Byzantine-era city with intact church and 200 inscribed shards found under Egyptian desert

Egyptian archaeologists have uncovered a well-preserved 1,600-year-old settlement at the Dakhla Oasis in the Western Desert, dating to the 4th century when Egypt was a wealthy Byzantine province. The planned town included a central basilica church, two watchtowers, a fortified building, gridded streets forming public squares, and homes with vaulted roofs, bread ovens, kitchens, and stone grain mills. Finds include domestic pottery, oil and perfume bottles, lamps, coins, and roughly 200 inscribed ostraca — pottery fragments used as writing material — bearing Coptic and Greek texts that record commercial transactions and correspondence, giving an unusually detailed documentary picture of daily life in Egypt’s remote oases.

The find was one of two announced by Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. A second dig at Marina el-Alamein on the Mediterranean coast yielded 18 tombs, an 8-foot granite sarcophagus with human remains, a damaged plaster sphinx, and bodies buried with gold foil placed in their mouths — the Greco-Roman ‘golden tongue’ practice meant to help the dead speak in the afterlife. Recovered coins span Byzantine emperors and the reign of Constantius II (AD 337–361). The Dakhla site sits on UNESCO’s Tentative List, one step from World Heritage status.

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