Heracleion Photos: Lost Egyptian City Revealed After 1,200 Years Under Sea [June 4, 2013]

So many stories and character can come from this. From today and yesterday and in between. For my nephew the Egyptologist.

http://seriouslyforreal.com/seriously-for-real/heracleion-photos-lost-egyptian-city-revealed-after-1200-years-under-sea/

It is a city shrouded in myth, swallowed by the Mediterranean Sea and buried in sand and mud for more than 1,200 years. But now archeologists are unearthing the mysteries of Heracleion, uncovering amazingly well-preserved artifacts that tell the story of a vibrant classical-era port.

Known as Heracleion to the ancient Greeks and Thonis to the ancient Eygptians, the city was rediscovered in 2000 by French underwater archaeologist Dr. Franck Goddio and a team from the European Institute for Underwater Acheology (IEASM) after a four-year geophysical survey. The ruins of the lost city were found 30 feet under the surface of the Mediterranean Sea in Aboukir Bay, near Alexandria.

A new documentary highlights the major discoveries that have been unearthed at Thonis-Heracleion during a 13-year excavation. Exciting archeological finds help describe an ancient city that was not only a vital international trade hub but possibly an important religious center. The television crew used archeological survey data to construct a computer model of the city .

According to the Telegraph, leading research now suggests that Thonis-Heracleion served as a mandatory port of entry for trade between the Mediterranean and the Nile.

So far, 64 ancient shipwrecks and more than 700 anchors have been unearthed from the mud of the bay, the news outlet notes. Other findings include gold coins, weights from Athens (which have never before been found at an Egyptian site) and giant tablets inscribed in ancient Greek and ancient Egyptian. Researchers think that these artifacts point to the city’s prominence as a bustling trade hub.

Researchers have also uncovered a variety of religious artifacts in the sunken city, including 16-foot stone sculptures thought to have adorned the city’s central temple and limestone sarcophagi that are believed to have contained mummified animals.

Experts have marveled at the variety of artifacts found and have been equally impressed by how well preserved they are.

“The archaeological evidence is simply overwhelming,” Professor Sir Barry Cunliffe, a University of Oxford archeologist taking part in the excavation, said in a press release obtained by The Huffington Post. “By lying untouched and protected by sand on the sea floor for centuries they are brilliantly preserved.”

A panel of experts presented their findings at an Oxford University conference on the Thonis-Heracleion excavation earlier this year.

But despite all the excitement over the excavation, one mystery about Thonis-Heracleion remains largely unsolved: Why exactly did it sink? Goddio’s team suggests the weight of large buildings on the region’s water-logged clay and sand soil may have caused the city to sink in the wake of an earthquake.

sources: http://www.huffingtonpost.com
http://www.franckgoddio.org

http://seriouslyforreal.com/seriously-for-real/heracleion-photos-lost-egyptian-city-revealed-after-1200-years-under-sea/

Clinton blasts Egypt's 'shocking' treatment of women [AFP]

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  US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accused Egyptian authorities of failing the …

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday denounced Egypt's treatment of women as "shocking" and a "disgrace" to the state after troops were shown ripping off a female protester's clothes.

In unusually strong remarks, Clinton accused Egyptian authorities of failing the country's women since the revolution that overthrew president Hosni Mubarak, both by excluding them from power and humiliating them in the streets.

"This systematic degradation of Egyptian women dishonors the revolution, disgraces the state and its uniform and is not worthy of a great people," Clinton said in a speech at Georgetown University.

In images widely seen over YouTube, helmeted troops were shown beating a veiled woman after having ripped her clothes off to reveal her bra and stomach.

Other pictures circulating on social media networks that have enraged protesters include one of a military policeman looming over a sobbing elderly woman with his truncheon.

"Recent events in Egypt have been particularly shocking. Women are being beaten and humiliated in the same streets where they risked their lives for the revolution only a few short months ago," Clinton said.

She denounced a "deeply troubling patter" of military authorities and the major political parties alike keeping Egyptian women out of the decision-making process.

"At the same time, they have been specifically targeted both by security forces and extremists," the top US diplomat added.

"Women protesters have been rounded up and subjected to horrific abuse. Journalists have been sexually assaulted and now women are being attacked, stripped and beaten in the streets."

Responding later to a question by a student, Clinton said that Egyptians and not Americans should be the first ones disturbed by the treatment of women.

Beating women on the street "is not cultural, it's criminal and it needs to be addressed and treated as such," she said to applause.

Clinton, who narrowly lost her bid to be the first female US president, has frequently been outspoken about women's rights during her tenure as the country's top diplomat.

She addressed events in Egypt as part of a broader speech in which she argued that peacemaking efforts around the world would benefit from greater involvement by women.

Egypt shutdown worst in Internet history: experts

AFP

[picture] Egyptian demonstrators demanding the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak shouts slogans on top of Egyptian site.

by Katia Dolmadjian Katia Dolmadjian – Sat Jan 29, 12:05 pm ET

PARIS (AFP) – The scale of Egypt's crackdown on the Internet and mobile phones amid deadly protests against the rule of President Hosni Mubarak is unprecedented in the history of the web, experts said.

US President Barack Obama, social networking sites and rights groups around the world all condemned the moves by Egyptian authorities to stop activists using cellphones and cyber technology to organise rallies.

"It's a first in the history of the Internet," Rik Ferguson, an expert for Trend Micro, the world's third biggest computer security firm, told AFP.

Julien Coulon, co-founder of Cedexis, a French Internet performance monitoring and traffic management system, added: "In 24 hours we have lost 97 percent of Egyptian Internet traffic.

According to Renesys, a US Internet monitoring company, Egypt's four main Internet service providers cut off international access to their customers in a near simultaneous move at 2234 GMT on Thursday.

Around 23 million Egyptians have either regular or occasional access to the Internet, according to official figures, more than a quarter of the population.

"In an action unprecedented in Internet history, the Egyptian government appears to have ordered service providers to shut down all international connections to the Internet," James Cowie of Renesys said in a blog post.

Link Egypt, Vodafone/Raya, Telecom Egypt and Etisalat Misr were all off air but Cowie said one exception was the Noor Group, which still has 83 live routes to its Egyptian customers.

He said it was not clear why the Noor Group was apparently unaffected "but we observe that the Egyptian Stock Exchange (www.egyptse.com) is still alive at a Noor address."

Mobile telephone networks were also severely disrupted in the country on Friday. Phone signals were patchy and text messages inoperative.

British-based Vodafone said all mobile operators in Egypt had been "instructed" Friday to suspend services in some areas amid spiralling unrest, adding that under Egyptian law it was "obliged" to comply with the order.

Egyptian operator ECMS, linked to France's Telecom-Orange, said the authorities had ordered them to shut them off late Thursday.

"We had no warning, it was quite sudden," a spokesman for Telecom-Orange told AFP in France.

The shutdown in Egypt is the most comprehensive official electronic blackout of its kind, experts said.

Links to the web were were cut for only a few days during a wave of protests against Myanmar's ruling military junta in 2007, while demonstrations against the re-election of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009 specifically targeted Twitter and Facebook.

Egypt -- like Tunisia where mass popular unrest drove out Zine El Abidine Ben Ali earlier this month -- is on a list of 13 countries classed as "enemies of the Internet" by media rights group Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

"So far there has been no systematic filtering by Egyptian authorities -- they have completely controlled the whole Internet," said Soazig Dollet, the Middle East and North Africa specialist for RSF.

Condemnation of Egypt's Internet crackdown has been widespread.

Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on Cairo to restore the Internet and social networking sites.

Facebook, the world's largest social network with nearly 600 million members, and Twitter also weighed in.

"Although the turmoil in Egypt is a matter for the Egyptian people and their government to resolve, limiting Internet access for millions of people is a matter of concern for the global community," said Andrew Noyes, a Facebook spokesman.

Twitter, which has more than 175 million registered users, said of efforts to block the service in Egypt: "We believe that the open exchange of info & views benefits societies & helps govts better connect w/ their people."

US digital rights groups also criticised the Egyptian government.

"This action is inconsistent with all international human rights norms, and is unprecedented in Internet history," said Leslie Harris, president of the Center for Democracy and Technology in the United States.

Monument lifted from Cleopatra's underwater city

Monument lifted from Cleopatra's underwater city

By KATARINA KRATOVAC,
Associated Press Writer
17 Dec 2009

ALEXANDRIA, Egypt – Archaeologists on Thursday hoisted a 9-ton temple pylon from the waters of the Mediterranean that was part of the palace complex of the fabled Cleopatra before it became submerged for centuries in the harbor of Alexandria.

The pylon, which once stood at the entrance to a temple of Isis, is to be the centerpiece of an ambitious underwater museum planned by Egypt to showcase the sunken city, believed to have been toppled into the sea by earthquakes in the 4th century.

Divers and underwater archaeologists used a giant crane and ropes to lift the 9-ton, 7.4-foot-tall pylon, covered with muck and seaweed, out of the murky waters. It was deposited ashore as Egypt's top archaeologist, Zahi Hawass, and other officials watched.

The pylon was part of a sprawling palace from which the Ptolemaic dynasty ruled Egypt and where 1st Century B.C. Queen Cleopatra wooed the Roman general Marc Antony before they both committed suicide after their defeat by Augustus Caesar.

The temple dedicated to Isis, a pharaonic goddess of fertility and magic, is at least 2,050 years old, but archaeologists believe it's likely much older. The pylon was cut from a single slab of red granite quarried in Aswan, some 700 miles (more than 1,100 kilometers) to the south, officials said.

"The cult of Isis was so powerful, it's no wonder Cleopatra chose to make her living quarters next to the temple," said coastal geoarchaeologist Jean-Daniel Stanley of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

Egyptian authorities hope that eventually the pylon will become a part of the underwater museum, an ambitious attempt to draw tourists to the country's northern coast, often overshadowed by the grand pharaonic temples of Luxor in the south, the Giza pyramids outside Cairo and the beaches of the Red Sea.

They are hoping the allure of Alexandria, founded in 331 B.C. by Alexander the Great, can also be a draw.

Cleopatra's palace and other buildings and monuments now lie strewn on the seabed in the harbor of Alexandria, the second largest city of Egypt. Since 1994, archaeologists have been exploring the ruins, one of the richest underwater excavations in the Mediterranean, with some 6,000 artifacts. Another 20,000 objects are scattered off other parts of Alexandria's coast, said Ibrahim Darwish, head of the city's underwater archaeology department.

In recent years, excavators have discovered dozens of sphinxes in the harbor, along with pieces of what is believed to be the Alexandria Lighthouse, or Pharos, which was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

The pylon is the first major artifact extracted from the harbor since 2002, when authorities banned further removal of major artifacts from the sea for fear it would damage them.

"The tower is unique among Alexandria's antiquities. We believe it was part of the complex surrounding Cleopatra's palace," Hawass said, as the crane gently placed the pylon on the harbor bank. "This is an important part of Alexandria's history and it brings us closer to knowing more about the ancient city."

Hawass has already launched another high-profile dig connected to Cleopatra. In April, he said he hopes to find the long-lost tomb of Antony and Cleopatra — and that he believes it may be inside a temple of Osiris located about 30 miles (50 kilometers) west of Alexandria.

The pylon extracted Thursday was discovered by a Greek expedition in 1998. Retrieving it was a laborious process: For weeks, divers cleaned it of mud and scum, then they dragged it across the sea floor for three days to bring it closer to the harbor's edge for Thursday's extraction.

A truck stood by to ferry the pylon to a freshwater tank, where it will lie for six months until all the salt, which acts as a preservative underwater but damages it once exposed, is dissolved.

Still in its planning stages, the underwater museum would allow visitors to walk through underwater tunnels for close-up views of sunken artifacts, and it may even include a submarine on rails.

A collaboration between Egypt and UNESCO, the museum would cost at least $140 million, said Darwish. The above-water section would feature sail-shaped structures that would complement the architecture of the harbor and have the city's corniche seabank in the backdrop, with the splendid Alexandria Library on the other end of the bay, Darwish said.

"To me, the greatest draw would be that visitors would be able to see these amazing objects in their natural surrounding, not out of context on some museum shelf," said Stanley, who has carried out excavations around Alexandria but is not involved in the underwater dig.

Speaking to The Associated Press by phone from Washington, Stanley cautioned that the dangers to such a museum would be twofold — from storms, which in wintertime have been known to sink ships in Alexandria's harbor, and from earthquakes.

Egypt and UNESCO are still studying the feasibility of building such an underwater museum. No one knows where the money would come from, but there is hope construction could start as early as late 2010.

"If the study shows it's possible, this could become a magical place, both above and underwater," Hawass said. "If you can smell the sea here, you can smell the history."

Darwish, one of seven Egyptian archaeologists who are also qualified divers, said the country has had to rely on foreign expertise, mostly French and Greek, for diving archaeology expeditions around Alexandria. That will change, he says, as the Alexandria university educates more underwater archaeologists.

A temporary downtown museum will house the Isis pylon extracted Thursday and some 200 other objects removed from the sea here in the last decade.

Copyright 2009 Associated Press,