Sunken Egyptian city reveals 1,200-year-old secrets – Red Star BC exclusive !!!

Until a decade ago, no one knew if Heracleion, believed to be an ancient city harbour was fiction or real. Now researchers have who found it—150 feet beneath the surface of Egypt's Bay of Aboukir—are sharing some of the amazing historical artefacts preserved there.

The finds include 64 ships, 16-foot-tall statues, 700 anchors and countless gold coins and smaller artefacts.

The city was probably built sometime around the 8^th century B.C., which makes it older than the famed city of Alexandria. Over the years, it fell victim to a number of natural disasters before being swallowed by the sea, probably around A.D. 700.

It's believed that gradual soil erosion eventually caused Heracleion to fall into the Mediterranean. It is now clear that a slow movement of subsidence of the soil affected this part of the south-eastern basin of the Mediterranean. The rise in sea level—already observed in antiquity—also contributed significantly to the submergence of the land.

 “We are getting a rich picture of things like the trade that was going on there and the nature of the maritime economy in the Egyptian late period,” Damian Robinson, director of the Oxford Centre for Maritime Archaeology at the University of Oxford, told the Red Star BC Blog Administrator, Walter Scott.

“It was the major international trading port for Egypt at this time,” Robinson added. “It is where taxation was taken on import and export duties. All of this was run by the main temple.”

The city is also believed to have had a rich cultural history. Helen was said to have visited it with her lover Paris shortly before the onset of the Trojan War.

You heard it first …on the Red Star BC Blog !!!!!