Ancient Egyptian Shipwreck from Heracleion That Sunk 2,200 Years Ago Due to Cataclysmic Quake Discovered

An ancient Egyptian shipwreck from Heracleion that sunk 2,200 years ago was discovered by archeologists. They also found details of what happened or how it got swallowed by the sea. The current find is similar to the city like Atlantis, except the accounts comes from different two millennia. However, further inquiries need to prove its existence.

One is the speculation exoplains that the boat sank from the falling debris of the Temple of Amun, which was ripped apart by a powerful quake that sent the ancient metropolis to the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea.

In antiquity, many places were devastated caused by huge upheavals of the earth, and even Pompei was done in the same way as Heracleion.

Thonis Heracleion rediscovered

It is estimated that the ancient city slipped into the sea because of earthquakes 1,200 years ago. The boat's remains were found, and a funerary area underwater after debris was found around it, reported the Daily Mail.

What caught the researcher's attention is the ship's design was typical in the Mediterranean Sea. It had a flat keel, and it measures at 82-feet or 25 meters long. This boat known as a fast galley is more at home in the Nile River and the Delta.

Furthermore, the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities on social media said more clues were found. They also noticed that the vessel had a large sail, which is a common design for those made in Egypt. An ancient Egyptian ship was sunk due to a devastating event.

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They dsicovered furter details in the investigation of the wreck site. Evidence shows that the vessel was hit by parts of the Temple of Amun in the 2nd Century B.C. Huge blocks from the temple fell on the ship due to a cataclysmic quake that brought it to submerge underneath the sea. All the heavy debris that fell on the ship pushed it deep into the canal whre it remained covered by the ancient stones for centuries.

It was found in 16-feet of clay on the seafloor, squished by the fallen debris from Amun.

Another find is a burial area covered with rocks and tumulus like a modern graves with tombstones.

The ancient world's melting pot

Heracleion is one of the cities in antiquity where Greek merchants lived, said Reuters. The Greeks co-mingled there even in the declining years of Pharaonic dynasties.

The Greek built their shelter close to the Temple of Amun. All these settlemnets were shattered by the ancient quake. These Greek structures were drown under and at the same time mixed with the archaic Egyptian temple's debris.

Franck Goddio, the project lead, stated that seeing Egyptian galleys far out in the Mediterranean is a rare find. These discoveries reveal that, about 1,000 years or more, the City of Heracleion was the center of trade in the ancient cities.

Another who also suffered the same fate was the Marsala, in 233 B.C. It sunk under the seaandwas discovered in 1971 in Sicily. These discoveries , using modern methods like sonar, were made possible finding this sunken galley and Greek tombs.

In the burial area of the sunken city, several rare pottery were found by experts. There was also an amulet made of gold depicting the Egyptian god Bes, who is associated with childbirth, fertility, sexuality, humor and war. Heracleion is where Cleopatra's temple stood. before it sank into the Mediterranean in the Bay of Aboukir.

Thônis-Heracleion, preceded Alexandria in Egypt, beijng the third biggest port of the ancient world. It was rediscovered by the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology just recently in 2019.

The ancient Egyptian shipwreck from Heracleion was only one of the investigations in the ancient past when earth upheavals swallowed cities like it. After this discovery, some called Thônis-Heracleion as the 'Egypt's Atlantis'.