‘Lost golden city’ found in Egypt reveals the lives of ancient pharaohs

Archaeologists have found a “Lost Golden City” that’s been buried under the ancient Egyptian capital of Luxor for the past 3,000 years, the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities announced Thursday.

The city, historically known as “The Rise of Aten,” was founded by Amenhotep III (ruled 1391-1353 BCE), the grandfather of Tutankhamun, or King Tut. People continued to use the “Golden City” during Amenhotep III’s co-regency with his son, Amenhotep IV (who later changed his name to Akhenaten), as well as during the rule of Tut and the pharaoh who followed him, known as Ay.

Despite the city’s rich history – historical documents report that it was home to King Amenhotep III’s three royal palaces and was the largest administrative and industrial settlement in Luxor at that time – its remains eluded archaeologists until now.

“Many foreign missions searched for this city and never found it,” Zahi Hawass, the archaeologist who led the Golden City’s excavation and the former minister of state for antiquities affairs, said in a translated statement. His team began the search in 2020 with the hopes of finding King Tut’s mortuary temple. They chose to look in this region “because the temples of both Horemheb and Ay were found in this area,” Hawass said.

They were taken aback when they began uncovering mud bricks everywhere they dug. The team soon realized that they had unearthed a large city that was in relatively good shape.

“The city’s streets are flanked by houses,” some with walls up to 10 feet (3 meters) high, Hawass said. These houses had rooms that were filled with knickknacks and tools that ancient Egyptians used in daily life.

“The discovery of this lost city is the second most important archaeological discovery since the tomb of Tutankhamun,” which occurred in 1922, Betsy Brian, a professor of Egyptology at John Hopkins University, said in the statement.

“The discovery of the Lost City not only will give us a rare glimpse into the life of the ancient Egyptians at the time when the empire was at [its] wealthiest but will help us shed light on one of history’s greatest [mysteries]: Why did Akhenaten and [Queen] Nefertiti decide to move to Amarna?”

(A few years after Akhenaten started his reign in the early 1350s BCE, the Golden City was abandoned and Egypt’s capital was moved to Amarna).

Once the team realized they had discovered the Lost City, they set about dating it.

To do this, they looked for ancient objects bearing the seal of Amenhotep III’s cartouche, an oval filled with his royal name in hieroglyphics. The team found this cartouche all over the place, including on wine vessels, rings, scarabs, coloured pottery, and mud bricks, which confirmed that the city was active during the reign of Amenhotep III, who was the ninth king of the 18th dynasty.

After seven months of excavation, the archaeologists uncovered several neighbourhoods. In the southern part of the city, the team also discovered the remains of a bakery that had a food preparation and cooking area filled with ovens and ceramic storage containers. The kitchen is large, so it likely catered to a large clientele, according to the statement.

In another, still partially covered area of the excavation, archaeologists found an administrative and residential district that had larger, neatly arranged units. A zigzag fence – an architectural design used toward the end of the 18th Dynasty – walled off the area, allowing only one access point that led to the residential areas and internal corridors.

This single entrance likely served as a security measure, giving ancient Egyptians control over who entered and left this area, according to the statement. In another area, archaeologists found a production area for mud bricks, which were used to build temples and annexes. These bricks, the team noted, had been sealed with the cartouche of King Amenhotep III.

The team also found dozens of casting moulds that were used to make amulets and decorative items – evidence that the city had a bustling production line that made decorations for temples and tombs.

Throughout the city, the archaeologists found tools related to industrial work, including spinning and weaving. They also unearthed metal and glass-making slag, but they haven’t yet found the workshop that made these materials. The archaeologists also found several burials: two unusual burials of a cow or bull, and a remarkable burial of a person whose arms were outstretched to the side and had a rope wrapped around the knees.

The researchers are still analyzing these burials, and hope to determine the circumstances and meaning behind them.

More recently, the team found a vessel holding about 22 pounds (10 kilograms) of dried or boiled meat. This vessel is inscribed with an inscription that reads: Year 37, dressed meat for the third Heb Sed festival from the slaughterhouse of the stockyard of Kha made by the butcher luwy.

“This valuable information not only gives us the names of two people that lived and worked in the city but confirmed that the city was active and the time of King Amenhotep III’s co-regency with his son Akhenaten,” the archaeologists said in the statement.

Moreover, the team found a mud seal that says “gm pa Aton” – a phrase that can be translated into “the domain of the dazzling Aten” – the name of a temple at Karnak built by King Akhenaten.

According to historical documents, one year after this pot was crafted, the capital was moved to Amarna. Akhenaten, who is known for mandating that his people worship just one deity — the sun god Aten – called for this move.

But Egyptologists still wonder why he moved the capital and if the Golden City was truly abandoned at that time. It’s also a mystery whether the city was repopulated when King Tut returned to Thebes and reopened it as a religious center, according to the statement.

Further excavations may reveal the city’s tumultuous history. And there’s still a lot to excavate. “We can reveal that the city extends to the west, all the way to the famous Deir el-Medina” – an ancient worker’s village inhabited by the crafters and artisans who built the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings and Valley of the Queens, Hawass said.

Furthermore, in the north, archaeologists have found a large cemetery that has yet to be fully excavated. So far, the team has found a group of rock-cut tombs that can be reached only through stairs carved into the rock – a feature that is also seen at the Valley of the Kings and Valley of the Nobles.

In the coming months, archaeologists plan to excavate these tombs to learn more about the people and treasures buried there.

Tunnel Discovered at Egypt’s Ancient City of Taposiris Magna

Archaeologists in Egypt have discovered a vast tunnel beneath a temple in the ancient city of Taposiris Magna, west of Alexandria. 

The 4,281-foot-long (1,305 meters) tunnel, which brought water to thousands of people in its heyday, was discovered by an Egyptian-Dominican Republic archaeological team, the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said in a statement. 

Ancient Egyptian builders constructed the  6.6-foot-high (2 m) tunnel at a depth of about 65 feet (20 m) beneath the ground, Kathleen Martínez, a Dominican archaeologist and director of the team that discovered the tunnel, told Live Science in an email. “[It] is an exact replica of Eupalinos Tunnel in Greece, which is considered as one of the most important engineering achievements of antiquity,” Martinez said.

The Eupalinos tunnel, in Samos, a Greek island in the eastern Aegean Sea, also carried water. 

The archaeology of the Taposiris Magna temple is complex.

Parts of it are submerged under water and the temple has been hit by numerous earthquakes over the history of its existence, causing extensive damage. The tunnel at Taposiris Magna dates to the Ptolemaic period (304 B.C. to  30 B.C.), a time when Egypt was ruled by a dynasty of kings descended from one of Alexander the Great’s generals. 

Finds within the tunnel included two alabaster heads: one of which likely depicts a king, and the other represents another high-ranking person, Martinez said.

Their exact identities are unknown. Coins and the remains of statues of Egyptian deities were also found in the tunnel, Martinez said. 

At the time the tunnel was built, Taposiris Magna had a population of between 15,000 and 20,000 people, Martinez said.

The tunnel was built beneath a temple that honoured Osiris, an ancient Egyptian god of the underworld, and Isis, an Egyptian goddess who was Osiris’s wife. 

Previous work in the temple uncovered a hoard of coins minted with the face of Cleopatra VII. Excavations at Taposiris Magna and analysis of artefacts from the site are ongoing. 

2,200-Year-Old Fruit Baskets Found in the Underwater City of Heracleion

Fruit baskets — with fruit still inside — that are more than 2,200 years old were discovered recently in the ruins of Thonis-Heracleion, the ancient lost city near Alexandria, Egypt.

The city, once the nexus of Mediterranean trade routes in the Hellenistic era, sank beneath the waves in the second century BC as the result of earthquakes and tidal waves that liquified the ground underneath it.

Imposing temples, such as the one dedicated to Amon, or Herakles, fell into the water and lay untouched there until the year 2000 when French diver Franck Goddio discovered them and brought many of them to the surface.

When the stones fell they trapped boats and cargo under them, preserving them in the clay of the sea bottom. This ensured that spectacular discoveries, such as Goddio’s recent find of a Greek/Egyptian wooden ship, would be protected from the ravages of time.

But no one expected to discover an intact basket — complete with the fruit it held — almost 2200 years later.

The wooden vessel, along with hundreds of ancient ceramic vases and amphorae — some of them meant for use in burials — as well as bronze treasures have been recently discovered in the waters containing the remains of the legendary city of Thonis-Heracleion off the coast of Alexandria, Egypt.

The ship had been moored at a wharf in the canal that flowed along the south face of the temple when the disaster occurred. The fallen blocks actually protected this ancient Greek shipwreck by pinning it to the bottom of the deep canal, which was then filled with clay and the debris of the sanctuary. The shipwreck lies under 5 meters (15 feet) of hard clay, mingled with the remains of the temple.

Fruit basket from Heracleion only the latest spectacular finds at the site of the lost city.

Almost miraculously, the ancient Greek ship was only detected through the use of a cutting-edge sonar prototype called a “sub-bottom profiler.”

“The finds of fast galleys from this period remain extremely rare”, explains Goddio, “the only other example to date being the Punic Marsala Ship from 235 BC.

The remains of the city sank even further into the clay bottom of the sea in the eighth century AD, following further natural disasters, including additional earthquakes and tidal waves. The city served as Egypt’s largest port on the Mediterranean Sea even before Alexander the Great founded Alexandria in the year 331 BC, with the intention of that city becoming his capital.

One of the greatest archaeological finds of recent times was made in the years 1999 and 2000, when Goddio discovered and brought to the surface the monuments of the ancient city, which had been lying for more than two thousand years in only 30-odd feet of water. Many of the massive statues belonging to the Temple of Amon/Herakles were in nearly perfect condition; some of the treasures he brought to the surface were shown in an exhibition at London’s British Museum in 2016.

Goddio, long used to finding hoards of archaeological treasures in the lost city of Heracleion, expressed complete amazement at his latest find, telling the Guardian that the fruit baskets found most recently were “incredible”, since they had been untouched for more than 2,000 years.

In the most stunning discovery of all, the baskets were still full of doum, the fruit of an African palm tree that was sacred to ancient Egyptians. Additionally, there were grape seeds as well, which can be used for pressing to make oil.

“Nothing was disturbed,” he told reporters. “It was very striking to see baskets of fruits.”

The basket may have a connection to funeral rites. Goddio told reporters that they had been placed inside an underground room, contributing to the likelihood that they would be preserved. The fruit basket was inside the same area where the funerary pottery was discovered, on a tumulus, or a mound that had been constructed over graves. The tumulus measured approximately 60 meters long by 8 meters wide (197 feet by 26.24 feet)

These findings date back two centuries before the destruction of the city, to the early fourth century BC, at the time of the greatest flourishing of the city, when Greek merchants and other Greek people lived in Thonis-Heracleion.

New finds part of tumulus containing Greek pottery, “exquisite” gold amulet

The Greek people had been allowed to settle in the area during the late Pharaonic period, as they were known for their skills as merchants and traders and that area soon controlled the entrance to Egypt at the mouth of the Canopic branch of the Nile. The Greeks were even allowed to construct their own religious temples, including that dedicated to the god Amun, or Hercules.

Goddio explained to interviewers that the tumulus “is a kind of island surrounded by channels. In those channels, we found an unbelievable amount of deposits made of bronze, including a lot of statuettes of Osiris (the ancient Egyptian fertility god).

“On that island, (was) something totally different. We found hundreds of deposits made of ceramic. One above the other. These are imported ceramic, red-on-black figures from the Attic period.”

Not only the spectacular Attic vases and amphorae but mirrors and quantities of statuettes were found in the tumulus as well.

Perhaps most fascinatingly, Goddio also discovered extensive evidence of burning, which he believes suggests that there had been a “spectacular” ceremony that in effect barred anyone from entering the particular site ever again — until now.

Strangely, the tumulus appears to have been sealed for hundreds of years, Goddio stated, since none of the artifacts he found were from later than the early fourth century BC — despite the fact that the city thrived for several hundred years after that time, when it finally sunk under the waves.

Goddio stated “There’s something very strange here. That site has been used maybe one time, never touched before, never touched after, for a reason that we cannot understand for the time being. It’s a big mystery.”

The underwater archaeologist says that he hopes to find answers to this conundrum in some of the treasures themselves. His newest finds include other carbon-based objects which rarely survive more than a few hundred years underwater, including the well-preserved remains of a wooden sofa for banquets.

In addition, Goddio said, there was also a large Attic vase and a gold amulet which he said was of “exquisite quality.”

The European Institute for Underwater Archaeology, or IEASM, is led by Goddio. The Institute works in close cooperation with Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities and has the support of the Hilti Foundation, which makes historic finds like these possible.

Goddio’s newest discoveries will be studied and preserved before being put on display in museums so the public can view them. Despite the many jaw-dropping discoveries already made at the site over the past 20 years, Goddio says that there is far more in store. So far, he says, only about 3% of the sunken city has been explored so far.

Archaeologists have discovered the ruins of what may be one of the four lost Ancient Egyptian “Sun Temples”

A Polish and Italian archaeological mission, while conducting an excavation in the Abusir necropolis near Saqqara in Egypt, unearthed the remains of a mud-brick building believed to be one of the lost “sun temples” of ancient Egypt’s Fifth Dynasty.

The discovery hints that the remains might belong to one of the lost four solar temples from Dynasty 5, known only in historical sources but yet to have been found thus far.

According to a statement released by the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities and Tourism on Saturday, the building was discovered beneath the King Nyuserre temple in the Abusir area, south of Cairo.

“Preliminary studies indicate that the new discovery may be one of the four lost sun temples that date back to the Fifth Dynasty,” the ministry statement said.

These temples are thought to date back to the Fifth Dynasty (2465 to 2323 BC).

Abusir is an Old Kingdom necropolis that functioned as one of the principal cemeteries for Memphis, the Ancient Egyptian capital. The site comprises of 14 royal pyramids, mastaba, and tombs dating from the early 25th century BC to the mid-24th century BC.

In a context layer that pre-dates the temple, the team found evidence of a mud-brick building and quartz blocks, that according to officials from the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, could be the remains of one of the four lost sun temples.

The Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities and Tourism said in a statement: “The building is accessible through an entrance built in the limestone rock, leading to an area with a paved floor and containing huge blocks of quartz.”

Although it is believed that six sun temples were constructed, only two have been found thus far.

Sun temples were constructed to honour the Ancient Egyptian god Ra, the god of the sun, order, kings, and the sky.

The temples of the Fifth Dynasty usually consisted of three parts: a considerably smaller entry structure, and a causeway leading to the main temple building at a higher height.

Excavations also uncovered ceramic vessels, beer pots, and red-rimmed containers, which were likely used in temple rituals and ceremonies.

The sun temples may have all been built around Abu Gharab.

Dominican mission discovers 1,305-meter Greco-Roman ancient rock-cut tunnel in Alexandria

A Greco-Roman tunnel measuring 1,305 meters in length was discovered beneath Tapuziris Magna, an Ancient Egyptian city, by an Egyptian-Dominican archaeological mission from the University of Santo Domingo.

The tunnel was carved into the rock and is 1,305 m long, 2 meters high and 13 meters underground, according to a statement released on Thursday by the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

The team, led by archaeologist Kathleen Martinez, found the heads of two Ptolemaic-era alabaster statues near the temple, one of which was likely a sphinx representation.

Dr. Kathleen Martins, head of the mission, explained that initial studies indicate that the architectural design of the uncovered tunnel is very similar to the Yubilinus tunnel project in Greece, but is longer, describing it as an engineering miracle.

She added by saying that several pottery pots and ceramic jars, as well as a rectangular block of limestone, were discovered beneath the mud and sand during the excavations and archaeological survey of the tunnel.

The mission is attempting to uncover a portion of the Temple of Taposiris Magna’s foundations that have been revealed by numerous pieces of archaeological evidence.

According to scientific sources, at least 23 earthquakes struck the Egyptian coast between 320 AD and 1303 AD, causing a portion of the temple of Taposiris Magna to collapse and sink beneath the waves.

It is worth noting that the Egyptian- Dominican mission was able to find many important artefacts inside the temple during previous excavation seasons, including coins bearing the images and names of Queen Cleopatra IIV and Alexander the Great, as well as several headless statues and statues of the goddess Isis, as well as various inscriptions and busts of various shapes and sizes.

The mission also discovered a network of tunnels stretching from King Marriott Lake to the Mediterranean, 16 burials inside rock-cut tombs commonly used in the Greek and Roman periods, and several mummies highlighting the features of the mummification process during the Greek and Roman periods.

Shrine With Never-Before-Seen Ritual Discovered In Egyptian Temple

Archaeologists have discovered a shrine in a temple in Egypt that describes a ritual never seen before. It comes from the religious complex of the ancient seaport of Berenike, a city that dates back to the third century BCE.

The complex itself is a lot more modern having been built over 700 years later, during the decline and final century of the Western Roman Empire.

The newly found place of worship has been named the “Falcon Shrine” by researchers due to the material found that suggests a ritual function associated with a falcon cult, and dates from the fourth to sixth centuries CE.

During this time, the city was partially occupied by the Blemmyes, a nomadic group of people from the Nubian region who had spread to many other areas of Egypt’s Eastern desert.

This finding gives new insight into the religious practices of the Blemmyes and how they merged them with the Egyptian belief system. The most incredible find, giving the shrine its name, was the discovery of 15 falcons – most of them headless – buried within the temple.

The burial of mummified falcons has been found in other temples but usually only one on its own. Finding multiple birds together with eggs is a unique discovery.

“The material findings are particularly remarkable and include offerings such as harpoons, cube-shaped statues, and a stele with indications related to religious activities,” Professor Joan Oller Guzmán, the Sikait Project research team director said in a statement.

Among the material findings, the stele is particularly intriguing. The stele is believed to depict a procession of gods and bears an inscription that reads: “It is improper to boil a head in here.”

A prohibition such as this in a religious temple has not been seen before in Berenike and implies that performing that ritual in the temple was a profane activity. It was likely performed elsewhere.

According to Professor Oller, “all of these elements point to intense ritual activities combining Egyptian traditions with contributions from the Blemmyes, sustained by a theological base possibly related to the worshipping of the god Khonsu.

The discoveries expand our knowledge of these semi-nomad people, the Blemmyes, living in the Eastern desert during the decline of the Roman Empire.”

The team’s working hypothesis is that this shrine is older and had a different use before the Blemmyes arrived and repurposed it for their religious ceremonies.

As Egyptian religious ceremonies continued to take place at the same time in Berenike, it is possible that these semi-nomadic people included Egyptian traditions in their practices, adding new rituals.

The work was published in the American Journal of Archaeology.

Shrine discovered with rituals never seen to take place before in an Egyptian temple

Researchers from the Sikait Project, directed by UAB Professor Joan Oller Guzmán, recently published new findings from the excavations of the Berenike site, a Greco-Roman seaport in the Egyptian Eastern desert. The study results, published in the American Journal of Archaeology, describe the excavation of a religious complex from the Late Roman Period (between the fourth and sixth centuries) with unprecedented discoveries linked to the presence of the Blemmyes, a nomadic people.

The Sikait Project research team, directed by Professor Joan Oller Guzmán from the Department of Antiquity and Middle Age Studies at the UAB, with financial support from the Fundación PALARQ and the necessary permits from the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities, recently published in the American Journal of Archeology the results obtained from the January 2019 excavation season at the ancient seaport of Berenike, located in Egypt’s Eastern desert.

The paper describes the archaeological dig of a religious complex from the Late Roman Period (4th to 6th centuries CE) named the “Falcon Shrine” by researchers and located within the Northern Complex, one of the most important buildings of the city of Berenike at that time.

The site, which was excavated by the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology and the University of Delaware, was a Red Sea harbour founded by Ptolomy II Philadelphus (3rd century BCE) and continued to operate into the Roman and Byzantine periods when it was turned into the main point of entrance for commerce coming from Cape Horn, Arabia and India.

Within this chronological period, one of the phases yielding the newest discoveries was the one corresponding to the Late Roman Period, from the fourth to sixth centuries CE, a period in which the city seemed to be partially occupied and controlled by the Blemmyes, a nomadic group of people from the Nubian region who at that moment were expanding their domains throughout the greater part of Egypt’s Eastern desert.

In this sense, the Northern Complex is fundamental in providing clear evidence of a link with the Blemmyes people, thanks to the discovery of inscriptions to some of their kings or the aforementioned Falcon Shrine.

Researchers were able to identify a small traditional Egyptian temple, which after the 4th century was adapted by the Blemmyes to their own belief system.

“The material findings are particularly remarkable and include offerings such as harpoons, cube-shaped statues, and a stele with indications related to religious activities, which was chosen for the cover of the journal’s current issue”, highlights UAB researcher Joan Oller.

The most remarkable consecrated element found was the arrangement of up to 15 falcons within the shrine, most of them headless.

Although burials of falcons for religious purposes had already been observed in the Nile Valley, as had the worshipping of individual birds of this species, this is the first time researchers discovered falcons buried within a temple, and accompanied by eggs, something completely unprecedented. In other sites, researchers had found mummified headless falcons, but always only individual specimens, never in groups as in the case of Berenike.

The stele contains a curious inscription, reading: “It is improper to boil a head in here”, which far from being a dedication or sign of gratitude as normally corresponds to an inscription, is a message forbidding all those who enter from boiling the heads of the animals inside the temple, considered to be a profane activity.  

According to Joan Oller, “all of these elements point to intense ritual activities combining Egyptian traditions with contributions from the Blemmyes, sustained by a theological base possibly related to the worshipping of the god Khonsu”. He goes on to say, “The discoveries expand our knowledge of these semi-nomad people, the Blemmyes, living in the Eastern desert during the decline of the Roman Empire”.