Secrets of Ancient Egyptian Ships (Ancient Egypt History Documentary)
- 8 yıl önce
Secrets of Ancient Egyptian Ships (Ancient Egypt History Documentary)
The ancient Egyptian sunken port-city of Thonis-Heracleion is now having some of its secrets revealed thanks to new research from the University of Oxford. The port-city served as the obligatory gateway to Egypt sometime around the first millennium BC, being the place where incoming cargo from other regions was inventoried and taxed, before being transferred to Egyptian ships for transport down the Nile.
The region where this city was once located is now under water, and is located about 6.5 kilometers off of the present day coastline. Makes you wonder what the coastlines of the world will look like in a thousand or so years, and what modern cities will be underwater by then. When you factor in modern anthropogenic climate change, and the rate at which the seas are predicted to rise with it, it is likely to be quite a few.
"This obligatory port of entry, known as 'Thonis' by the Egyptians and 'Heracleion' by the Greeks, was where seagoing ships probably unloaded their cargoes to have them assessed by temple officials and taxes extracted before transferring them to Egyptian ships that went upriver. Before the foundation of Alexandria, it was one of the biggest commercial hubs in the Mediterranean because of its geographical position at the mouth of the Nile."
The city is a somewhat recent archaeological find, the first traces of the city were found only as recently as the year 2000, by the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology.
The ancient Egyptian sunken port-city of Thonis-Heracleion is now having some of its secrets revealed thanks to new research from the University of Oxford. The port-city served as the obligatory gateway to Egypt sometime around the first millennium BC, being the place where incoming cargo from other regions was inventoried and taxed, before being transferred to Egyptian ships for transport down the Nile.
The region where this city was once located is now under water, and is located about 6.5 kilometers off of the present day coastline. Makes you wonder what the coastlines of the world will look like in a thousand or so years, and what modern cities will be underwater by then. When you factor in modern anthropogenic climate change, and the rate at which the seas are predicted to rise with it, it is likely to be quite a few.
"This obligatory port of entry, known as 'Thonis' by the Egyptians and 'Heracleion' by the Greeks, was where seagoing ships probably unloaded their cargoes to have them assessed by temple officials and taxes extracted before transferring them to Egyptian ships that went upriver. Before the foundation of Alexandria, it was one of the biggest commercial hubs in the Mediterranean because of its geographical position at the mouth of the Nile."
The city is a somewhat recent archaeological find, the first traces of the city were found only as recently as the year 2000, by the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology.