WATANI International
12 September 2010
Some 2,000 years ago, a thriving Greco-Roman port city boasting villas of merchants grown rich on the wheat and olive trade, lay underneath what is today Marina, a luxury summer resort on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast. The ancient city, known as Leukaspis or Antiphrae, was hidden for centuries after it was nearly wiped out by a fourth century tsunami that devastated the region. It was discovered 25 years ago, when construction began on the site some 100km west of Alexandria to erect what is today the thriving Marina. Construction was directly halted, and a stretch of about 200 acres set aside for archaeological excavation.
The ancient city yielded up its secrets to a team of Polish archaeologists excavating the site through the 1990s. The picture thaat emerged was of a prosperous port town, with up to 15,000 residents at its height, exporting grain, livestock, wine and olives to other Mediterranean countries.
Merchants lived in elegant two-story villas set along zigzagging streets with pillared courtyards flanked by living and prayer rooms. Rainwater collected from roofs ran down special hollowed out pillars into channels under the floor leading to the family cisterns. Waste disappeared into a sophisticated sewer system.
The town centre, where the two main streets intersect, was the social and economic heart of the city. There can still be found the remains of a basilica which later became a church when Christianity spread in Egypt.
A semicircular niche lined with benches underneath a portico provided a space for town elders to discuss business before retiring to the bathhouse across the street.
Greek columns and bright limestone walls up to two metres high today remain standing in some places, reflecting the sun. Steep shafts lead to rock-cut tombs in the deeply buried burial chambers of the city’s necropolis.
It is from the sea from which the city gained much of its livelihood. It began as a way station in the coastal trade between Egypt and Libya to the west. Later, it began exporting goods from its surrounding farms overseas, particularly to the island of Crete, just 480 km away north in the Mediterranean.
And from the sea came its end. Leukaspis was largely destroyed when a massive earthquake near Crete in AD365 set off a tsunami wave that also devastated nearby Alexandria. In the ensuing centuries, tough economic times and a collapsing Roman Empire meant that most settlements along the coast disappeared.
Today, the ancient Leukaspis is being open to visitors. The tombs, villas and city streets represent a rare example of a Classical era. “Visitors can go to understand how people lived back then, how they built their graves, lived in villas or traded in the main agora square,” said Ahmed Amin, the local inspector for the antiquities department. “Everyone##s heard of the resort Marina, now they will know the historic Marina.”
Compiled from the Associated Press PAUL SCHEMM’s ++Where Egypt##s elite now play, an ancient Roman port on Mediterranean once thrived++