Ancient History Blog

Alexandrian Harbor’s Lost City Found (ca. 1000 BC)

By: The Scribe on Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Before Alexander the Great made his way to the Nile delta and established his own city in 331 B.C., the northern coast of Egypt was home to a city called Rhakotis. Although Rhakotis is mentioned in several ancient history texts, until recently, the actual existence of the city had never been proven – but now, it seems as though Alexander the Great was more of a renovator than a city builder.

Teams of underwater archaeologists were diving in Alexandria’s bay, searching for Greek and Roman ruins, when they stumbled across some signs of building construction that appeared to be 700 years older than Alexander the Great’s arrival in the area. In order to substantiate the evidence, researchers took soil sample cores from the Mediterranean ocean’s floor – some as large as 20 feet long – and dated them with radiocarbon technology.

The cores revealed that the ocean floor held lead and human waste that was over 3,000 years old, confirming that there was indeed human habitation along these shores long before Alexander ever arrived; the cores also contained pieces of stone building materials that would have come from southern and central Egypt. By looking at historical documents that have survived the centuries, all evidence pointed to the true, historic existence of the Egyptian city of Rhakotis.

The lead from the cores was dated to around 1000 to 800 BC, with some portions suspected to date back even further to Egypt’s Old Kingdom – if this is true, it means that people were living here over 2000 years before Alexander arrived! Lead was a very important substance for humans in the ancient world, and in large cities, it was not unusual for lead to be used in everything from fishing, building, ship construction, and plumbing, to more artistic activities like glass making.

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