After more than two millennia submerged in the Mediterranean, the ancient city of Canopus is slowly yielding its secrets. Divers and archaeologists have recovered striking statues, artefacts, and structural remains from the sunken ruins in Abu Qir Bay, offering a vivid new glimpse into one of the most important centres of the Ptolemaic dynasty.
The discoveries, announced by Egyptian authorities, include royal statues, sphinxes, limestone buildings, and a substantial 125-metre ancient dock complete with stone anchors and the remains of a harbour crane. The finds illuminate daily life, commerce, and worship in a prosperous port city that once thrived before being claimed by earthquakes and rising sea levels, along with its neighbouring port of Heracleion.
On Thursday, August 21, cranes lifted selected statues from the seabed while divers worked carefully around the site. Egypt’s Minister of Tourism and Antiquities, Sherif Fathi, emphasised the delicate balance between exploration and preservation.
“There’s a lot underwater, but what we’re able to bring up is limited, it’s only specific material according to strict criteria,” said Minister Fathi. “The rest will remain part of our sunken heritage.”
This cautious approach is guided by Egypt’s commitment to UNESCO’s Convention on Underwater Cultural Heritage, which the country signed in 2001. Most relics will stay protected on the seabed, while recovered items are undergoing restoration ahead of a new exhibition at Alexandria’s National Museum.
Among the standout finds is a partially preserved sphinx bearing the cartouche of Ramses II, one of ancient Egypt’s most powerful and longest-reigning pharaohs. Other statues depict royal figures from the pre-Roman era, though many are incomplete — including a beheaded granite Ptolemaic figure and a marble bust of a Roman nobleman missing its lower half.
The underwater city also reveals limestone structures believed to have served as places of worship, alongside residential and commercial buildings. Rock-carved ponds and reservoirs point to sophisticated systems for domestic water storage and fish cultivation, highlighting the advanced engineering and self-sufficiency of the settlement.
The 125-metre dock, which once accommodated merchant ships, underscores Canopus’s role as a bustling maritime hub. The area continued to function as a harbour for smaller boats into the Byzantine period, bridging the Ptolemaic, Roman, and later eras.
A City Frozen in Time
Canopus dates back more than 2,000 years and represents a significant chapter in Egypt’s layered history. Its submersion, along with that of Heracleion, serves as a powerful reminder of the forces that have reshaped this coastline over centuries.
Today, the modern city of Alexandria faces similar threats. Sinking by more than 3mm per year and highly vulnerable to rising sea levels, experts warn that in the United Nations’ best-case scenario, a third of the city could be underwater or uninhabitable by 2050.
The recovery of these artefacts not only enriches our understanding of Egypt’s ancient past but also adds urgency to contemporary conversations about coastal preservation and cultural heritage in the face of climate change.
As the restored statues take their place in Alexandria’s National Museum, they stand as tangible links to a lost world — one that the ocean concealed for centuries but could not erase forever. The waters of Abu Qir Bay still guard the majority of Canopus, promising that future dives and technologies may yet reveal even more of this remarkable sunken civilisation.