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Lost city discovered beneath Egypt's desert with ancient church
- cmrdporcupine 4mo ago... Do we have a better source than Daily Mail? Here: https://archaeologymag.com/2026/07/byzantine-city-with-written-records-in-dakhla-oasis/ https://archaeologymag.com/2026/07/byzantine-city-with-writt... and https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/04/archaeologists-uncover-ancient-byzantine-city-in-egypts-western-desert https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/04/archaeologists...
- sshagent 4mo agothank you.
- hashim 4mo agoCame for this, thanks. I try everything I can not to read the Daily Heil, whose politics haven't really shifted that much since Harold Harmsworth used it to push his propaganda for Hitler.
- gaiagraphia 4mo agoAmusing how every single article is exactly the same rehashed press release with no additional content. There's not even any maps anywhere. Wonder how aggressively Egypt are on manoeuvres trying to claw back tourism. Would help if they opened up the desert roads so travelling the western deserts was actually viable as a ring route.
- m0llusk 4mo agoThe Ancient Architects video on YouTube has a quite good summary of the history of this site.
- thisisauserid 4mo agoA Byzantine lost city around the year 400 CE.
- derdi 4mo agoNot singling you out, all the articles do it, but: Strange to call this Byzantine. The coins found are from the reign of Constantius II, who at times ruled the whole empire alone (as did his successor Julian). The idea that the East, even when administered separately, was some foreign/"Byzantine"/not-really-Roman "other" was invented much later.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- philistine 4mo agoYes, invented much later, but the expression of a different power structure that those types of Romans felt was not present. But to our modern eyes it was. Hell, the mere fact the centre of power was in Constantinople and not Rome is proof enough that they were distinct.
- derdi 4mo agoProof to your modern eyes. Not to the eyes of those who also called Constantinople "New Rome", and who called themselves Romans even 1000 years later.
- momoschili 4mo agoMany Western polities have sought the title of the Roman Empire and the legitimacy it endows. Constantine split the empire, and Constantius II did not rule over Rome (or many other parts of the empire). Is it even reasonable to assert it was still the Roman Empire after the fracture? Is it legitimate for the Eastern Roman Empire to claim the legacy? I think so, and I think they have among the best arguments for it. Conversely it is also legitimate to note the major differences between the two and the fact that discontinuities do exist.
- derdi 4mo ago"Constantine split the empire" is just incorrect. There were co-emperors with regional responsibilities both before and after him. They were co-emperors of one empire. If you want a firm split, 395 (death of Theodosius) is the more common date AFAIK. I'm not denying that gradually, over well more than a thousand years, the empire (only surviving in the East) changed character in many ways. I am denying that a unique Eastern character sprang up (and immediately applied to Egypt) the moment that Constantinople was founded.
- dominotw 4mo agothis is amazing. I am ancient egypt nerd but sucks that egypt is in egypt. I got scammed last time i went there and ppl were rude and agrresive.
- waschl 4mo agocan you tell a bit more about how you got scammed? I was in Cairo twice for business and our hosts organized nice trips through the historic sites and new museum. I intend to go there with my family one day
- honeycrispy 4mo agoSonny from the "Best Ever Food Review Show" had a similar experience to op. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LzuZrkEY18 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LzuZrkEY18
- dominotw 4mo agohttps://youtube.com/shorts/iCInGp4cxhc https://youtube.com/shorts/iCInGp4cxhc i guess you might be ok if you are cocooned in a safe travel group. I travel more independently, freely and let things come to me. Going on planned group iternary isnt much of an interest for me at the moment.
- nashashmi 4mo ago
- honeycrispy 4mo agoI wish I could go back in time and visit to see what it was like.
- 205guy 4mo agoJust like planting trees, the second best time is now. Travel (with sensitivity and understanding) to see cultures and places that are at risk: glaciers, savanna, wildlife parks, minority cultures, and dare I add Western democracies. Edited to add: maybe the computer history museum as well.
- testoo 4mo agoanyone else immediately reminded of this lovecraft tale? https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/nc.aspx https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/nc.aspx
- testoo 4mo agoactually it looks like he wrote several stories on this theme: https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/up.aspx https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/up.aspx what did H.P. know that we did not??
- PapaSpaceDelta 4mo agoHe was inspired by Iram of the Pillars, which is mentioned in the Quran (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iram_of_the_Pillars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iram_of_the_Pillars). There's an interesting overview of its role in his work here: https://lovecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Irem https://lovecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Irem.
- declan_roberts 4mo ago> During this period, from the late fourth to the mid-seventh century AD, Christianity became the dominant religion, towns expanded across the country and Egypt served as one of the empire's richest provinces. It's easy to forget how different the Middle East looked before the conquest of Islam starting in 600 AD.
- dismalaf 4mo agoNot just Islamic conquest but Arab conquest. Up to this point Arabs lived mainly in, well, Arabia. The indigenous peoples of Egypt, Syria, Iraq, etc..., were all non-Arab. Nowadays those indigenous groups are known as Copts, Syriacs, Chaldeans, etc...
- einpoklum 4mo agoLocal populations adopted Arabic. Somewhat like, several centuries earlier, they adopted Greek; and elsewhere and at other times, Latin. The peoples of the regions were not replaced by Greek or Roman colonists.
- taeric 4mo agoLegitimate question, in the early days was this a large distinction? Specifically, my understanding was that the earliest raids where this distinction is most accurate, they didn't actually change the local societies much. Mostly were raids for resources and did not stay. That is, until the Islamic raids started, the indigenous groups took losses, but were not nearly as transformed. Is that not accurate?
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- thaumasiotes 4mo agoWell, the distinction mattered. But because the distinction mattered, the modern labels aren't really accurate. Arabs were the highest-prestige ethnicity within their empire. But they were numerically insignificant. You have "Arabs" and "Copts" in Egypt today, but most of the "Arabs" are Copts whose ancestors decided they wanted more respect. Same thing is true farther west, where the "Arabs" are Berbers.
- wewewedxfgdf 4mo agoWhy are there cities in the desert? Was the climate different? Was there water?
- flockonus 4mo agoI suppose it's like gradient descent, often times you get stuck in local minima and there is no inertial force to overcome the next peak.
- prmoustache 4mo agoThe whole african continent and middle east were much greener back then. So yes.
- mlvljr 4mo ago[dead]
- WalterBright 4mo agoThe older I get, the closer in time these ancient civilizations become. It's really not that many lifetimes away. It's stunning the progress humans have made since then.
- Towaway69 4mo agoWhat progress are you referring to? The shiny blinky things that scroll across our screens while the poor stay poor, war rages everywhere and the internet is overwhelmed with fake AI generated content. The more I look back into history, the more I realise that besides the sparkling blinky-blinky gadgets, we have made no progress at all - on a species level. We’re still living in caves, we’re still believe in God myths that make no sense and let ourselves be blindly led by folks who claim legitimacy because they won voter approval based on the lies they told. No, for me progress is a fiction invented in hollywood or silicon valley. Real progress would be understanding our place in the universe, understanding that we are one of many species with which we share this planet, that we don’t have the right to strip clear the planet for our sole benefit. And that shiny bits of metal or bits of paper with numbers and faces on them aren’t important and most certainly won’t help us achieve true progress.
- vitally3643 4mo agoWe put humans on the moon and we've seen the first galaxies ever born
- warumdarum 4mo agoCan there be peace and progress.. where a hockeystick meets a horizontal line? Why demand the impossible?
- brendanmc6 4mo agoProgress is a fiction? What an enraging and awful take. You are living in a world that is so extraordinarily safe, comfortable, populous, peaceful, free and entertaining your ancestors literally would not believe you if you told them. Most of your ancestors worked ten times as hard to access a tiny fraction of the material wealth and health and knowledge most people have today. Touch grass.
- gaiagraphia 4mo agoQuite incredible how you can search for this information and it's all just the same article with the same pictures. No maps or anything. >Lost city discovered beneath Egypt's desert Sounds incredibly misleading, as if some long lost civ is rising from sand dunes, lol. As far as I'm aware, there have just been ruins uncovered (which look like 6 rooms on the pictures) at Dakhla Oasis, and the site is very obvious on Google Maps. Are they speaking about Kellis? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kellis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kellis https://maps.app.goo.gl/65daKj9K8qJ35x1c9 https://maps.app.goo.gl/65daKj9K8qJ35x1c9