DATELINE :- 8th July 2000
SPECIAL FIND
Goddio finds Herakleion
French excavationist Franck Goddio, who has spent years unravelling the mysteries of sunken archaeological remains at Alexandria in Egypt, has now located what is thought to be the ancient city of Heraklion, over an area of one square kilometre.
Structures including houses and shrines have been identified, and items raised from the area have included statues, coins and jewellery. Key finds have included an enormous granite statue of a pharaoh dating to 654-525BC and a missing section of the Naos of the Decades, a large stone text detailing 36 decades of Egyptian history. Other sections of the stone were found on land in 1777 and reside in Paris' Louvre Museum.
Heraklion was built around the fifth century BC and was a major trading port until Alexander the Great founded Alexandria in 331BC. Heraklion remained, however, a centre of culture and pilgrimage.