this time we are finding complete cities--cities that were only heard about from the classical writings," Gaballa said.
It will take years, if not decades, to excavate and explore the two ruined cities, but Goddio's team has already made one very important discovery--a large fragment of a black granite tablet from what is called the Naos of the Decades.
The Naos of the Decades was the inner sanctum of a temple dedicated to Isis, erected by Pharaoh Nectanebo I in the 4th century BC. Hieroglyphics on its interior walls documented the origins of the Egyptian calendar, with its 36 decades--the 10-day periods defined by the appearance and disappearance of significant stars.
