ST. PETERSBURG (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 21st July, 2021) The Egyptian-French underwater mission for the recovery of the recently discovered rare remains of a military vessel near the Egyptian city of Alexandria will take a year to be completed, world-renowned archaeologist Zahi Hawass told Sputnik.
The Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities announced on Monday that a military vessel of the Ptolemaic era had been discovered in the submerged city of Heracleion, which sunk as the famed Amun temple collapsed during an earthquake in the second century BC. The remains of a Greek funerary were also uncovered during the mission.
"I think they would need another season of excavation, I mean a year to complete it," Hawass said, adding that the archaeologists would have to go through a long process of salvaging artifacts from the wrecked ship and the vessel itself.
Underwater finds of that era remain extremely rare, according to the Egyptian Antiquities Ministry, as Hellenistic ships of this type were completely unknown before this discovery.
"This is a very important discovery. It is a big success to find this big of a ship. It is like 25 meters [82 feet] long," Hawass stressed.
According to the ministry, the ancient city of Heracleion used to be the largest port on the Mediterranean Sea before the city of Alexandria was founded in the fourth century BC.
