AR CHA EOLOG Y

Archaeologists are bringing Heracleion, an ancient port frozen in time at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, back to life
W ords: M atthew Sym onds Im ages: C hristoph Gerigk

OR CENTURIES THE only physical evidence of the ancient Egyptian city of Heracleion was a handful of mentions in ancient texts. In its heyday, at the end of the era of the pharaohs, it was said to be an incredibly wealthy port, acting as the gateway to Egypt. It was even said to have been visited by Helen of Troy before being lost beneath the Mediterranean Sea around 1,200 years ago. While few scholars doubted that Heracleion once existed, it was far from clear if it would ever be found. But in 2000, it was rediscovered some 6.5km from the modern Egyptian coast. Today, archaeologists are finding tablets, gold coins and huge statues that had been hidden for centuries, and which show how important this port would have been.

Finding this lost city was not easy. The ancient texts placed Heracleion, also known as Thonis, near Alexandria at the mouth of the Nile as it opened into the Mediterranean. But anyone seeking it faced a trail that had long gone cold. Franck Goddio, president o f the Institut Europeen dArcheologie Sous-Marine, was not deterred. With the aid of the French Commission of Atomic Energy, he developed a custom-built nuclear resonance magnetometer to search the seabed off the Egyptian coast. The magnetometer detects objects by the disturbances they create in the seabed's magnetic field, and in 1999 Goddio found something. At Aboukir Bay, on the north coast o f Egypt, there were faults in the clay sediment - a sign of the disaster that destroyed the city. **

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- - ; - AEOLOGY

WHERE WAS HERACLEION?

Its position at the mouth of the Nile brought it wealth
At the time it was founded in the 8th Century BC. Heracleion was located at the mouth of the River Nile. Today it is 6.5km off the Egyptian coast. Heracleions status di.....shed after nearby Alexandria was founded in around 331 BC. More conveniently located to capitalise on trade with the west, this new port city also lay on a natural limestone ridge - a far more stable environment than the Nile silts that doomed Heracleion.

Heracleion and neighbouring Canopus - an ancient Las Vegas infamous during the Roman era for its debauchery - were built on a thin layer of silts capping waterlogged clay. One suggestion is that a tsunami added to the pressure exerted by major buildings, forcing the water out of the clay and bringing a sharp drop in ground level. As the ground level dropped, the cities above were lost. Whatever triggered the collapse, this was a disaster waiting to happen - the unstable substrata that formed the foundations of these cities meant they were doomed from the outset.

HIEROGLYPHIC PROOF
While science had led the exploration team to the lost city, it could not positively identify the site. The only way to prove that this was ancient Heracleion was to send down divers. "In the first year we found part of an inscribed chapel that belonged to the main city temple, says Goddio. "On it was written in hieroglyphics that this temple was dedicated to Amun-Gereb. We know that this was the God worshipped in Heracleion. Finding this proof was an extreme pleasure."

With Heracleion identified, under;, s:?excavation began and the Universit, cf 2 Centre for Maritime Archaeology (OC VA * e invited to study the artefacts being d s : : stb : Overtime, the Oxford team has also fceccr-e involved in the excavations. "It has all the fun of a normal dry-iaad excavation with none of theteo;:_ '~ : spoil," says Dr Damian Robinson, d rs c r:' r the OCMA. "We have to get through = c c 5I r ~ of mobile sand, and we do that using . ' . f f dredge. This tool works by pumping r= r down a hosepipe from a support sftp 4m-long plastic tube. The water is - e rrs : midway along the plastic tube's lengr ~: ~ being ejected out of one end. This r the water creates suction at the c~ r arc r the plastic tube, allowing it to s u o ^ n e s a r c "Visibility is really poor," says R g o nscr "Some days you'll see a few metres. ^ days youll see a few centimetres - =: r in a submerged city covering a r c - " 2' But despite the poor visibility, the tea- - managed to capture some stu g _ ^ r the archaeology on the seabec. '.'an. r re s E photographs show statues and stea4 - : - A inscriptions - found within the rL :'

"'in - lamr

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This monumental stele is known as the Decree of Sai's and was positioned near the main temple. It records that pharaoh Nectanebo I, reigning from 378-362 BC, granted 10 per cent of import tax to the priests of Neith. The stele shows the goddess Neith seated while Nectanebo furnishes her with gifts.

This fine sculpture executed in black stone represents a queen of the Ptolemaic dynasty, probably Cleopatra II or III. The figure wears the flowing robes of the goddess Isis incarnate and is a masterpiece of Greco-Egyptian craftsmanship.

The city's destruction has preserved a range of metal objects that were often melted down and reused elsewhere. This Hellenistic lamp dates to the 2nd Century BC and was found within the ruins of the temple of Amun-Gereb.

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ARCHAEOLOGY

A CITY REB
Digital reconstruct
Heradeion owed its wealth to its location at the gateway to Ancient Egypt. The city grew fat off customs duties levied on boats entering the Nile.

_ __ ................. At the height of its prosperity, the

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city occupied an area of roughly 2km by 1km. But by the time it was destroyed most of the population had left, leaving the urban area little more than a hollow shell.

The main city temple of Amun-Gereb. A magnificent monument 150m in length, its entrance was flanked by 5m-tall statues of a 4th Century BC pharaoh and his queen, while the god Hapi stood to one side.

Huge stelae - upright slabs with inscribed surfaces - were erected near the temple. One, the Decree of Sal's, gave 10 per cent of import tax to the priests of the goddess Neith on the orders of Pharaoh Nectanebo I.

Different types of anchor point to the presence of boats from many regions including Greece and Phoenicia, a civilisation centred on modern Lebanon. The wrecks of 64 boats and ships lie in the former harbour.

main city temple. This complex was the lynchpin of urban life. "The temple was huge, says Goddio. It was 150m long and lay at the centre of social and economic life. Food was redistributed to the inhabitants here and it was the site where customs levies were raised on all boats entering Egypt. So this temple was both rich and powerful."

HAPI HOME
We have a good idea of the architectural form of the temple. At its entrance was a row of statues: the pharaoh and his queen. There was also a figure of the god Hapi, symbolising the flooding of the Nile, which was linked to wealth and wellbeing. Hapi must have been of particular importance to this city at the mouth of the Nile, as this is the largest statue of him ever discovered. Usually his statues were small, but this sculpture stands 5m high. These colossal carvings of the pharaoh, his queen and the god Hapi are among those raised by the archaeologists for more detailed study. So far, nearly 100 statues and sculptural fragments have been recovered from the deep. Hundreds of smaller statuettes and large

A diver discovers the head of a dark stone statue of an unknown Ptolemaic queen. Egyptologists believe the statue is most likely a depiction of Cleopatra II or III, dressed in the robes of the goddess Isis.

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A diver examines a red granite statue of a queen of the Ptolemaic dynasty. Dating to the 4th Century BC, the sculpture stood 4.9m high and could have been paired with an equally colossal statue of a pharaoh. Together they probably flanked the main entrance to the temple of Amun-Gereb.

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numbers of more modest artefacts including coins, pottery and lead objects have also been brought to the surface, many of which are being studied by researchers from Oxford. More statues may be forthcoming from a major new discovery at the site. "Last year we discovered evidence of another main city temple, to the north of the other. It dated from the 8th Century BC to the 4th Century BC. So there were two main temples at Heracleion. The first was destroyed by a natural disaster -ju s t like the rest of the city over 1,000 years later - and so it was simply rebuilt to the south. There was so much wealth to be made here that no-one wanted to abandon the site."

NEW DISCOVERIES
This beautiful bronze statuette was found lying in silt near the temple of Amun-Gereb. Topless and wearing a crown, the figure is a miniature representation of a pharaoh of the 26th dynasty, which ruled Egypt from around 685-525 BC.

As the archaeologists prepare for this years excavation season in September, techniques including sonar will determine what gets excavated. With sonar, pulses of sound are sent underwater from a boat on the surface, interesting archaeology revealing itself as anomalies in the resulting echoes. We are led by the magnetometer and sonar surveys," says Goddio. "They tell us where to excavate. At the

current rate, I think that the work at this city will go on for centuries. I hope so. When Heracleion's final reckoning came in the 8th Century AD, the city's golden age was already far in the past. Never regaining its hold over Egypts maritime trade after Alexandria blossomed, Heracleions inferior location left it withering away. At the moment of collapse, it was no more than an archaeological site - a city that had already been abandoned, says Robinson. It's not like Pompeii being destroyed by Vesuvius in AD 79, its more like the ruins of Pompeii being destroyed today. That the settlement had fallen on hard times does not make it any less valuable to archaeologists. "The city is amazing because it is an emporium, a port where the Greek, Persian and Egyptian worlds connected, says Robinson. You can see in the pottery and even in the style of the anchors where all these people were coming from and the nature of the trade they were engaged in. Its just a phenomenal site.

M A TTHEW SYM O N D S is th e ed ito r of Current Archaeology m agazine

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