Archaeologists have unveiled the complete site of Egypt‘s ‘Lost City of Gold’ that was buried beneath the sand for 3,000 years.
The site, once a booming gold mining city called Aten, was discovered beneath the Valley of Kings in Luxor where King Tutankhamun in 2020 and excavations were completed this week.
The team unearthed remnants of homes, workshops, administrative buildings, religious temples and bath houses.
Artifacts recovered from the site were dated to later historical periods, including the Roman era (30 BC to 639 CE) and the Islamic era (642 CE to 1517 AD).
This suggests Aten remained active for centuries and produced gold for multiple Egyptian dynasties that decorated their palaces bodies and tombs.
Among the many artifacts was a collection of 628 fragments of pottery and stone inscribed with hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek scripts, according to the researchers.
Researchers believe these inscriptions show Aten was a multicultural and multilingual city, and reflect the rich diversity of its inhabitants.
Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities announced the completion of the project on Tuesday, describing it as a ‘significant step in preserving Egypt’s ancient mining heritage while making it accessible to both researchers and the public.’
Archaeologists have finally completed a two-year-long dig at the site of Egypt ‘s ‘Lost City of Gold,’ which was buried beneath the sand for thousands of years
Aten dates back to the reign of Amenhotep III — one of Egypt’s most powerful pharaohs who ruled from 1391 to 1353 BC.
Named after the Egyptian god of the sun, the city was founded between 1386 and 1353 BC. For many years, it served as Egypt’s main administrative and industrial center, persisting through the rise and fall of multiple pharaohs.
But a few years after Akhenaten, King Tutankhamun’s father, began his reign in the early 1350s BC, the city was abandoned and Egypt’s capital was moved to the city of Amarna 250 miles away.
The findings from the dig offer new insight into Egypt’s ancient mining industry and the daily lives of the workers who inhabited this region, according to the researchers.
The excavation unearthed a remarkably well-preserved mining settlement, complete with intact gold processing facilities and specialized factories for extracting gold from quartz veins.
The remains of these factories contained evidence of an advanced, multi-step gold refining process that involved grinding quartz, filtering out sediments into specialized basins and smelting the ore in clay furnaces to produce pure gold.
Once translated, these writings could shed new light on what life in the Lost City of Gold was like, including insights into its economy, government and culture.
The archaeologists also uncovered bronze coins from the Ptolemaic dynasty, the longest and last dynasty of ancient Egypt which ruled from 305 BC to 30 BC.
The ‘Lost City of Gold’ mining complex remained buried beneath the sand for millennia
The excavation unearthed a remarkably well-preserved mining settlement, complete with intact gold processing facilities and specialized factories for extracting gold from quartz veins
They also found five offering tables — stone slabs where food and drinks could placed as gifts for the gods or the spirits of the dead — from this same time period.
The excavations also uncovered terracotta figurines of both humans and animals, stone sculptures of deities, ceramic vessels used for storing perfumes, medicines and incense, and jewelry made from precious stones and seashells.
These findings were the result of a multi-year research effort that has been taking place since the city of Aten was finally found five years ago.
Archaeologists discovered the lost city while digging west bank of Luxor near the Valley of the Kings, about 300 miles south of Egypt’s capital, Cairo.
Among the many artefacts the archaeologists found, a collection of 628 ostraca fragments of pottery and stone is particularly noteworthy because they are inscribed with hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek scripts, according to the researchers
The excavations also uncovered terracotta figurines of both humans and animals and stone sculptures of deities
Archaeologists first discovered the lost city while looking for King Tut’s mortuary temple in the west bank of Luxor near the Valley of the Kings
They were looking for King Tutankhamun’s mortuary temple and had decided to dig in this region because the temples of two other Egyptian pharaohs, Horemheb and Ay, had been found there.
But ‘Within weeks, to the team’s great surprise, formations of mud bricks began to appear in all directions,’ lead researcher Zahi Hawass, an archaeologist and former Minister of Tourism and Antiquities of Egypt, said at the time.
‘What they unearthed was the site of a large city in a good condition of preservation, with almost complete walls, and with rooms filled with tools of daily life.’
Over the years, many foreign archaeological missions had searched for the lost city but never found it, according to Hawass.
Now, after years of extensive excavation, experts have unearthed new details about this ancient, lost city that should help them piece together its rich history.
