On Thursday, divers working in Abu Qir Bay off Alexandria guided slings around half-buried sculptures while cranes lifted them from the seabed. The recovery yielded a headless Ptolemaic statue, the base of a Roman marble likeness, and a quartz sphinx bearing the cartouche of Ramses II.
The operation unfolded inside an underwater archaeological zone that Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities identified as an outlying district of ancient Canopus. “The site is a living witness to the greatness, history and civilization of ancient Egypt,” said Mohamed Ismail Khaled, Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.
Survey teams documented an intact 125-metre quay that once served small boats during the Roman and Byzantine periods, along with limestone temples, private houses, artisan workshops, rock-cut reservoirs, and fish ponds—evidence of careful urban planning and a diverse economy, reported the Times of Israel. Researchers also charted a merchant ship, clusters of stone anchors, and the base of a harbor crane that marked the former bustle of the Canopic branch of the Nile, added CBS News.
Many statues surfaced without limbs or heads. The presence of Ramses II underlined the site’s symbolic weight across eras.
“There’s a lot underwater, but what we’re able to bring up is limited; it’s only specific material according to strict criteria. The rest will remain part of our sunken heritage,” said Tourism and Antiquities Minister Sherif Fathy. Egypt, a signatory to UNESCO’s Convention on Underwater Cultural Heritage, argued that partial retrieval aided conservation while allowing further study in situ.
Canopus flourished for almost nine centuries under the Ptolemies and later Rome, famous for its wealth, indulgence, and the principal sanctuary of the Greco-Egyptian god Serapis. Strong earthquakes and rising seas submerged the city about 1,200 years ago, recalled La Croix. Those same forces also drowned nearby Thonis-Heracleion, making Abu Qir Bay one of the Mediterranean’s richest underwater repositories.
The waters that swallowed Canopus now threaten modern Alexandria. The United Nations projected that even under the most optimistic scenario, one-third of Egypt’s second-largest city would become submerged or uninhabitable by 2050; gauges already recorded an annual sea-level rise of roughly three millimetres, compounded by Nile delta subsidence and aquifer over-exploitation. Fathy said the contrast between ancient loss and present danger should heighten global awareness of cultural and human vulnerability along the Mediterranean shore.
Ongoing dives continued to catalogue coins, pottery, ushabti figurines, and amphorae stamped with commercial seals. “These findings reveal a high degree of economic and urban sophistication,” said Khaled. Egyptian officials described the mission as a milestone in the national effort to research and develop Abu Qir Bay, convinced that each object lifted from the silt enlarged Alexandria’s heritage and its cautionary tale for the twenty-first century.
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