2,300-YEAR-OLD SETTLEMENT UNEARTHED IN EGYPT’S ALEXANDRIA

Sat 28 August 2021:

Egypt reported on Friday the discovery of a colony dating back to at least the second century BC in the Mediterranean seaside city of Alexandria.

The discovery was uncovered during nine months of excavations in the city’s central Al-Shatby area, according to a statement from Egypt’s tourism and antiquities ministry.

According to the statement, the settlement served a “residential and commercial” purpose.

Mostafa Waziri, the head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, claimed preliminary research revealed “a main road and nearby streets connected by a sewage network.”

Abdullah Gohar, a researcher at El Mansoura, university works on renovating the 43 million-year-old fossil of a previously unknown four-legged amphibious whale called “Phiomicetus Anubis”

Photo: Reuters/Mohamed Abd El Ghany. pic.twitter.com/QRrlQlLEMt

— Ticia Verveer (@ticiaverveer) August 26, 2021

The area was in use from the late Ptolemaic period until the middle of the period of Roman rule, covering a timeframe from “the second century BC until the fourth century AD,” Waziri was quoted as saying.

Archaeologists discovered a large number of wells cut into the rock and a network of water cisterns, the statement said.

The Egyptian archaeological mission from the Alexandria succeeded in discovering the remains of a residential and commercial suburb from the Greek and Roman periods, during excavations in the Shatby area pic.twitter.com/ULz59ARnh3

— Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities (@TourismandAntiq) August 27, 2021

They also discovered amulets, several amphorae, and 700 old coins, as well as an alabaster figure of an unidentified Roman emperor.

The remnants, according to Ahmed Abu Hamd, head of antiquities in Alexandria, belong to a “market, workshops, votive and sculpting shops.”

Cairo has disclosed a number of archaeological finds in recent years, in the hopes of reviving a critical tourism sector that has been harmed by a 2011 revolt, terrorist attacks, and the coronavirus outbreak.

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