When I was growing up, a popular song urged us to “see the pyramids along the Nile.” Problem is, the pyramids are in the desert at Giza, no water to be found.
That has nothing to do with exciting news coming from Alexandria, Egypt, the nation’s second-largest city. Archaeologists there have been busy recovering statues, a partially preserved Sphinx, and other artifacts from a sunken city off the shore of Alexandria.
The discoveries were made in Abu Qir Bay, where divers and cranes brought up the huge sculptures from the sunken city of Canopus. Canopus thrived during the Ptolemaic (Greek) and Roman periods.
The excavation also revealed limestone buildings, reservoirs, and stone-cut ponds, probably used for storing water and cultivating fish.
Camopus and the nearby port of Heracleion eventually were submerged due to rising sea levels and earthquakes.
PICTURED: A crane pulls a 2,000-year-old sunken statute from the ocean.