Archaeologists Dug Under an Ancient Greek City—and Found a 3,500-Year-Old Egyptian Settlement

Yahoo

15-04-2025

An entire ancient Egyptian settlement from the New Kingdom, also known as the Golden Age of Egypt, surfaced from beneath Greek ruins at the site of Kom el-Nugus near Alexandria
Among the artifacts found were the remains of a temple and pottery including an amphora and a grape crusher that indicate the settlement had something to do with the production of wine.
Continuing excavations in the upcoming months may reveal more about the settlement, whose name is still unknown.
On an Egyptian desert rock ridge west of Alexandria and between the Mediterranean sea and Lake Mariout is Kom el-Nugus, an archaeological site named for a mound roughly in the shape of a horseshoe, or kom, in the midst of ancient ruins surrounded by fig orchards.
The kom appeared unassuming. Most relics found there until now were from a long-abandoned Greek necropolis and lakeside town from the time of Alexander the Great. What emerged when archaeologists dug deeper was a whole other city, one that was already ancient when Alexander arrived in Egypt.
It turned out that a 3,500-year-old settlement from Egypt's New Kingdom had been lying beneath the Hellenistic ruins for thousands of years. The New Kingdom was the height of Egypt's splendor in antiquity. It gave birth to legendary 18th and 19th Dynasty pharaohs such as Tutankhamun (nobody wanted to speak of his heretic father Akhenaten), Seti I and Rameses II. It is thought to have been built over around 332 B.C., when the Egyptians willingly allowed Alexander's forces in to liberate them from oppressive Persian rule, and was occupied by Greeks for several hundred years.
'Towards the interior, the curious shape of the kom has long puzzled visitors, and the steep inward slope from the top of the hill to the centre has defied easy explanation,' Sylvain Dhennin of the University of Lyon in France, who led the team of archeologists in unearthing the lost settlement, said in a study recently published in Antiquity.
In the middle of the Kom are the remains of a Hellenistic monument that is probably a temple, carved out of calcarenite, a type of limestone. Hardly anything is left except its crumbling foundations. Dhennin thinks the proportions of the building, along with some telltale inscriptions, set it apart as a temple. Parts of it were eventually plundered.
Some New Kingdom artifacts that have surfaced at the kom hint at the splendor of what was also known as Egypt's Golden Age. An amphora stamped with the name Meritaten dated back to the 18th Dynasty, from 1550 to 1292 B.C., since Meritaten Tasherit or Meritaten the Younger is known to be the eldest daughter of Akhenaten and Nefertiti. Wine was often stored in amphoras, and a grape crusher discovered at the site suggests that the ancient settlement had something to do with the production of wine. Dhennin thinks the stamp with Meritaten's name means that the wine belonged to a royal estate.
The name Meritaten translates to 'she who is beloved of the Aten.' The Aten was the sun disk that Akhenaten demanded all of Egypt worship when he ascended the throne. Ushering in an era of monotheism, he did away with the Egyptian pantheon, fueling political and religious upheaval. After Akhenaten's death, his subjects tried to erase every possible statue, carving, and other vestige of him that remained, and his mummified body has never been found. Tutankhamun (named Tutankhaten at birth) then took the throne and restored the pantheon.
There were also some fragments of what were once stone monuments scattered on the Hellenistic levels, including blocks from one of the many temples dedicated by Rameses II, with one of them depicting Ra-Horakhty, 'Horus of the two horizons.' Ra-Horakhty is one of the many forms of the sun god Ra. In this iteration, he has the falcon head of Horus, another god of the sun who crossed the vast expanse of sky every day. This carving must have been intended to show him during the daytime since his right eye was believed to be the sun, while left eye was the moon.
More artifacts found at Kom el-Nugus include pieces of chapels from the 19th and 20th dynasties, otherwise known as the Ramesside period. There was also piece of a stele carved with the cartouches of Seti II and a pit containing five miniature ceramic bowls. The buildings of the settlement were made of mud bricks, with two groups of them lined up on either side of a street that headed slightly southward and featured a water-collecting system to keep the buildings dry so they wouldn't collapse. This road was found to have been rebuilt at some point.
'The restructuring of the buildings—in stages that appear to have taken place in quick succession—raises the possibility that this was a seasonal or intermittent settlement, as in the case of temporary military garrisons,' Dhennin said in the same study.
More excavations will be carried out during the coming months. The artifacts and remnants of buildings that emerge may not be a glittering golden hoard like the scene that greeted Howard Carter when he broke the seal to Tutankhamun's tomb, but they will still be treasures.
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