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Ancient Egypt Magazine Issue Two - July / August 2000
Cities of Pharaonic Times Discovered Under the Sea Claudia Haj Ali reports from
Alexandria It is a ghost town submerged in the sea. Buried under mud are jewels and golden coins, temples and colossal statues rise from the seabed with bronze artefacts scattered throughout. The legendary city Herakleion has been rediscovered thanks to the French underwater archaeologist Franck Goddio, who is still shocked about his discovery: "Herakleion was completely forgotten. No one ever thought it could be a full six kilometres off the coast of Egypt, slumbering at a depth of ten metres". With the discovery of Herakleion in the bay of Aboukir, north of Alexandria, the 53 year old Frenchman made worldwide headlines once again. "We knew from the beginning that we were searching for three cities. We had already found Menouthis and Canopus, the sister cities, a couple of years ago. Menouthis was exciting and beautiful, but when we came across Herakleion, it was like a dream."
After lying on the sea bed for centuries, the legs of this massive statue shattered by earthquake are measured by one of Franck Goddio's team. Last year Goddio made international news with the discovery of Napoleon's sunken fleet in Aboukir, which Admiral Nelson of the British fleet had destroyed in 1798. The tall, slender and boyish Frenchman gained fame when he declared he had found the foundations of Cleopatra's (51-30 BC) palace. His high tech expedition sponsored by the Hilti foundation was critically observed by one of the greatest living scientists specialising in Alexandrian studies, Jean-Yves Empereur. Empereur and other notable scientists agreed that Goddio's excavation of Alexandria's harbour was a submerged building in what was likely a royal quarter, but nothing that conclusively connected it with the legendary queen. Goddio's story turned out to be a public relations flop. "If they had found a skirt, they would have called it the skirt of Cleopatra," mocked Empereur. But Goddio deserves a big round of applause for the discovery of Herakleion. "We found an intact city frozen in time," said Goddio. Only the people are now replaced by creatures of the sea. So far there has never been archaeological evidence found to prove the existence of Herakleion, although historians knew of the once flourishing city. Herakleion's construction began in the 7th or 6th century BC, during the waning days of the Pharaohs. In the 6th or 7th century AD it sunk, probably due to major earthquakes, according to Goddio. "We are certain about the time, because our team discovered Byzantine and Islamic coins and jewellery dating back to this epoch." Herodotus, the Greek historian, raved about the Hercules temple in Herakleion during his visit to Egypt in 450 BC. Greek mythology tells us that Menelaos, King of Sparta, rested in Herakleion after recapturing his wife Helen from Paris in Troy. While Strabo described the location and lauded the luxurious lifestyle of the city, Seneca condemned their lax morals. Today, within the sunken ancient city walls of Herakleion, which stretch over 90m in length, one finds remarkably well preserved ruins of temples, houses, ancient streets, sphinxes, huge statues, including a basalt statue of the goddess Isis, as well as coins, jewellery and the port infrastructure. Around two kilometres off the coast lie the foundations of the sister cities Menouthis and Canopus with magnificent statues and temples, dedicated to the goddess Isis and the gods Serapis and Anubis.
The eerily blind gaze of this statue of Serapis, a god combining Greek and Egyptian aspects, gazes up through the water from a city now occupied by sea life Until Alexandria was built in 331 BC, Herakleion
served as a pilgrimage The most remarkable discovery according to Goddio was the large fragment of a black granite tablet called the "Naos of the Decades" "We found an intact Naos which I touched, on which only Pharaohs had laid their hands before". Pharaoh Nectanebo I erected a temple in the 4th century BC at Saft, which was dedicated to Isis, with an inner sanctum, called the Naos of the Decades. The Naos was later transferred to a temple in Canopus. In these later times the Egyptians divided the sky into segments known as decans and recorded movements of the decan stars at night on the Naos in hieroglyphs. They believed that these constellations had a menacing power on humans and animals alike. In 1777 the naturalist Sonnini de Manoncour dug one fragment out of the beach in Aboukir, which is now exhibited at the Louvre in Paris. In 1940 a second part of the Naos was excavated by divers under the direction of Prince Omar Toussom and is currently on display at the Greco-Roman Museum in Alexandria. The piece that Goddio found provides "a text of a kind which was previously unknown," said archaeologist Jean Yoyotte of the Collège de France. Christians destroyed the stone chapel, which was considered an outstanding example of pagan idolatry and scattered the fragments. Zacharias the Rhetorician wrote between 511-518 in his "Life of Severius": "The priest first handed us the idol of Kronos, entirely filled with blood, then all the other idols of demons, then a varied collection of other idols of all kinds, especially dogs, cats, apes, crocodiles and reptiles, because in former times the Egyptians worshipped venerated animals". With advanced underwater technology, that receives both magnetic waves and sound waves down to 100m in depth, Goddio started to map the site of Aboukir two years ago and to produce an underwater electronic map. "While we were doing the job, we found Menouthis and Canopus, which we wanted to introduce to the world press. We were done with the work, but decided to go diving one more time - and one week ahead of the press conference, we found Herakleion".
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