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Editor in Chief Mohamed Wadie

Hawass Reveals Secrets Found in the Nile's 'Womb'


Tue 02 Jul 2019 | 01:39 PM
Ali Abu Dashish

Many French and American missions are excavating for missing monuments in the Mediterranean Sea. They have found, in the eastern port, many antiquities of the Ptolemaic palaces submerged under water. Ptolemies ruled Egypt for roughly 300 years. Cleopatra VII, was the last Ptolemaic queen to rule Egypt.

Egyptian archaeologist Dr Zahi Hawass said: “When I filmed an 11-topic series, directed by American director Leslie Greif, “for History” television channel, I met a Greek archeologist working in the Eastern port.

“We pulled a huge pillar out of the water. This pillar belongs to Queen Cleopatra's palace. It is known that a tomb was built for Cleopatra next to the palace that is under water now,” Hawass added.

The Egyptian archaeologist noted: “We have no evidence whether Cleopatra was buried in this tomb or not, hence, a Dominican archaeological mission confirmed that Cleopatra and Mark Antony were buried together inside a temple located about 30 km west of Alexandria. This mission has been working in the temple for 12 years”.

Hawass stressed that many antiquities of coins and statues belonging to the charming queen were discovered but the tomb hasn’t been discovered yet.

Diving missions under the Mediterranean Sea discovered a city submerged under water in Abu Qir. In addition, the fleet of French commander Napoleon Bonaparte and archaeological gold treasures were discovered as well.

“When I was a student at Faculty of Arts, Archaeology Department at Alexandria University, I went with Dr. Fawzi al-Fakharani, a professor of archaeology, to El Shatby area. We saw Abu El Sa’adat, the Egyptian per, pulling out a statue of Isis weighing about 20 tons from the eastern port,” Hawass said.

“I started digging and working on the site of the unfinished obelisk in Aswan. From there, the ancient Egyptians were able to transfer the statues made of granite through a port in front of quarries, via the Nile to Luxor and Cairo,” Hawass revealed.

The Egyptian archaeologist added:”Therefore, I believed that there is a need to present a program on the management of the archaeological sites in this area”.

“We have removed thousands of tons of sand and stones. We have been able to uncover a lot of evidence that shows how the pharaohs cut the obelisks and statues,” Hawass revealed.

“We discovered the ways through which they cut the obelisks, as well as the names of the workers who worked in the site. We also found that the engineer supervising the work was drawing arrows on the stones to be a guide for workers while cutting the stones”.

“We found drawings covering the obelisks, as well as dolphin drawings. this indicates that some workers came from the Mediterranean region as this kind of fish doesn’t live in the river Nile”.

“We found diorite balls that were used to clean the surface of the obelisks, as well as images of god of fun “Bs” worshiped by the workers who cut the granite”.

“We also discovered a Hieroglyphic text in which King Thutmose III, known as "Napoleon of the Ancient Age", orders his engineer to cut an obelisk to offer it for his father, God Amun”.

“While doing this work with archaeologist Adel El Kilany’s assistants, we found that the pharaohs were transferring obelisks weighing about 100 tons” Hawass said.

He affirmed that there is no doubt that these obelisks were exposed to accidents and sank to the bottom of the Nile, so “I have decided to head a research mission on excavating at the bottom of the Nile”.

Contributed by: Basant Ahmed