Sunken cities surface in time
By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY
Some people collect postage stamps, beer cans or Beanie Babies. Mohammed El-Sarji collects underwater cities.
So far, he has found two.
The latest, he believes, is Yarmuta, an ancient Egyptian port that disappeared off the coast of today's Lebanon some 3,300 years ago. Historians know it best from the Amarna Tablets, letters sent to the Egyptian Pharaohs Amenophis III and his son Akhenaten 3,400 years ago. The letters, filled with disputes over the territory of modern-day Lebanon, came from the Persian and Middle Eastern rulers who fought over Yarmuta's territory with the Pharaohs.
"It was a great city that stood up for the Pharaohs of Egypt," says El-Sarji, who lives half the year in Los Angeles and half in Lebanon, where he heads the Lebanese Divers Association.
The findings by El-Sarji and others are part of a growing list of cities that have been discovered under the waters of the Mediterranean in the past five years. These ancient towns dotted the edges of the Mediterranean, but were relegated to watery graves through earthquakes, rising water levels and floods over the past 3,000 years.
Reports of such finds "certainly seem to be picking up," says Jean-Daniel Stanley of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., a member of one such discovery team. Researchers hope investigation of the sites will yield better information about life around the cradle of Western civilization.
Here's a look at some of the finds:
Lost city of the Pharaohs
El-Sarji and Lebanese historian Yossef El-Hourany believe they have found the Yarmuta described in the Amarna Tablets. A "Mount Yarmuta" mentioned in the letters is the closest mountain to the site's beach, says El-Hourany, who directed El-Sarji to the site.
Over 10 months ending in February, El-Sarji mapped an underwater region about three miles long, about half a mile off the beach. To do so, he made about 600 dives at the site to photograph the ruins.
On his survey, he photographed paving stones of a broad central square as well as statues of the Egyptian goddess Bastet and the head of the god Set, the researchers say.
"If it is Yarmuta, it is a very exciting find, because Yarmuta was one of the cities that caused the Egyptians a lot of trouble," says marine archaeologist Cheryl Ward of Florida State University in Tallahassee, who reviewed a portfolio of photographs taken by El-Sarji. "If it is a port, particularly from that early period, it is even more exciting because early port sites are few and far between."
Lost city of the Nile
Last year, an international archaeological team reported the discovery of Heraklieon, a water-covered Egyptian city near the mouth of the Nile River that disappeared, either through floods or earthquakes, more than 1,000 years ago. Led by French archaeologist Franck Goddio, the team revealed its latest findings in June, the most startling of which included a statue of the Nile River goddess, Hapi, and stone tablets announcing tariffs on Greek trade goods.
"We have found the famous Temple of Heracles-Khonsu," Goddio announced, citing the statue of Hapi as proof of the discovery. The site is renowned in legend as the place where Hercules once changed the course of the Nile. An accompanying pair of statues, of a pharaoh and queen, turned up broken where they had fallen inside a pink granite shrine dedicated to the town's mythological patron.
The stone tablets, or stelae, confirm the city as Heraklieon. Amid the submerged walls and streets of the town, Goddio's team found the wrecks of 10 ships that sank in the harbor of the trading town, a center of commerce before the rise of Alexandria.
Cisterns mark ancient city
In 1999, El-Sarji located Sidoon, another ancient underwater ruin, a sunken island town covered with cisterns, off the Lebanese coast near the city of Sidon. Extensive mapping of the site revealed it to have been an island town, whose inhabitants used their separation from shore for security, augmenting their water supplies with rainwater collected in oversized cisterns chiseled into the native rock of the island.
To document Sidoon, El-Sarji received funding from a Lebanese television network and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
For the latest find, "what is worthy to note is our discovery of a very wide field of thermal springs under the water of the sea, near the shore, at a distance less than 10 kilometers (about six miles) from our site," El-Hourany says. Those springs, submerged by a slow rise in sea level or earthquakes, appear in mentions of Yarmuta and narrowed the search site for the town.
Despite the certainty of Lebanese discoverers about their identification of Yarmuta, other archaeologists are much less convinced, Ward says. "It is highly likely that the photos (of El-Sarji's) illustrate some parts of a submerged site," she acknowledges.
Israeli historian Nadav Na'aman calls it "highly unlikely" that the discovery is the Yarmuta mentioned in Egyptian tablets, because that city was farther north, near modern Beirut, he argues.
Proper identification of the site, in his view, awaits a full investigation of artifacts found there.
The Lebanese discoverers agree with the need for an archaeological examination of their site, which they have left undisturbed aside from taking photographs. "Backing to do more search and discoveries would be welcomed, and there are more things to discover, I am sure," El-Sarji says.
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