These two cities have been looked for, for centuries, and have never been discovered before.
We found all these artefacts under the sediment,
in a place which was once a powerful city.
This statue of Hapy was one of the first artefacts we found.
I was excavating, on the very first day of the mission,
and under 1.8 metres of sediment I came across a big rock of red granite.
I started to clean it and I could see (kind of) a big foot,
but I thought, no, it’s too big to be a foot.
I could not understand what it was.
Until the time, going on with the excavation, I came across the face of the God Hapy.
It’s extremely rare to find an inscribed stela, absolutely intact,
and so it’s a two thousand year mystery.
That stela taught us that we were in the city of Thonis because it’s written,
‘Pharaoh orders that that stela be erected in the city of Thonis’.
But we were sure we were in the city of Heracleion.
Thus, Thonis and Heracleion were one and the same city.
Thonis was the Egyptian name and Heracleion was the Greek name.
This statuette stayed for 2200 years under the water, and under the sediment,
before it was retrieved.
We found that statuette exactly as you can see it there.
There was not a single crustacean, nothing, on it.
It was intact – fabulous.
We have been working there for twenty years now,
but I would say that we haven’t touched more than 5% of the site.
Thus, we have some centuries of work ahead of us.