Divers pulled out several sunken antiquities from Abu Qir Bay in Alexandria on Thursday.
The artefacts include a quartz sphinx statue with the sigil of Rameses II, a granite figure and a white marble statue of a Roman nobleman. The relics were lifted out of the water using cranes and set on the shoreline as onlookers cheered.
The event was attended by several officials, including Sherif Fathi, Egypt’s Minister of Tourism and Antiquities, and Mohamed Ismail Khaled, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.
The site of the artefacts had long been known to Egyptian authorities. The town of Abu Qir is near the ruins of several ancient cities that became submerged as a result of earthquakes, tsunamis and rising sea levels. These include Canopus and Thonis-Heracleion.
Thursday’s recovery event was organised by the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities and came as part of a series of initiatives aimed at celebrating the history and legacy of the ancient cities. These include a new exhibition at the Alexandria National Museum to showcase treasures recovered from the depths of the Mediterranean Sea.
Secrets of the Sunken City runs until February and features 86 artefacts that were retrieved from the sunken cities in Abu Qir, as well as the Royal Quarter in the Eastern Harbour of ancient Alexandria. They include statues, pottery and jewellery – providing material evidence of the cultures that thrived in the area thousands of years ago.
A number of the exhibited artefacts were recovered over the past 25 years by the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology, a French non-profit dedicated to exploring and excavating sunken sites.
While the newly retrieved artefacts will probably be exhibited in the future, they are not part of the exhibition at the Alexandria National Museum. The sites at Abu Qir contain many more submerged artefacts, including pillars, statues and an ancient warship, and there are plans to recover more of the relics, authorities confirmed to The National.
