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ARCHAEOLOGY AND ALEXANDRIA
In the last couple of decades Alexandria has been the focus of a major under water archaeology recovery effort. Visitors to Alexandria are often struck by how little the ancient city remains and archaeologists have often given it a short shift preferring to dig in the older sediments around the pyramids and Luxor or the classical cities in Greece. In 1890 an English archaeologist cautioned, “There is nothing to hope for in Alexandria. You classical archaeologists, who have found so much in Greece or Asia Minor, forget this city.” Interest in the city has risen however as it has been discovered that much the ancient city lies in the harbor accessible to anyone with scuba certification and the guts to brave the murky water. [Source: Andrew Lawler, Smithsonian magazine, April 2007]
The edge Alexandria harbor is pretty much a smooth curved line with few indentations but ancient Alexandria harbor was very different. It was heavily indented, and on the indentations were things like the Palace of Cleopatra and the Pharos Lighthouse, one of the Seven Wonders of the World. It is the areas around indentations that archaeologists have been devoting much of their attention. In the city itself, archaeologists have found things such as the remains of the world’s oldest university complex under the downtown area and a 3rd century B.C. necropolis, dating back to around the time the city was founded by Alexander the Great, now covered by a highway. An indication of how much has yet to be discovered occurred in the 1990s when the city underwent major development and construction trucks hauled away old columns and ceramics and dumped them in Lake Mariout.
Over the centuries the ancient areas of Alexandria have become submerged as a result of earthquakes, tsunamis and slow subsidence. Efforts to slow the sinking—shoring up foundations of buildings and wharves—only made the situation worse: the extra weight caused them to sink further. Particularly damaging was a tsunami in A.D. 365 that caused the sea to empty out the harbor, leaving ships grounded and fish flopping on the seabed, before a surge of water poured in, swamping and carrying away much of the city and killing perhaps 50,000 people. After that there was a wave of seismic activity. This and rising sea levels markedly changed the Egyptian coast. Other Egyptian cities— Heracleion, Canopus and Menouths — vanished completely.
See Separate Article: ANCIENT ALEXANDRIA: HISTORY, LIBRARY, SEVEN WONDERS europe.factsanddetails.com
Underwater Discoveries Off Alexandria
Among the archaeologists that have been active in Alexandria are the Frenchman Jean-Yves Empereur of the Center of Alexandrian Studies. He is credited with launching the rediscovery effort in Alexandria in the early 1990s when he took a swim near the 15th century fort of Qait Bey, near where the Pharos lighthouse used to stand in an area that had been closed of by the military for security reason. While swimming there he saw large building stones and shapes that looked like statues and columns. He saw so much he said it made him dizzy.
When he emerged he watched construction crews drop 20-ton concrete blocks into the water where he had just been swimming to shore up the breakwater there and decided something had to be done. He then told authorities what he saw and got the government to stop dumping blocks into the sea and won permission to survey the area. His team then discovered Corinthian columns more than two meters hick, markings dating back to the time of the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II and huge stone sphinxes and huge pharaoh-like statues of Ptolemy I and his wife. As of 2007, Empereur’s team has photographed more than 3,000 pieces from the sea floor, including 20 sphinxes and five obelisks and many columns, most of which still remain in the water.
Underwater finds at Alexandria included: columns with the cartouche of Ramses II — who from 1279 to 1213 B.C., nine centuries before Alexandria was founded — and 25 sphinxes made of calcite or red or gray granite. One colossal male statue was made from Aswan granite. From the base of the neck to the thigh measured 13½ feet. It is believed to be a Greek rule in an Egyptian costume.
In 1895, Oxford historians retrieved 50,000 papyri from what appeared to be a town dump in Oxyrhybcnus, a Greek settlements with 35,000 people that prospered on a Nile tributary around 300 B.C., and shipped them to England in 800 containers. The documents included deeds, wedding announcements, census returns, instructions on building cisterns, a Sophocles play and poems.
Heracleion
Heracleion was a busy port at the mouth of the Nile near Alexandria mentioned in Greek myths as a place where Helen of Troy and Paris went to escape the wrath of Helen’s husband Menelaus. Sometime in the 1st century B.C. it was a struck by a catastrophic earthquake that leveled most of the buildings, swamped ships in the harbor, killed many of the residents and forced survivors to flee so quickly they left many of their possessions behind. Another earthquake in the A.D. 9th century dropped the city in the sea. In the centuries that followed it was covered by silt and 30 feet of water.
Candida Moss wrote in the Daily Beast: Before its discovery, Heracleion (which was also known in the ancient world by its Egyptian name, Thonis) was almost the stuff of mythology. Though it is now buried several miles off the coast, Thonis-Heracleion was once a thriving port city. If you were bringing goods into Egypt, this is where your items would be taxed and inspected. The focal point of the city was a huge temple dedicated to the god Amun-Gereb, around which a network of canals snaked and flowed. In between them small islands housed residences, religious sites, and commercial buildings, almost like an ancient Venice. [Source:Candida Moss, Daily Beast, August 04, 2019]
By the fifth century, Heracleion was no more, its role as Egypt’s main port having been assumed by Alexandria in the second century. According to written records, a steady succession of earthquakes, perhaps as many as 23, struck North Africa between A.D. 323-1303. The most severe occurred in A.D. 365.The coastline fell and the cluster of cities that lay in the Canopic branch of the Nile vanished into the Mediterranean.
Discovery of Heracleion?
In the early 2000s, French marine archaeologist Frank Goddio said he found Heracleion and discovered remains of the Great Temple of , three pink granite colossal statues of a pharaoh, his queen and the god Hapi, a black granite stele covered with Egyptian writing and containing the word Heracleion on it, the remains of 10 ships and thousands of artifacts, including jewelry, coins, vases, and personal items.
Candida Moss wrote in the Daily Beast: In 1933 British RAF Group-Captain Cull was flying his plane over Aboukir, a Royal Air Force base east of Alexandria in Egypt, when he glimpsed something in the water below him. From his vantage point, Cull could make out the outlines of structures beneath the water. Unbeknownst to him, Cull had located Heracleion, an important ancient Egyptian city that had lain hidden beneath the water for nearly 1500 years. [Source: Candida Moss, Daily Beast, August 4, 2019]
Even before Cull flew over Heracleion, there had been rumors of underwater ruins for over a century. In 1866 Mahmoud Bey El-Falaki, the official astronomer to the Viceroy of Egypt, had published a map that located the nearby ancient town of the Canopus on the edge of the coastline. But it took nearly 70 years to identify and excavate the area. It was only in 1996, when a team of Egyptian and European archaeologists, working under the leadership of Franck Goddio, founder of the Institut Européen d’Archéologie Sous-Marine, began to truly explore the uncharted waters of the ancient port. It took years to locate Heracleion itself: the team had to start from scratch surveying the seabed, taking soil samples, and collecting geophysical information in an effort to locate archaeological remains.
The time and effort paid off. During an underwater expedition in 2000, divers saw a large stone head emerge from the murky dark waters. It was the head of the god Hapi, the personification of the Nile’s annual flood. Speaking to Archaeology. org in 2000, Goddio described the city of Heracleion as “an intact city, frozen in time. ” It was almost like a sub-marine Pompeii.
Over several months in 2019 divers at Heracleion discovered what can only be described as a treasure trove of artifacts from the site. Among the recent discoveries are gold jewelry, coins, and a missing piece of a large ceremonial boat that, when complete, measured 43 feet in length and 16 feet across. According to Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities, they also discovered two previously unearthed temples: the first was large and included stone columns while the second, smaller temple was crumbling and buried beneath 3 feet of sediment. Goddio and his team discovered the artifacts by using sophisticated underwater scanning tools that can locate and produce images of items buried under the seabed. As of 2019, the excavation has also uncovered 700 anchors, 64 ships, numerous other gold coins, tiny sarcophagi used for the animals that were sacrificed to Amun-Gereb, a number of colossal statues like that of Hapi, and the temple of Amun-Gereb itself.
Many of the coins found at Heracleion date to the time of King Ptolemy II, who ruled Egypt from 283 to 246 B.C. . Ptolemy II’s father had been a companion and bodyguard of Alexander the Great and he participated in Alexander’s military campaigns in Afghanistan and India. Some have even claimed that Ptolemy I was Alexander’s half-brother. After Alexander’s death in 323 B.C., Ptolemy became the governor of Egypt and he and his successors styled themselves as the new pharaohs in Egypt. When Heracleion was first discovered it was the huge statues of Ptolemy II and his queen (and sister), Arsinoe, that helped draw attention to the site. The statues were so large that the ceiling of the British Museum had to be dismantled before they could be exhibited.
Legends Associated with Heracleion
Candida Moss wrote in the Daily Beast: In Plato’s Critias the fictional city of Atlantis — a rival to ancient Athens — was cursed by the gods, besieged by earthquakes and floods, and disappeared into the ocean. For centuries, people wrote pseudo-histories about the ancient city and its supposed location. According to Stanford professor Dan Edelstein, some of the theories about Atlantis even provided fodder for Nazi mythology. But for all of the interest it generated, Atlantis never actually existed. There were, however, places that suffered its fate — Heracleion
According to legend, this lost metropolis had hosted its namesake,Heracles, and lovers Paris and Helen before they fled to Troy. Cleopatra, Egypt’s most famous queen, had even been crowned in one of the temples there. It is not known exactly which temples were unearthed in 2019 but there are some important candidates that have yet to be discovered. The fifth-century B.C. historian Herodotus writes that the Temple of Heracles was a refuge for runaway slaves. Herodotus notes that if a slave took refuge there and had the “sacred marks” set on them it would not be lawful for the slave’s original owner to claim them.
According to legend, this practice was instrumental in the history of the Trojan war. Herodotus says that when Paris and Helen arrived in Heracleion, Paris’s attendants became supplicants at the temple. They revealed the whole story about Paris’s deceit of Menelaus and the abduction of Helen. As a result the warden of the city, Thonis, refused Paris and Helen refuge. They would continue their journey to Paris’s hometown of Troy and the rest, as they say, is history.
Discovery of the Pharos Lighthouse?
In the mid-1990s French archaeologists claimed that found pieces of the 2,200-year-old Pharos Lighthouse, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, and remnants of the lost Palace of Ptolemy in the waters off Alexandria. The finds included two giant red granite blocks, weighing 30 and 45 tons, and the granite torso of a woman that were brought to surface of the sea with balloons. The archaeologists also found statues of sphinxes, bases and capitals of columns, sections of obelisks, inscribed blocks, a statue of the goddess Isis and a section of male torso from a 42-foot statue.
Empereur claims he found the lintel and 13-meter-high doorjams that marked the entrance to the Pharos Lighthouse. Many scientists are skeptical whether the remains are really from the lighthouse. The French archaeologists found no inscriptions that linked the pieces to the Pharos Lighthouse nor evidence of statue which reportedly rested on the top of the lighthouse. Moreover, the lighthouse was reportedly made of marble while the fragments found by the archaeologists were granite (the archaeologists say the marble was a facade that was probably reused on other buildings).
Search for Cleopatra’s Tomb
Chip Brown wrote in National Geographic, In the past few decades archaeologists have finally taken up the mystery of Cleopatra's whereabouts and are searching for her burial place in earnest. Underwater excavations begun in 1992 by French explorer Franck Goddio and his European Institute of Underwater Archaeology have allowed researchers to map out the drowned portions of ancient Alexandria. "My dream is to find a statue of Cleopatra — with a cartouche," says Goddio. So far, however, the underwater work has failed to yield a tomb. The only signs of Cleopatra the divers have encountered are the empty cigarette packs that bear her name, drifting in the water as they work.[Source: Chip Brown, National Geographic, July 2011]
More recently, a desert temple outside Alexandria has become the focus of another search, one that asks whether a monarch of Cleopatra's calculation and foresight might have provided a tomb for herself in a place more spiritually significant than downtown Alexandria — ome sacred spot where her mummified remains could rest undisturbed beside her beloved Antony.
In 2006 at his office in Cairo, Zahi Hawass, then secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, sketched the highlights of an archaeological site where he and a team of scientists and excavators had been digging over the previous year. "We are searching for the tomb of Cleopatra," he said, excitedly. "Never before has anyone systematically looked for the last queen of Egypt."
See Separate Article: SEARCH FOR CLEOPATRA'S TOMB africame.factsanddetails.com ;
Underwater Temple Filled with Sunken Treasure Found Off Egypt
In 2023, underwater archaeologists exploring a canal off the Mediterranean coast of Egypt said they found a partially collapsed underwater temple filled with treasures. Exploration of the temple, which collapsed sometime during the mid-second century B.C. and was built for the ancient Egyptian god Amun, revealed of "treasures and secrets," including silver ritual instruments, gold jewelry and alabaster containers. [Source: Live Science, December 26, 2023]
Radina Gigova of CNN wrote: An underwater archaeological team, led by French marine archaeologist Franck Goddio, has made further discoveries at the site of a temple to god Amun in the ancient port city of Thonis-Heracleion in the Bay of Aboukir, the institute said. The team investigated the city’s south canal, where huge blocks of stone from the ancient temple collapsed “during a cataclysmic event dated to the mid-second century B.C.,” the institute said. [Source: Radina Gigova, CNN, September 20, 2023]
The temple to god Amun was where pharaohs came “to receive the titles of their power as universal kings from the supreme god of the ancient Egyptian pantheon,” it said. “Precious objects belonging to the temple treasury have been unearthed, such as silver ritual instruments, gold jewelry and fragile alabaster containers for perfumes or unguents,” IEASM said. “They bear witness to the wealth of this sanctuary and the piety of the former inhabitants of the port city. ”
The archaeological excavations, conducted jointly by Goddio’s team and the Department of Underwater Archaeology of the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities of Egypt, revealed underground structures “supported by very well-preserved wooden posts and beams dating from the 5th century B.C.,” the institute said. “It is extremely moving to discover such delicate objects, which survived intact despite the violence and magnitude of the cataclysm,” said Goddio, who is president of IEASM and director of excavations. The discoveries were made possible thanks to the development and use of new geophysical prospecting technologies that can detect cavities and objects “buried under layers of clay several meters thick,” the institute said.
East of the Amun temple, a Greek sanctuary devoted to Aphrodite was discovered containing bronze and ceramic objects. “This illustrates that Greeks who were allowed to trade and settle in the city during the time of the Pharaohs of the Saïte dynasty (664 — 525 B.C.) had their sanctuaries to their own gods,” the institute said. The discoveries of Greek weapons also reveal the presence of Greek mercenaries in the area, IEASM said. “They were defending the access to the Kingdom at the mouth of the Canopic Branch of the Nile. This branch was the largest and the best navigable one in antiquity. ”
The remains of Thonis-Heracleion are now located under the sea, 7 kilometers (4. 3 miles) from the present coast of Egypt, IEASM said. The city was for centuries Egypt’s largest port on the Mediterranean before the founding of Alexandria by Alexander the Great in 331 B.C. “Rising sea levels and earthquakes followed by tidal waves triggering land liquefaction events, caused a 110 square kilometer portion of the Nile delta to totally disappear under the sea, taking with it the city of Thonis-Heracleion,” the institute said. The city was discovered by the IEASM in 2000.
Discovery of the 'Lost City' of Tanis — Featured in an Indiana Jones Movie
Brian Handwerk wrote in National Geographic History: The treasures found in the "lost city" of Tanis rival those of King Tut's. Yet for more than six decades the riches from its rulers' tombs have remained largely unknown. Many who know of Tanis at all remember the city as portrayed in the Indiana Jones movie Raiders of the Lost Ark. In the famous film the city was buried by a catastrophic ancient sandstorm and rediscovered by Nazis searching for the Ark of the Covenant. In reality, the Ark was never hidden in Tanis, the sandstorm didn't happen, and the Nazis never battled Indiana Jones in the site's ruins. But the true tale of Tanis is also fit for the silver screen. [Source Brian Handwerk, National Geographic History]
It was known that the ancient city was hidden somewhere in the area, but not where. "People kept trying to identify different places with it," said Salima Ikram, a professor of Egyptology at American University in Cairo and a National Geographic Society grantee. "It's not like the Valley of the Kings, where everyone knew they'd been burying [pharaohs] for ten generations or so," said David Silverman, an Egyptologist at the University of Pennsylvania.
In 1939 a French archaeologist named Pierre Montet brought Tanis into the 20th century after nearly a dozen years of excavations. He unearthed a royal tomb complex that included three intact and undisturbed burial chambers—a rare and marvelous find. The tombs held dazzling funereal treasures such as golden masks, coffins of silver, and elaborate sarcophagi. Other precious items included bracelets, necklaces, pendants, tableware, and amulets.
Statues, vases, and jars also filled the tombs, all part of an array that still bears witness, after thousands of years, to the power and wealth of Tanis's rulers. One of the kings, Sheshonq II, was unknown before Montet discovered his burial chamber. But he wore elaborate jewelry that once adorned the more famous Sheshonq I, who is mentioned in the Bible. "That shows you that [the kings of Tanis] were very important at least during that time period," Silverman said of the biblical reference.
Tanis was found largely as it was abandoned, so the city is home to many archaeological treasures in addition to the tombs. Temples, including a Temple of Amun and a Temple of Horus, have been found. Even urban districts of the ancient city remain, and the site continues to host archaeological expeditions in search of more finds.
With so much to discover, how did Montet succeed so spectacularly where others had failed? "It takes somebody who is really persevering to conquer the odds," Silverman said. "Pierre Montet worked very, very hard to finally discover what is referred to in the Bible—what was known from contemporary history but had been lost." But if Montet's achievements were extraordinary, his timing was atrocious. His discovery of Tanis was completely overshadowed by the nearly simultaneous eruption of World War II. Even today, few know the tale of the treasures Montet discovered. And though the objects reside in Cairo's Egyptian Museum, they draw far fewer visitors than their more famous counterparts. "Had the Second World War not intervened, the royal burials of Tanis would have been as well, if not better, known that the tomb of Tutankhamun," Ikram notes.
See Separate Article: THIRD INTERMEDIATE PERIOD (1070–712 B.C.) OF ANCIENT EGYPT africame.factsanddetails.com
Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons except last picture from the Iklaina Archaeology Project
Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Greece sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Hellenistic World sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; BBC Ancient Greeks bbc.co.uk/history/; Canadian Museum of History, Perseus Project - Tufts University; perseus.tufts.edu ; MIT Classics Online classics.mit.edu ; Gutenberg.org, Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Live Science, Discover magazine, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, Encyclopædia Britannica, "The Discoverers" and "The Creators" by Daniel Boorstin. "Greek and Roman Life" by Ian Jenkins from the British Museum, Wikipedia, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP and various books and other publications.
Last updated September 2024