Thonis-Heracleion, The Ancient Egyptian City That Vanished Into The Mediterranean
Christoph Gerigk © Franck Goddio/Hilti FoundationThe statue of a Ptolemaic king from Thonis-Heracleion.
For centuries, Thonis-Heracleion was something of a mystery. It was known as Thonis to the Egyptians and Heracleioon to the Greeks, but neither were entirely sure if the city had existed at all.
Like many lost civilizations, Thonis-Heracleion had been relegated to the realm of legend — that is, until the late 20th century, when divers soon uncovered evidence of the ancient lost city deep beneath the waves of the Mediterannean Sea.
After years of detailed seafloor mapping and excavations, researchers eventually uncovered the remains of the ancient city beneath a thick layer of sediment. Along with it came numerous relics, statues, and treasures dating back to before the eight century B.C.E.
In the decades since, more about Thonis-Heracleion has been made clear. Historians now know that the ancient city had been a bustling port — a highly important one in ancient Egypt, serving as the first stop for ships importing goods.
That said, many stories about the port city are still hard to verify. For example, Herodotus said Thonis-Heracleion was where Heracles first arrived in Egypt, and where Paris and Helen of Troy visited before the Trojan War began. Unfortunately, these descriptions of the city are still largely based in myth.
What historians have gleaned, however, is that as Alexandria became more and more prominent, Thonis-Heracleion became less so. Natural disasters wreaked havoc on the city, eventually causing bits of it to fall into the sea, and by the eight century C.E., the city was completely gone.
It wasn’t until the late 1990s and early 2000s that marine archaeologists were able to fully uncover the ruined, submerged city — but what they found was remarkable.
