Egypt’s sunken treasures exhibition was inaugurated at Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in US on Jul.3

CAIRO – 4 July 2020: “Sunken Cities: The Enchanting World of Egypt” exhibition was inaugurated on July 3. The exhibition is now seeing a fourth touring round in the United States.  

The exhibition of sunken Egyptian antiquities which is located at Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is dating back to different historical periods.

Secretary general of the supreme council of antiquites Mostafa Waziri said that the exhibition displays 293 artifacts that were recovered from the cities Heracleion and Canopus in the eastern port of Alexandria and the port of Abu Qir.

“Sunken Cities: The Enchanting World of Egypt” exhibition houses as well two huge statues of Isis and Serapis as well as statues of a Sphinx and some ornaments and household items.

The artefacts that are displayed in the exhibition are not dating back to the Pharaonic periods only, but some belong to the Ptolemaic and Roman times as well.

Waziri  pointed out that the exhibition’s working hours is from 9 am to 10 pm and scheduled to continue until January 2021. Only 35 visitors are received every 15 minites, this comes because of the precautionary measures taken by the museum administration to organize the visit to the exhibition in accordance with international health safety standards.

These Egyptian sunken artifacts are most probably found in Alexandria at certain archaeological sites, such as Abu Qir Port, Qaitbay Castle, and the Maamora Gulf, but there are also a considerable number of sunken treasures hidden beneath the surface of the Nile in Aswan and near Khufu Port in Giza.

In 2015 “Sunken Cities: The Enchanting World of Egypt” exhibition was first opened at the Arab World Institute of France under the title “Osiris … the secrets of sunken Egypt”, and then transferred to the British Museum in England. The first tour ended with an exhibition in Switzerland.