1,200 Years Old Egyptian Secrets At Sunken City

Until ten years ago, no body know if Heraclion  believed to be an ancient harbor city, was fiction or real. Now, report the Telegraph, the researchers who found it - 150 feet beneath the surface of Egypt's bay of Aboukir-are sharing some of the amazinf historical artifacts preserved there.

The finds include 64 ships, 16-foot-tall statues, 700 anchors and countless gold coins and smaller artifacts. According to underwater aecheologist Frank Goddio, credited with having discovered the site, the city was probably built sometime around the 8th century B.C, which makes it older than the farmed city of Alexandria.

Over many years, it fell vistim to a number of natural disasters before being swalloewed by the sea, probably around A.D 700.

The Telegraph reports that researchers are beginning to more fully understand what daily life was like in the city, also called "Thorus." Mainly they describe it has having served as the main hub for sea traffic entering the region, including all trade from Greece.

"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 Archeology at the University of Oxford, told the Telegraph Robinson is part of the team that has been busy uncovering artifacts from Heraclion's sunken remains.

It was the major international trading port for Egypt at this time," Robinson addes "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 hstory. Helen was said to have visited it with her lover Pans shortly before the onset of the Trojan War.

http://www.goocap.com/2013/04/1200-years-old-egyptian-secrets-at.html