| 3,600 years ago, in the place where
Santorini archipelago is located today, a devastating volcanic
explosion occurred. This eruption sank most of the land where
the Greek islands are now located and killed over 35,000 people
and the thriving Minoan civilization. All this is connected
today to the myth of the Atlantis ... |
| Currently, Santorini is the only place near Europe
where submarine volcanoes can be found (in 1650 one submarine
eruption left 70 victims).
Now Egyptian archaeologists have found white pumice on the
northern Sinai Peninsula that they think was swept there by
the tsunami provoked by the ancient volcanic eruption on the
Santorini archipelago, located 530 miles (850 kilometers)
away.
Vestiges of the solidified lava foam linked to that eruption,
have been discovered on the island of Crete and in southwestern
Turkey, and now it seems to have reached the Sinai location,
where archaeologists were digging at an ancient fort 4 miles
(6,4 kilometers) inland from the Mediterranean coast.
"Geologists will help us study how natural disasters,
such as the Santorini tsunami, affected the Pharaonic period,"
said the head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, Zahi
Hawass. |
| The archaeological team discovered at Tel Habuwa,
in the desert northeast of Qantara, a town on the Suez Canal
located at 95 miles (150 kilometers) northeast of Cairo, on
a Pharaonic fort aimed to protect the Nile Delta from foreign
invasion. The 18th Dynasty fort had four rectangular towers
built of mud bricks.
"The pieces of lava stone were a surprise, but they
were only part of the story," said team leader Mohamed
Abdel Maqsud.
For the researchers, more significant was the discovery of
a fortress employed by ancient Egyptians to expel the Hyksos
enemy during the New Kingdom that lasted approximately from
1500 BC to 1000 BC
These forts were even represented in the reliefs on the walls
of Karnak Temple in the ancient Egyptian capital of Thebes
(current Luxor), 300 miles (480 km) south of Cairo.
"More such lava will be found," added Hawass.
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| George Vougioukalakis, a volcanologist
at Greece's Institute of Geology and Mineral Exploration, disagrees
that the pumice could have been transported so far by a tsunami.
"Layers of ash from Santorini have been found in Egypt's
Nile Delta, but it is more likely the floating pumice was
carried to the Sinai by regular sea currents." said Vougioukalakis.
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