Reuters: Ancient Cities Reported Found Under Sea Off Egypt

ALEXANDRIA, Egypt (Reuters) - Archaeologists on Saturday showed off relics retrieved from the nearly complete ruins of ancient cities they said they had discovered on the seabed off the Egyptian coast.

The joint French and Egyptian team said the cities of Menouthif and Herakleion, submerged more than 1,000 years ago, lay in 15-30 feet of water about 3.75 miles off the Mediterranean city of Alexandria.

``We are very excited because we are used to finding the remains of a tomb, a church or a mosque, but this time we are finding complete cities -- cities that were heard about from the classical writings,'' said Gaballah Ali Gaballah, head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.

``Most probably they disappeared because of seismic causes,'' said Franck Goddio, head of the Paris-based European Institute of Marine Archaeology.

A rise in the Mediterranean sea level and sudden submersion caused by earthquake, or climate changes, could explain the annihilation of the cities, he said.

The cities were legendary in antiquity for their wealth and arts as well as their many temples dedicated to the gods Serapis, Isis and Osiris.

An intricately carved five-foot-tall black granite statue of Isis was shown to the media after being raised from the seabed.

``To me she looks 17 years old but in reality she is probably around 1,200 years old,'' Goddio said.

Gaballah said researchers were aware of the existence of the ancient cities but could not pinpoint their exact location.

``Thanks to modern technology and the efforts of the Egyptian-French team, we could pinpoint cities that were read about in Greco-Roman literature,'' he told Reuters.

Also discovered during two years of undersea exploration were the head of a pharaonic statue of a sphinx, jewelry and gold coins dating from the Byzantine and Islamic eras.

The archaeologists said the coins showed the region had not been submerged until the eighth century, although the cities had been founded many hundreds of years earlier.

The archaeologists said they had also identified two other submerged cities in the same area, Canopus and Thonis, but had not yet retrieved relics from them.

(Reim Bashir 6/4/00 13:40)