CAIRO (AP) – Egypt’s most famous archaeologist on Saturday released further details about a pharaonic city recently found in the southern province of Luxor.
Zahi Hawass said archaeologists have found brick houses, artifacts and tools from the Pharaonic period on the site of the 3,000-year-old lost city. It dates from Amenhotep III of the 18th dynasty, whose government became a golden era for ancient Egypt.
“It really is a big city that has been lost … The inscription in it says that the city was called ‘The Brilliant Athens,'” Hawass told reporters.
Archaeologists excavated the area last year and searched for the body of the boy King Tutankhamun. Within a few weeks, however, they found mudstone formations that ended up being a large city that was well preserved.
It is alleged that city walls and even rooms are filled with ovens, pottery and utensils used in daily life. Archaeologists also found human remains visible to reporters and visitors on Saturday.
“We found three major districts, one for administration, one for workers to sleep in, one for industry and (an) area for dried meat,” Hawass said.
He said he believed the city had been ‘the most important discovery’ since Tutankhamun’s tomb in Luxor’s Valley of the Kings in 1922 was almost completely intact.
Hawass also rejects the idea that the city’s surplus has been discovered before, as suggested in social media reports. “It’s impossible … for me to discover something that has been discovered before,” he said.
Betsy Brian, professor of Egyptology at John Hopkins University, agrees that the find is new and calls it ‘extraordinary in scope and organization’.
“There is no indication that I am aware that this part of town has been found before, although it is clearly a new part of a huge royal city, which we can now appreciate much more,” she said.
The recently excavated city is located between the temple of King Rameses III and the colossi of Amenhotep III on the west bank of the Nile in Luxor. The city is still used by the grandson Tutankhamun of Amenhotep III, and then his successor King Ay.
Some mudstones bear the seal of King Amenhotep III’s cartouche, or insignia.
Amenhotep III, who ruled ancient Egypt between 1391 BC and 1353 BC, built the main sections of the Luxor and Karnak temples in the ancient city of Thebes.
Egypt has sought publicity for its archaeological discoveries in hopes of reviving its tourism sector, which was hit hard by the post-2011 uprising, and now the coronavirus pandemic.
The announcement comes a few days after Egypt moved 22 of its esteemed royal mummies to their new resting place in a gala parade – the newly opened National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in Cairo.