Egypt unearths 3000-year-old JACKPOT! Discovers entire city filled with…, worth Rs…

The 'lost city of gold', located at Jabal Sukari, southwest of Marsa Alam, deep inside the Red Sea Governorate in Egypt, has now been revived after around four years of excavation and restoration.

Archeologists have resurrected a long-lost piece of history of ancient Egypt, successfully restoring a 3,000-year-old gold-mining complex, which has been dubbed the “lost city of gold” by Egyptologists. The site, discovered in 2021, was once a bustling industrial hub during the ancient Egyptian empire, and provides a glimpse of ancient gold extraction techniques and the lives of miners involved in the extraction process.

The ‘lost city of gold’

The ‘lost city’, located at Jabal Sukari, southwest of Marsa Alam, deep inside the Red Sea Governorate, has now been revived after around four years of excavation and restoration. According to researchers, the site dates back to 1000 BC and was an industrial hub that played a vital role in gold mining and processing.

The Jabal Sukari site, which is being described as one of the most significant archaeological finds in recent years, features structures designed to extract gold from quartz veins.

According to Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Dr. Mohamed Ismail Khaled, excavations at the site uncovered the remains of an ancient gold-processing facility, featuring grinding and crushing stations, filtration basins, and clay furnaces used for smelting gold.

Dr Khaled said the site played a crucial part in the gold trade in ancient Egypt, as is evident from the scale of the operation at the complex.

Rare artefacts, Ptolemaic coins found at ancient site

Besides the remains of an elaborate industrial complex, archaeologists have also unearthed a wide range of rare artefacts, including 628 inscribed ostraca — fragments of pottery and stone bearing inscriptions in hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek scripts, that provide key insights into the day-to-day operations and administration of the site, as well as the lives of the workers and officers employed there.

Archeologists also discovered ancient coins dating back to the Ptolemaic Period, hinting that the site was active long after initial mining operations of the New Kingdom. Additionally, human and animal terracotta figurines, dating back to the Greco-Roman Period, were also found during the excavation.

Highlighting the importance of the project in preserving the rich heritage of Egypt while aligning with modern economic development initiatives, Minister of Tourism and Antiquities, Sherif Fathy said the discovery sheds light on the engineering and technological expertise of ancient Egyptian miners, who had developed sophisticated methods for extracting gold in an unforgiving desert landscape.

Ancient Egyptians mastered gold mining

According to Dr Khaled, the existence of grinding and filtration stations indicates that ancient Egyptians had mastered the process of separating gold from quartz, while the discovery of clay furnaces used for smelting gold confirms that the site was a fully operational processing facility, not juts a mining outpost.

He noted that the complex structure of the settlement, that included workshops, administrative buildings, temples, and residential quarters, suggests that mining was a highly organized and state-regulated industry in ancient Egypt.

The ‘lost city of gold’ has the potential to become a major tourist attraction, and the Egyptian government has set up a new visitor site, about three kilometers north of the original site, that boasts large display screens to showcase the excavation process and discovering, offering visitors a detailed look at the scientific methods employed in uncovering the site’s secrets.