ALEXANDRIA, Egypt – Plunging into the waters off
Alexandria Tuesday,
divers explored the submerged ruins of a palace and temple complex from
which Cleopatra ruled, swimming over heaps of limestone blocks hammered
into the sea by earthquakes and tsunamis more than 1,600 years ago.
The international team is painstakingly excavating one of the richest
underwater archaeological sites in the world and retrieving stunning
artifacts from the last dynasty to rule over
ancient Egypt before the
Roman Empire annexed it
in 30 B.C.
Using advanced technology, the team is surveying
ancient Alexandria's Royal Quarters, encased deep below the harbor
sediment, and confirming the accuracy of descriptions of the city left
by Greek geographers and historians more than 2,000 years ago.
Since the early 1990s, the topographical surveys have
allowed the team, led by
French
underwater archaeologist Franck Goddio, to conquer the harbor's
extremely poor visibility and excavate below the seabed. They are
discovering everything from coins and everyday objects to colossal
granite statues of Egypt's rulers and sunken temples dedicated to their
gods.
"It's a unique site in the world," said Goddio, who
has spent two decades searching for shipwrecks and lost cities below the
seas.
The finds from along the Egyptian coast will go on
display at Philadelphia's Franklin Institute from June 5 to Jan. 2 in an
exhibition titled "Cleopatra: The Search for the Last
Queen of Egypt."
The exhibition will tour several other North American cities.
Many archaeological sites have been destroyed by man,
with statues cut or smashed to pieces. Alexandria's Royal Quarters —
ports, a cape and islands full of temples, palaces and military outposts
— simply slid into the sea after cataclysmic earthquakes in the fourth
and eighth centuries. Goddio's team found it in 1996. Many of its
treasures are completely intact, wrapped in sediment protecting them
from the saltwater.
"It's as it was when it sank," said Ashraf
Abdel-Raouf of
Egypt's
Supreme Council of Antiquities, who is part of the team.
Tuesday's dive explored the sprawling palace and
temple complex where Cleopatra, the last of
Egypt's Greek-speaking Ptolemaic rulers,
seduced the Roman
general Mark Antony
before they committed suicide upon their defeat by Octavian, the future
Roman Emperor Augustus.
Dives have taken Goddio and his team to some of the
key scenes in the dramatic lives of the couple, including the Timonium,
commissioned by Antony after his defeat as a place where he could
retreat from the world, though he killed himself before it was
completed.
They also found a colossal stone head believed to be
of Caesarion, son of Cleopatra and previous lover
Julius Caesar, and two
sphinxes, one of them probably representing Cleopatra's father, Ptolemy
XII.
Divers photographed a section of the seabed cleared
of sediment with a powerful suction device. Their flashlights glowing in
the green murk, the divers photographed ruins from a temple to Isis
near Cleopatra's palace on the submerged island of Antirhodos.
Among the massive limestone blocks toppled in the
fourth century was a huge quartzite block with an engraving of a
pharaoh. An inscription indicates it depicts Seti I, father of
Ramses II.
"We've found many pharaonic objects that were brought
from Heliopolis, in what is now
Cairo," said Abdel-Raouf. "So, the Ptolemaic
rulers re-used pharonic objects to construct their buildings."
On the boat's deck, researchers displayed some small
recent finds: imported ceramics and local
copies, a statuette of a pharaoh, bronze ritual vessels, amulets barely
bigger than a fingernail, and small lead vessels tossed by the poor into
the water or buried in the ground as devotions to gods.
Alexandria's Eastern Harbor was abandoned after
another earthquake, in the eighth century, and was left untouched as an
open bay — apart from two
20th
century breakwaters — while modern port construction went ahead
in the Western Harbor. That has left the ancient Portus Magnus
undisturbed below.
"We have this as an open field for archaeology,"
Goddio said.
___
Online:
The
Franck Goddio Society:
http://www.franckgoddio.org
The
Franklin Institute:
http://www.fi.edu
