Once believed to be a small town on the Nile Delta, the now-sunken city of Naukratis actually was once a major Greek trading center in ancient Egypt, an expedition led by researchers from the British Museum has revealed.
Let by curator Dr. Ross Thomas, the excavation efforts resulted in the discovery of well over 10,000 ancient artifacts, including wood from Greek sailing vessels and Egyptian figurines that were crafted to honor a “festival of drunkenness,” The Guardian reported on Saturday.
Credit: Wikimedia Commons
According to the museum’s website, at least 17,000 objects have been discovered at Naukratis since the late 19th century and are currently on display at museums worldwide. Objects from the 7th century BC to the 7th century AD, and including Roman and Cypriot items as well as Greek and Egyptian ones, have reportedly been discovered there.
Based on the “wide variety” of artifacts recovered at the site, Dr. Thomas told The Guardian that the city was likely home to a vast network of commerce. Once believed to be a fairly small town, it now appears as though Naukratis was actually “the Hong Kong of its era,” he added.
Naukratis was actually twice as big as previously believed
While its existence was known through ancient sources, the actual location of Naukratis was first discovered in 1884 by British archaeologist Sir Flinders Petrie, according to Quartz. The city has been visited by expeditions many times over the years, and for a while, it seemed as though there were no more secrets to be discovered at the site.
However, the latest excavation by Dr. Thomas and his colleagues found that the city was actually twice as big as previously thought, and that only a fraction of it had been explored. Once thought to be just 30 hectares in size and completely destroyed, the British Museum-led expedition found that it is actually 60 hectares big and home to yet undiscovered artifacts.
The discovery of wood from Greek ships confirms that the vessels were able to travel well into Egypt, and did not have to stop along the Mediterranean coast to transfer their cargo onto barges as previously believed, the researchers told The Guardian. Their expedition also opened up the location of the city’s harbor and the sites of a pair of Greek temples.
According to Dr. Thomas, the newly recovered evidence also revealed that Naukratis “was populated with tall tower houses that commonly had three to six stories. These are similar in construction to those found to this day in Yemen. We should imagine a mud-brick Manhattan, populated with tall houses and large sanctuaries, befitting a large cosmopolitan city.”
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Feature Image: Artist’s drawing of the sacred way and Ptolemaic pylon of the sanctuary of Amun-Ra at Naukratis. (Credit: Kate Morton/British Museum)
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