Archaeologists in Egypt have just uncovered an entire hidden city buried beneath the sands for thousands of years! Dubbed the “Golden City,” it’s filled with dazzling treasures, pottery, and ancient workshops that reveal how people truly lived during the age of the pharaohs. The discovery has been called one of the most significant since Tutankhamun’s tomb. Every building, tool, and jewel tells a story about life, trade, and power in ancient Egypt. Scientists are still piecing together its mysteries, and new findings are revealed almost daily. Join us as we explore this lost city of gold and secrets waiting to be told. Animation is created by Bright Side. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/
Check our Bright Side podcast on Spotify and leave a positive review! https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV Subscribe to Bright Side: https://goo.gl/rQTJZz ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Our Social Media: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brightplanet/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brightside.official TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@brightside.official?lang=en
Stock materials (photos, footages and other): https://www.depositphotos.com https://www.shutterstock.com https://www.eastnews.ru ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This video is made for entertainment purposes. We do not make any warranties about the completeness, safety and reliability. Any action you take upon the information in this video is strictly at your own risk, and we will not be liable for any damages or losses. It is the viewer's responsibility to use judgement, care and precaution if you plan to replicate.
00:00For over 3,000 years, no one knew this place even existed.
00:05And then, out of nowhere, archaeologists digging near Alexandria uncovered something absolutely shocking.
00:12A forgotten Egyptian city.
00:14This place is buried under Greek ruins, hiding secrets that could rewrite the history of pharaohs and their armies.
00:21And one of the artifacts, which looks like a simple wine jug, changed everything.
00:27We thought that we already placed all the important parts on the map of ancient Egypt.
00:32Pyramids, Thebes, Luxor, Alexandria.
00:35But nope, the map just got an update.
00:38The new city was a big deal, and it's about 3,400 years old.
00:43It's just been discovered at the site called Com el Nugos.
00:47This place is located west of Alexandria and tucked between the Mediterranean and a saltwater lake, called Lake Marut.
00:54This discovery raised a few eyebrows.
00:58Scientists thought that this place used to be empty and that it was only settled by the Greeks in about 332 BCE.
01:05But it turns out that people lived in Com el Nugos way before that.
01:12When archaeologists were digging through Greek ruins, they started noticing something unexpected.
01:18Mudbrick walls.
01:19Yep, you know, the pyramid type.
01:21That's the kind Egyptians built during the New Kingdom.
01:24These mudbricks were made from mud, clay, sand, and straw.
01:29These ingredients were mixed with water and dried in the sun, not baked.
01:33Egyptians used them for thousands of years to build houses, temples, palaces, and yes, the pyramids.
01:40Of course, other civilizations did use mudbrick too, but Egyptian mudbrick is kind of quirky.
01:46They used straw that grew in their regions, layout styles, and mortar.
01:50That's what helped the experts realize that Egyptians used to hang out in Com el Nugos.
01:56That alone raised eyebrows, and then they found more.
02:00An entire street layout, buried structures, and even a temple built by Ramses the Great himself.
02:07His name speaks for itself.
02:10This guy was one of the most famous pharaohs in all of Egyptian history.
02:13He ruled ancient Egypt for 60 years, fought huge battles, and just loved building tons of stuff like that temple.
02:22People loved him so much that later pharaohs literally pretended to be him or wrote his name on their buildings.
02:29That's when archaeologists realized that they weren't looking at some dusty mudbricks of a tiny village.
02:35That's an entire buried city.
02:37They immediately started digging more.
02:41Turns out, the whole place wasn't random.
02:43It was built with great care.
02:45The streets had drains to stop rainwater from damaging the soft mudbricked walls.
02:50There were also small tomb chapels with writings about soldiers.
02:55This suggests this place might have been the military base.
02:58And that changes a lot.
03:01In ancient Egypt, when the military showed up, there must have been a reason.
03:07So what was it?
03:08Protection?
03:09Conquest?
03:10Control of something important?
03:12In the case of this city, it was probably about wine, water, and trade on the edge of the desert.
03:18What's even crazier is that we still don't know just how big it was.
03:23The team has only uncovered part of it so far.
03:25There could be fortifications, warehouses, administrative buildings, or even more religious or royal structures waiting underground.
03:34We also don't know what this town was called in ancient times.
03:39That name is still buried.
03:41But it might be uncovered someday.
03:43Maybe inside a wall.
03:45Maybe on a scroll.
03:46Maybe on another broken jug.
03:48One of those already turned out to be a mind blower.
03:54A chunk of a ceramic jar, called an amphora, had a royal seal pressed into it.
03:59And that seal bore the name Meridaton.
04:03Princess Meridaton wasn't just anyone.
04:05She was the eldest daughter of Queen Nefertiti and the older sister of King Tutankhamen.
04:11Yes, that's right.
04:12Both Nefertiti and King Tut were involved here.
04:15All that was about a century before Ramses the Great built one of his temples here.
04:21Looks like the city was founded back in the days of another pharaoh.
04:25The pharaoh Akhenaten, husband of Queen Nefertiti, father of Princess Meridaton, and future king Tutankhamen.
04:33That guy, Akhenaten, was a bit of a wild card.
04:37He was the type who really gets weird about one of his interests.
04:40He tried to completely change Egypt's religion, forcing everyone to worship the sun disk called Aten instead of the usual deities.
04:49He basically told all Egypt that all their mythology was wrong.
04:53And from now on, there will be no more Osiris, no more Toth, or Set.
04:58Just raw sunlight only, people.
05:00That's known in history as the Amarna period.
05:04And he went all in.
05:06Changed his name, built an entirely new capital city called Amarna in the middle of the desert.
05:12Redesigned temples, rewrote hymns, and even banned traditional religious imagery.
05:18Even the art got wild at the time.
05:20People started getting elongated heads, belly rolls, and all that humanity and vulnerability carved into stone.
05:27It was deliberately weird.
05:29He wanted to show the family not as perfect gods, but as human vessels of divine light.
05:36Everyone had to awkwardly smile and play along because he was the pharaoh after all.
05:41The wackiest part is that after his rule, his son, Tutankhamen, reversed all the sun disk-related stuff.
05:47He literally changed his name from Tutankhamen, which means living image of the Aten, the sun disk, to Tutankhamen, which means living image of Amun, one of the great older deities.
06:00King Tut brought back the old deities, reopened the temples, and erased as much of Akhenaten's legacy as possible.
06:07Looks like his family didn't really like the sun cult after all.
06:10Meanwhile, this discovered wine jug shows that the city was probably active, thriving with life during Akhenaten's times.
06:20That's huge!
06:21Up until now, there was no clear evidence that his radical ideas and projects extended all the way to the north.
06:29The jug also shows that vineyards and wine production reached all the way to the north in ancient Egypt.
06:35Wine really was a huge deal, worthy of placing a military base here.
06:41Princess Maritaton most likely used this jug.
06:44Just like with her brother, she was born into the sun and named after it.
06:49Her name, also spelled Maritaton, meant beloved of the Aten.
06:53As the eldest daughter of Pharaoh and his queen, born right into the middle of radical religious changes, she was raised to perform the future queen's duties.
07:02From her earliest years, she walked in temples alongside her mother, Nefertiti, shaking the sistrum in solemn rituals.
07:11She was there when Akhenaten established his capital city, Amarna.
07:15He clearly loved his family.
07:17Maritaton's face was etched into its stone walls more than anyone else.
07:22In every temple, in every sacred scene, her figure appears revered.
07:27Things get foggy in history after her father passed away.
07:31The throne wobbled.
07:32King Tut was very young, only nine years old when he had to take new duties.
07:39Maritaton seemed to have been a brief step between her father and her younger brother.
07:43She married someone called Smunkunkari.
07:46History isn't even sure who that mysterious man was.
07:50Could have been a puppet, a phantom king in a crumbling dynasty.
07:53May have even been her brother.
07:56Whatever the truth was, these two took power and ruled together for a while.
08:01Maritaton got the title of the great royal wife, a title of immense power.
08:06But Smunkunkari was a very short-lived ruler.
08:10He passed away just in about a year.
08:12There are some speculations among historians that Maritaton was the actual ruler, the informal female pharaoh, because her brother was too young.
08:23Some theories say that she raised Tutankhamun and became a sort of queen regent, mentoring the child who would be used to restore the old order.
08:31But all this is unconfirmed.
08:33It's very hard for historians to find information about that time, because the Amarna period was later condemned.
08:41The successors wanted to wipe away Akhenaten's heresy and everything attached to it.
08:46This included Maritaton.
08:48So even if she ruled, even if she mothered Tut, they tried to bury her in the sands of history.
08:54In any case, perhaps this new uncovered city will tell us more about the mysteries of the Amarna period, one of the most chaotic periods of ancient Egypt.
09:05That's it for today.
09:09So hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your friends.
09:14Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the bright side.
Be the first to comment