NARRATOR: It's the New York City of ancient Egypt.
The kingdom's most important center for international trade.
The place where pharaohs come to be crowned and revered.
The home of Gods and mythic heroes.
Then, 2,000 years ago...
It disappears without a trace.
BOB: The legend informs us of a city in Egypt with a Temple of Hercules
that was a great emporium, a trading center.
It was an enormous source of wealth for Egypt proper.
NARRATOR: Many have hunted for the fabled city on land,
but no sign of it has ever been found.
One of the world's most celebrated archaeologists,
Franck Goddio, believes he can succeed where others
have failed by looking somewhere new.
FRANCK: I thought it would be extraordinary to find it and
excavate it and see what it could teach us about the past.
NARRATOR: Franck puts together one of the biggest underwater
archaeological expeditions ever undertaken,
equipped with the latest technology.
His goal, to track down the lost city of Heracleion.
Unravel myth from history.
And, re-write the story of Egypt.
The hunt for Heracleion begins on the north Egyptian coast.
Scouring the ancient texts Franck and his team have
narrowed their search down to here.
East of modern day Alexandria.
A 40 square mile area in the bay of Abu Qir.
In 1996 they start to scour the area in forensic detail...
using the very latest nuclear magnetic resonance probes
and high resolution sonar scanners,
searching for any evidence that may lurk beneath these
turbulent estuary waters.
FRANCK: You have a team looking at you for days, it's fine.
For weeks, OK.
[speaking native language].
For months, it start to be very hard and people are
coming to you and say, "Um, Franck, uh, are you sure?"
NARRATOR: All Franck has to go on are 2,000 year old stories.
They speak of a mighty metropolis in the Nile Delta
with a massive port.
The outside world's gateway to Egypt.
And, a great temple dedicated to the Gods who give the
pharaohs their right to rule these lands.
Greek writers suggest Heracleion exists between
the eighth and second centuries BC.
But, their descriptions are mixed up with fantastical
stories of mythical heroes.
From the half God, Heracles, founding the city
to Helen of Troy seeking refuge in its temple, with her lover, Paris.
As months of searching turn to years,
it would be easy to suspect Franck is chasing a myth.
FRANCK: Of course, there is always a doubt that...
is it existing, really?
Are you looking in the right spot, you know?
Always those question, give you the full responsibility of the
mission whether it fails or it does succeed.
[speaking native language].
NARRATOR: Finally, Franck spots something.
A change in the magnetic readings bouncing off the sea bed,
indicating that the sediment here has been
disturbed by something.
After four years of searching it's the lead he needs.
He zeroes in on one corner of the bay where he discovers
something unexpected.
FRANCK: There is something very strange here.
It's a straight line and, in nature,
you very rarely find something absolutely straight.
I had the feeling that there there was something very important.
NARRATOR: Divers investigate what's behind the signal.
But, they find nothing.
FRANCK: I was hoping something could be seen,
and the diver came back saying, sand...flat sand.
NARRATOR: But, Franck trusts his data.
The divers return and begin to dig through the sand.
It's several feel thick.
So, armed with dredges, they set to work sucking up
tons of sand and silt to see what lies below.
It's a long, slow process.
FRANCK: First foot of sediment we found some shard
mixed with the sand.
Ceramic. It's interesting.
Then, on the third feet of the sediment something white appear.
A limestone block.
Beautifully preserved, like if it were new.
NARRATOR: The quality of the limestone Franck uncovers
means it must come from quarries further south.
There is only one way it could have gotten here.
FRANCK: There is no limestone whatsoever in the Bay of Abu Qir,
so it was obvious that there was there something made by man.
NARRATOR: Could this be part of the lost city Franck spent
years searching for?
With visibility limited to only a few feet it's hard for
him to make out what he has discovered.
But now, we can.
Using sophisticated computer software to drain away water
and sand to reveal an accurate picture of what lies beneath
this corner of Abu Qir Bay.
A series of limestone blocks gradually appears.
All with the same regular shape.
Some are stacked on top of each other in,
what looks like, a wall.
And, measuring ten feet wide and over 500 feet long it's huge.
But, just beyond, more ruins.
From the position of the limestone pieces,
Franck believes this was once a single structure
the size of a city block.
It's a remarkable find.
The first glimpse of what maybe the famous lost city of
Heracleion.
BOB: Finding a large structure of limestone indicates an
enormous expenditure of time, energy and resources because
that limestone had to be quarried from further south in
Egypt, and that tells you that you're in an important site.
NARRATOR: According to legend, the most important building in
the lost city was its famous Temple to Heracles.
Are these limestone blocks part of it?
Franck needs more evidence.
Returning to the drained landscape,
something catches the eye.
A different kind of stone.
Black granite.
Seven blocks of it leading to the temple.
Examining them more closely it's clear they've been carved.
The face of a man and the body of a lion.
They are sphinxes.
Whatever this site is, it's ancient Egyptian.
FRANCK: Discovering those sphinx was extremely exciting
because we knew that we were on an Egyptian monument and,
little by little, the whole picture came to our mind.
NARRATOR: Sphinxes are symbols of protection.
Great avenues of guardian sphinxes still exist,
leading up to sacred Egyptian buildings.
The size.
The limestone.
The avenue of sphinxes.
All signs point to this being a temple and, maybe,
the famous Temple of Heracles itself.
FRANCK: To find a missing temple under the sea,
under the sediment is something nearly unbelievable.
BOB: It's, perhaps, the greatest archaeological
discovery to have ever happened in the Nile Delta.
NARRATOR: And, there's more.
As Franck and the team scour the area for clues,
they come across faces from a lost world.
♪
NARRATOR: Archaeologist, Franck Goddio,
has discovered a mysterious ancient temple lying under
water, just off the coast of northern Egypt.
He believes it may be the famous Temple of Heracles,
part of the lost city of Heracleion.
To be sure, he needs more evidence of when it is built
and who it belongs to.
Searching for clues his team painstakingly syphons away
hundreds of tons of sand from around the site,
revealing parts of a huge statue.
FRANCK: At the very beginning, we could not understand exactly what it was, because we saw
something looking like a foot, but it was so big that I said
'no it must be something else'.
But, suddenly, we found the face.
NARRATOR: Hewn from red granite,
this jumble of giant limbs and faces clearly represents a
number of human figures.
BOB: All I can say is wow.
That is the largest complex of monumental statues ever
discovered in the Egyptian Delta.
It's extraordinary and unparalleled.
NARRATOR: Their location reveals they stood just
outside the temple entrance.
Discovering whom they portray could help reveal the temple's
true name and purpose.
BOB: The $64,000 question is how do I identify the individuals
represented by the statues because they are not inscribed.
NARRATOR: Using data from the dive,
we can do something never possible before.
Digitally reconstruct these long lost figures.
As the pieces come together, three colossal statues take shape.
Each stands over 16 feet high and weighs over 6 tons.
Carved atop the heads of two of the statues,
a man and a woman, are royal crowns.
A pharaoh and his queen.
The presence and sheer scale of the royal couple suggest
this is a temple of major significance.
Egyptologist and art historian, Dr Bob Bianchi,
studies the representation of pharaohs in ancient Egyptian art.
He's come to the Temple of Kom Ombo near Aswan,
where he believes images on the wall may shed light on the
underwater statues in Abu Qir Bay,
and help reveal the temple's age.
BOB: So, royal images in any given period of Egyptian
history, are characterized by what we call a period style.
NARRATOR: Nowhere is this more obvious than in
representations of the pharaohs.
BOB: So, here we have an image of a pharaoh surrounding by deities.
The first thing we notice is that the pharaoh's head is
protected by a sacred cobra, The Uraeus,
and the tail of the cobra has a little bit of a loop that
goes to our left hand side.
And then, there's this curious feature of the depression of the navel.
That looks like a tear drop navel.
All of these features, from the head into the torso,
are exactly the same details that we found on the royal statue.
NARRATOR: It's evidence that both carvings are from the same period.
BOB: This particular example is dated to the Ptolemaic period,
305 to 30BC.
So, in my estimation, the statue found at the site is
also to be dated to the Ptolemaic period.
NARRATOR: The Ptolemies are the last pharaohs to rule
ancient Egypt before it falls to Rome and, crucially,
they rule at the same time that Heracleion itself is
supposed to have existed.
The date of the temple in Abu Qir Bay is a likely
match for the lost city.
The scale and location all suggest that the temple could
have been the centerpiece of Heracleion.
But, until Franck discovers whom the temple was dedicated
to he can't know for sure.
Ancient records state the temple in Heracleion was
dedicated to the Greek God, Heracles.
By the time of the Ptolemies strong trade links between
Greece and Egypt mean their cultures are closely entwined.
Greeks adopted Egyptian Gods and, vice versa.
If this is the temple in Heracleion both Greeks and
Egyptians would have worshipped its Gods.
FRANCK: I thought let us go and do an excavation in the
heart...of the heart...of the temple where, normally,
the shrine containing the main God of the temple should stand.
And, we started to uncover, little by little,
a red granite pyramid.
NARRATOR: This unassuming stone shrine belonged to the
main God of the temple.
Studying it up close it's possible to make out
intricately carved shapes running down the sides.
They're faded and worn but they appear to be
ancient Egyptian writing.
Hieroglyphs.
The 2300 year old message is deciphered and it finally
reveals which God this temple is dedicated to.
FRANCK: What we have discovered was a shrine saying,
"I am the house of the God Amun-Gareb."
At that time we knew that we were in the temple of Amun-Gareb.
NARRATOR: Amun-Gareb, the God who gives the pharaohs
their right to rule.
This is the place where the kings of Egypt come formally
to receive their title.
But, that's not all.
FRANCK: There is a stela in Cairo Museum in three
languages hieroglyph, demotic and Greek,
saying that the Temple of Amun-Gareb was also
the Temple of Heracles.
NARRATOR: Finally. The proof Franck needs.
He now knows that he's found the lost city of Heracleion.
FRANCK: It was quite fantastic.
With one artifact we had the identity of that temple but,
furthermore, we knew that we were in the middle of the city
we were looking for.
The city of Heracleion.
BOB: Case closed.
We've now been able to link the archaeological site with
the Greek testimonia that came before it.
NARRATOR: It's proof the city of Heracleion is more than a legend.
Using Franck's data, the mighty temple is now revealed.
Just as it once stood in the heart of the city.
FRANCK: The alley of sphinxes, the colossal statue in front.
BOB: This must have just blown you away traveling either by
sea or coming from land, to see this gigantic structure.
It was absolutely breathtaking.
NARRATOR: Now, knowing the huge significance of this legendary city,
Franck's desperate to find the rest of it.
While temples were built from stone,
all other Egyptian buildings, including palaces,
were made from mud brick which likely broke up
and dissolved under water.
To find traces of the city's crumbling ruins Franck employs
a new piece of technology.
A high resolution sub bottom profiler.
It's high frequency sound waves are better able to
detect wood and mud brick than magnetometers.
At nearly 700 feet from the temple it detects something solid.
FRANCK: I can see that it's not something very hard.
It's not stone, but it does reflect the beams.
Thus, it could be a layer of clay which is harder,
and then, there's a layer of clay or wood.
It's a very strange picture.
NARRATOR: The underwater team investigates.
Within a few hours they find the source of the strange signal.
Wooden timbers.
Could these really have survived from the days of the
lost city of Heracleion?
NARRATOR: Archaeologist, Franck Goddio and his team,
are searching for evidence of Heracleion's famous port.
Franck has discovered a mysterious wooden object which
he believes could reveal clues about the city.
The Mediterranean swell makes it hard for the divers to see
what they've uncovered.
But now, we can drain away thousands more tons of
sediment from Abu Qir Bay to reveal what lies buried
beneath the sand.
The ghostly skeleton of a wooden ship.
Its planks exposed to the light of day for the first
time since the Age of the Pharaohs.
These are considered among the oldest wooden timbers ever
discovered, yet they are in astonishingly good condition.
The hull is largely intact and reveals the ship is flat bottomed.
But, what's most extraordinary,
is the way the hull has been pieced together.
Franck has never seen this ship design before.
He calls in maritime archaeologist,
Damian Robinson, to help make sense of it.
DAMIAN: The ship itself is built in a way that we've not
seen in archaeology before.
It's got a strange brick-like pattern of the planking,
and the planks themselves are joined together in a way that
hasn't been recorded.
NARRATOR: Traditionally, wooden ships are made of
long, thin planks.
This bizarre layered design is totally unique.
What is this vessel?
And, why is it designed so strangely?
The cargo it was carrying is long gone so they
study the wood itself.
DAMIAN: We took a whole series of samples of the wood,
and you can look at the micro structure and identify what
wood type it was.
And so, this we were really fortunate,
that it was a wood type called acacia.
NARRATOR: The stunted, curvy branches of the acacia tree
are not ideal ship building material,
but it's one of the only tree species that can endure
Egypt's hot, dry climate.
DAMIAN: It was a very exciting find simply because it enabled
us to think that this was an Egyptian ship.
NARRATOR: The wood reveals this was probably a local
vessel, rather than a foreign trade ship.
And, it can also shed light on where it travelled,
thanks to a voracious marine mollusk called ship worm,
which preys on sea faring wooden ships.
DAMIAN: It was undamaged by ship worms and this helps us
to think that, perhaps, this wasn't a sea going ship.
That, perhaps, it was more of a river going ship.
NARRATOR: The ship's wide, flat hull also points to river travel
enabling it to navigate shallow water ways like the Nile Delta.
But, the ship's purpose remains a mystery.
Studying the ancient texts reveals a vital clue.
DAMIAN: Well, fortuitously, the Text of Herodotus tells us
almost, word for word, how our ship was built.
It was as if he'd been to a shipyard and seen one of these
constructed and then written it down.
NARRATOR: Using the words of Herodotus,
we can now understand exactly how this boat is built and
what it is used for.
With the stunted wood of acacia most readily available
shipwrights lay rows of short planks along the hull,
offset like bricks, to minimize the pressure at each joint.
Using this entirely new method of shipbuilding they create
vessels 90 feet long and 26 feet wide,
capable of carrying 120 tons of cargo.
Ancient river trading barges called baris.
DAMIAN: It's staggering that Herodotus can help us, 2,500 years later,
to solve the mystery of how this ship was put together.
NARRATOR: The presence of a single cargo ship hints that
some sort of trade went on around the temple.
But, it's not nearly enough evidence for an international trade center.
As divers continue to investigate,
they find strange, carved stone blocks scattered around the wreck.
Their shape and design varies, but all have one thing in
common, a hole approximately three inches wide.
To Damian, it's clear these are holes for rope meaning one thing.
DAMIAN: We've started to discover ancient anchors.
Clearly, these anchors were thrown in to anchor the ship,
but then, they got stuck, and so,
they were just cut away and left.
NARRATOR: In total the team uncovers more than 700 anchors.
DAMIAN: The anchors are extremely significant because
they enable us to work out which parts were land and
which parts were anchorages.
NARRATOR: It's clear now that hundreds of ships visited the city.
Franck's data also reveals dozens more wrecks that litter the site.
It's the largest collection of ancient shipwrecks ever
discovered anywhere on earth.
Plotting the locations of the wrecks and the anchors,
Franck can now map the layout of the city.
The outline of a central harbor appears...
interconnected by a network of waterways and canals.
The temple is surrounded by a huge port city.
FRANCK: All those shipwrecks.
Those hundreds of anchors we are pointing to a very active
port which had been active for century.
BOB: If you put the ships together with the statues,
together with the size of the temple,
together with the Greek descriptions,
we have a picture of a thriving economic powerhouse.
NARRATOR: Franck Goddio has uncovered that Heracleion was
a great port city, but he has yet to find evidence it's the
thriving international trade hub described by the ancient Greeks.
As the team excavates further, they begin to uncover objects
left behind by the city's inhabitants.
From luxury jewelry and perfume bottles to simple wine
amphora and cooking pots.
Each object shines light on the everyday lives
of the people here.
And, analyzing the individual designs,
the team discovers many of these artifacts were not made in Egypt.
FRANCK: We have ceramic from all over the Mediterranean world.
From Sicily.
From Ateek. This is Ateek.
Pristine. Quality. Important ceramic.
NARRATOR: So far, Franck has identified pottery from
18 different places.
Some of it almost 3,000 years old.
Mapping these findings reveals that a complex network of
trade routes linked the port of Heracleion to the rest of
the Mediterranean.
This port city was clearly a thriving multi-cultural hub
where, not only produce, but ideas and beliefs flowed
between different cultures opening up ancient Egyptian
civilization to the rest of the Mediterranean world.
BOB: The importance of this city cannot be underestimated
because they now had ready access,
via the maritime routes, to all of the luxury goods and
the agricultural bounty of ancient Egypt.
NARRATOR: The scale of the port reveals Heracleion was,
likely, one of the most important cities in Egypt.
DAMIAN: It's a bit like New York.
It's got river fronts crammed with ships coming in from all
over the trading world.
BOB: Very cosmopolitan. Very colorful.
Very picturesque kind of a place to be in.
Analogous to any port city that you can imagine today.
NARRATOR: Dating the artifacts discovered in Heracleion reveals
that the city thrived from the eighth to second centuries BC.
But, aside from its temple and role in international trade,
we know next to nothing about it.
What secrets can this shipwreck reveal about the key role
this city played in the everyday lives of the people of Egypt?
NARRATOR: Franck Goddio and his team are searching for clues
to what life was like in the newly discovered city of Heracleion.
As divers explore the site they discover yet another shipwreck.
But, nothing about this one makes sense.
FRANCK: You can see concentration of shipwreck
here and there.
But, there is one totally isolated.
It's totally different from the others.
NARRATOR: Not only is this wreck over 1200 feet from most
of the other wrecks, it's in a canal right beside the temple.
Franck suspects there is something special about this ship.
It's hard to see the full picture in the murky water.
But, we can finally reveal its secrets.
A hull emerges.
Long and shallow, it's beautifully crafted.
With a width of only 6 feet it's clearly not designed to
carry cargo or ferry people.
The hull is remarkably intact.
But, a hole in it reveals that a section of the keel is missing.
And, unlike a baris, it's made from long, wide planks.
It's clear to Franck, the ship is not made of acacia wood.
FRANCK: We realize that that ship has been built from
sycamore wood.
Sycamore be the tree of life for ancient Egyptians.
NARRATOR: Sycamore has a powerful significance in
ancient Egyptian religion.
Two sycamore trees marked the point on the horizon where Ra,
the Sun God, rises every morning, and the Sky Goddess,
Nut, takes the form of a sycamore branch.
BOB: Sycamore is fraught with religious symbolism
within the culture of Egypt.
So, if this boat is made of sycamore, then all of the
symbolic associations of sycamore are brought to bear on that boat.
NARRATOR: So, what is the function of this spiritually important vessel?
Egyptologist, Arto Belekdanian,
believes he has an answer.
The key evidence lies 600 miles south of Heracleion,
at the Temple of Philae in Aswan.
Among the images carved on the walls of this 2,000 year old
temple there is a perfect match for the mystery ship.
ARTO: So, this ship right here,
you can see that it's long and slender and it is exactly the
shape of the ship that was discovered in the canal.
Right off the bat, I can tell you this is a processional barge.
This is the barge that was used to carry the image of a God.
NARRATOR: The theory that this is the processional barge of
an Egyptian God explains its position near the temple,
the home of the Gods.
But, why it sinks remains a mystery.
As divers hunt for clues around the wreck they stumble
across a series of strange objects.
Miniature models of the ritual barge made of lead.
FRANCK: This is one of the best...you can see the papyrus here.
And, we found 22 of them and now it's 23 with this one.
DIVER: 23 now. FRANCK: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
I love them. They're so nice.
So strange, you know.
NARRATOR: Nothing like these has ever been found before.
Their position all around the ceremonial barge suggest they
are offerings to the God it carried.
ARTO: Unlike gold, that shiny, celestial,
luminous metal associated with the Sun God, lead is dull.
It's heavy.
It has associations with the underground.
These offerings were meant for the God Osiris,
the ruler of the underworld.
NARRATOR: Osiris was among the most popular of all Egyptian Gods.
Worship of him culminated in a great annual festival where an
image of the God was carried around the city in an
elaborate procession of ships and boats.
Arto believes the barge in Heracleion is the actual ship
used in this iconic event.
ARTO: As the barge of Osiris proceeded along the canal
hundreds of torches lit the way.
Crowds of people standing on either side of the canal,
watching as the procession passed them by depositing
votive offerings, pouring libations into the Nile.
Fires were being lit.
Meat was being cooked as a offering to the God.
Incense was being burned.
NARRATOR: But, given its prestigious role,
how does this ship built to carry a God end up at the
bottom of a canal?
Returning to the drained landscape provides a clue.
Looking closer at the hole in the hull it's possible to make
out a series of repeated cuts in the surrounding wood.
Saw marks.
Franck can think of only one reason for this deliberate
damage to such a sacred vessel.
FRANCK: When such a barge was too old to be used anymore
what to do with such an object?
You could not destroy it because it has been touched by
the God of the underworld, Osiris.
To get rid of such a boat the only way was to give it back
to the God by sinking it on purpose.
NARRATOR: After serving in Egypt's greatest festival the
sacred barge itself becomes an offering to the Gods.
The annual festival for Osiris is celebrated throughout
Egypt, but the size of this ritual barge suggests it holds
a particular importance in Heracleion.
BOB: Size is always an index of power,
wealth and importance.
And, to have a vessel of this size in that city,
the largest ever found, actually in Egypt,
that would say this was probably the most important
Osiris sanctuary in that particular part of the Delta.
NARRATOR: The city of Heracleion rises to fame for
its role in international trade.
It also flourishes as an important religious center.
And yet, this thriving metropolis now lies
at the bottom of the sea.
What can these cracks beneath the city teach us about its
terrifying fate?
NARRATOR: The city of Heracleion.
The former trade emporium of Egypt.
Now lies buried 20 feet beneath the waves of the Mediterranean.
No historical texts record the demise of the city.
But, Franck suspects a clue lies in what happened to the
city's most iconic building, the temple.
Excavating beneath the temple Franck finds chilling evidence
that something catastrophic happened here.
FRANCK: We have here human remains.
We found them trapped under a block which fell from the
temple and this, of course, reveals that there has been
there a sudden event and human beings have been trapped.
NARRATOR: Whatever happened, it happened fast.
Geologist, Iain Stewart, tries to discover what triggered the
temple's sudden destruction.
Studying the location of Heracleion he has a prime suspect.
IAIN: So, this is a map showing, essentially,
the landscape of the eastern Mediterranean.
So, our site is located just in this little cusp here.
And, from this, it doesn't really seem as if there's much
in terms of danger or threat.
But, actually, if we put on top the tectonic template
what we find is these are all...
these red lines are all fault lines, earthquake fault lines.
So, when you look at it, you know,
this is a tectonically active area.
For me, it says one thing.
And, that is that's earthquake.
An earthquake has destroyed that temple.
NARRATOR: Earthquakes regularly rock Egypt.
Hundreds of quakes are known to have struck the
northern coast since 2200BC.
This explains the destruction of the temple,
but not how an entire city disappears beneath the waves.
Using Franck's data, we can drain deeper into the landscape.
The sand and silt exposes a dense layer of clay underlying the city.
Although the temple is built on top of the clay,
limestone blocks now lie buried within it.
Nearby the clay opens up in a huge crack almost two feet wide.
It's buckled up at the edges as if something has
burst its way up from below.
Across the city there are many of these strange fissures in
the underlying clay.
Iain recognizes this unique geological fingerprint.
It reveals Heracleion was struck by a terrifying
after effect of the earthquake.
IAIN: It looks like that muddy sea bed has been broken up and
forced apart and the process most likely do that is liquefaction.
So, liquefaction is this process that,
if you have sediment with a lot of water in it,
then the shaking that sediment forces the sediment particles
apart and, under that great pressure,
the water is forced up and breaks out at the surface.
NARRATOR: Seismic activity loosens the underlying
sediment releasing water which erupts through the clay,
breaking it apart to form cracks,
and buckling it upwards with the force.
This pressure released, the ground collapses and behaves
like quicksand, destabilizing anything built on top of it.
IAIN: You get geysers and fountains of water producing
a, kind of, quick sand.
And, it's a really scary phenomenon.
NARRATOR: Recent events in Palau, Indonesia,
reveal how this process can carry away buildings and
entire sections of land in a matter of minutes.
Iain believes Heracleion's location made it even more vulnerable.
IAIN: So, this city in the Nile Delta is built on layer
upon layer of waterlogged sand piled on top of each
other in an area that gets hit by earthquakes.
So, this is a tragedy waiting to happen.
NARRATOR: Piecing together all the evidence we can now
finally reveal what happened to the great city of Heracleion.
A massive earthquake strikes the temple sending its statues
and pillars tumbling.
IAIN: Things are starting to crumble down.
And, everything is moving. The whole world is in motion.
NARRATOR: Water erupts through the underlying clay...
Suddenly turning the ground to quicksand,
engulfing blocks from the temple.
FRANCK: The currents would have collapsed several meters
in a fraction of a second.
NARRATOR: Loosened by the sudden release of water the
land underlying the city begins to slide downhill.
IAIN: Sliding towards the sea and beneath the waves.
It must have felt like the end of the world.
NARRATOR: This great city with its once thriving port and
sacred sites is lost to the sea.
FRANCK: So, the sea covered the whole area and sealed the site.
NARRATOR: An extraordinary capital of trade,
wealth and culture is gone.
BOB: It was absolutely breathtaking.
NARRATOR: A little over a century later,
Egypt itself will fall to Rome ending the
extraordinary 3,000 year reign of the great pharaohs.
Captioned by Cotter Captioning Services.