Heracleion a City Discovered Under Water after 1500 Years

Heracleion a City Discovered Under Water after 1500 Years
Image Courtesy: Franck Goddio

Heracleion, a much prosperous and a known city had been engulfed underwater 1500 years ago. This grand city had also been mentioned by the Greek writer Herodotus, the 5th-century BC historian. He had told a wonderful tale of Helen of Troy, the most beautiful woman in the world, who had launched a thousand ships, travelled to Heracleion, then a port of ‘great wealth’, with her glamorous Trojan lover, Paris.

The discovery of Heracleion will now add depth and detail to our knowledge of the ancient world, because among the discoveries, there are perfectly preserved steles (inscribed pillars) decorated with hieroglyphics. Once translated, they will reveal much about the religious and political life in this corner of ancient Egypt. A similar inscription on the Rosetta stone had been discovered in the Nile Delta town of Rosetta in 1799 by a French soldier, and now preserved in the British Museum, it had cracked the code of hieroglyphics in the first place.