Egypt announced on Tuesday the discovery in Luxor, the Thebes of the pharaohs in the south, of remains of “an entire Roman city” dating from the first centuries after Christ.
It is, according to the Ministry of Antiquities, “an entire residential city” of the 2nd and 3rd centuries, discovered “on the east bank of the Nile, near the temple of Luxor”, about 500 km south of Cairo. .
In this “extension of ancient Thebes”, “metallurgical workshops” have already been unearthed with numerous tools and “Roman copper and bronze coins”, explains Mostafa Waziri, patron of Antiquities: “And the excavations continue.
Already in 2021, an Egyptian archaeological mission had discovered the “largest ancient city of Egypt”, dating back more than 3000 years, on the west bank of Luxor where the famous valleys of the kings and queens are located.
Egypt has revealed several major discoveries in recent months, mainly in the necropolis of Saqqara, south of Cairo, but also, in January in Luxor, that of a tomb of a royal wife of the 18th dynasty, that of Akhenaten and Tutankhamun, dating from 3500 years ago.
For some experts, these announcement effects have more political and economic than scientific significance.
Because the country of 104 million inhabitants in serious economic crisis is counting on tourism to straighten out its finances: its government is aiming for 30 million tourists per year by 2028, against 13 million before Covid-19.
To revitalize this sector, which has been at half mast since the Arab Spring in 2011, which employs two million people and generates more than 10% of GDP, Cairo has been promising for months the imminent opening of its “Grand Egyptian Museum”, near the plateau of Giza.
Many predicted this in 2022, for the bicentenary of the deciphering of the Rosetta Stone by the Frenchman Jean-François Champollion and the centenary of the discovery of the tomb of the child-pharaoh Tutankhamun.