Archaeologists in Egypt have discovered a vast tunnel beneath a temple at the ancient city of Taposiris Magna, west of Alexandria. The 4,281-foot-long (1,305 meters) tunnel, which brought water to thousands of people in its heyday, was discovered by an Egyptian-Dominican Republic archaeological team, the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said in a statement.
Ancient Egyptian builders constructed the 6.6-foot-high (2 m) tunnel at a depth of about 65 feet (20 m) beneath the ground, Kathleen Martínez, a Dominican archaeologist and director of the team that discovered the tunnel, told Live Science in an email. “It is an exact replica(复制品) of Eupalinos Tunnel in Greece, which is considered as one of the most important engineering achievements of antiquity(古迹),” Martinez said. The Eupalinos tunnel, in Samos, a Greek island in the eastern Aegean Sea, also carried water.
The archaeology of the Taposiris Magna temple is complex. Parts of it are under water and the temple has been hit by numerous earthquakes over the history of its existence, causing a lot of damage. The tunnel at Taposiris Magna dates to the Ptolemaic period (304 B.C. to 30 B.C.), a time when Egypt was ruled by a dynasty of kings descended from one of Alexander the Great’s generals.
Finds within the tunnel included two alabaster(雪花石膏) heads: one of which likely depicts(描绘) a king, and the other represents another high-ranking person, Martinez said. Their exact identities are indecisive. Coins and the remains of statues of Egyptian deities(神) were also found in the tunnel, according to Martinez.
At the time the tunnel was built, Taposiris Magna had a population of between 15,000 and 20,000 people, according to Martinez. The tunnel was built beneath a temple that honored Osiris, an ancient Egyptian god of the underworld, and Isis, an Egyptian goddess who was Osiris’s wife.
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