In the year 2000, French researcher Franck Goddio was the first man to find traces of an ancient city, sunken and lost in time. A city lost between legend and reality has now been uncovered with a team of marine archaeologists preparing to showcase some of the initial finds uncovered. The artefacts recovered from sea depth include gold coins, limestone sarcophagi, weights from Athens, sculptures up to 5m, and huge tablets engraved in ancient Greek and ancient Egyptian. Finds like these indicate that the lost city was once a key trading hub.
The names Thonis and Heracleion had only been heard of prior to the breakthrough discovery preserved in ancient texts and rare inscriptions found by archeologists on land and was shrouded with mystery of the unknown. The unveiling of the submersed city solved a historic enigma which had puzzled Egyptologists over the years revealing that Thonis and Heracleion were in fact the same city. Heracleion being the Greek name for the city and Thonis being the Egyptian. The remains of Thonis-Heracleion lay beneath the waters of Abu Qir Bay, roughly 30km northeast of Alexandria, Egypt.
