Remains of an ancient city uncovered outside Egypt’s Luxor

Archaeologists have uncovered the remains of an ancient city in the desert outside Luxor that they say is the “largest” ever found in Egypt and dates back to a golden age of the pharaohs 3,000 years ago.

Famed Egyptologist Zahi Hawass announced the discovery of the “lost golden city”, saying the site was uncovered near Luxor, home of the legendary Valley of the Kings.

“The Egyptian mission under Dr Zahi Hawass found the city that was lost under the sands,” the excavation team said on Thursday.

“The city is 3,000 years old, dates to the reign of Amenhotep III, and continued to be used by Tutankhamun and Ay.”

The team called the find “the largest” ancient city ever uncovered in Egypt.

Betsy Bryan, professor of Egyptian

art and archaeology at Johns Hopkins University, said the find was the “second most important archeological discovery since the tomb of Tutankhamun” nearly a century ago, according to the team’s statement.

Items of jewellery have been unearthed, along with coloured pottery vessels, scarab beetle amulets and mud bricks bearing seals of Amenhotep III.

“Many foreign missions searched for this city and never found it,” said Hawass, a former antiquities minister.

The team began excavations in September last year, between the temples of Ramses III and Amenhotep III near Luxor, some 500km south of Cairo.

“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.” AFP