Heracleion, an ancient Greek port in Egypt

Many cities have been named after Heracles, and we find plenty of examples in Greece and Turkey. Still, this Heracleion was discovered about 10 meters under the surface of the Mediterranean at Abukir Bay in the Nile Delta. Before the foundation of Alexandria by Alexander the Great in 331 BC, Heracleion, which the ancient Egyptians called Thonis, was a major port going back to the 8th century BC.

Thonis-Heracleion, as it was baptized for convenience, was the central trade hub and an important religious center. Herodotus, for instance, told us about a great temple devoted to Heracles after he set foot on Egyptian soil. He also mentions that Helen of Troy visited Heracleion with Paris before the Trojan War. Strabo visited Egypt four hundred years later and recorded that the Temple of Heracles was straight to the east on the Canopic branch of the River Nile. Evidence has shown that the city spread along a network of canals which must have given it a leisurely appearance.

After 13 years of underwater excavations, 64 ancient beautifully preserved shipwrecks and more than 700 anchors have been dug out of the mud. More archaeological material shows that the city peaked between the 6th and the 4th century BC, as shown through a wide variety of artifacts like  gold coins, weights from Athens (never found in Egypt before), and giant tablets with ancient Greek and Egyptian inscriptions. Some religious objects, like a five-meter stone sculpture supposedly from one of its temples and limestone sarcophagi apparently used for mummified animals, were also unearthed.

[Reconstruction by Huffington Post]

The one mystery that remains to be solved is why so many ships sank. It has been suggested that the overall weight of the large buildings on the water-logged clay and sand inevitably led the city to sink in the wake of an earthquake.

Whatever the cause, it often occurs to me that Alexander, although he never knew about the Americas or Australia, had a far better knowledge of his world than we have today as we keep on discovering so many lost cities he was familiar with!

[visit Goddio's Heracleion website for more pictures].