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In the Dakhla Oasis, deep in Egypt’s Western Desert, an Egyptian mission has exposed a well-preserved Byzantine-era settlement with streets, houses, churches, ovens, coins and even scraps of written paperwork. The find, announced alongside a separate discovery of tombs near Alexandria, comes from a period of Egyptian history often overshadowed by pharaohs and pyramids: the centuries when Egypt belonged to the Byzantine Empire and Christianity was reshaping public and private life.
A City Built for Living
The settlement, excavated at Ain Al-Sabil in the New Valley Governorate, was laid out according to a seemingly orderly urban plan.
North-south streets crossed east-west roads, creating squares and public spaces. At the head of the settlement stood a basilica-style church dating to the mid-fourth century. Nearby, archaeologists found two watchtowers, a heavily fortified structure with thick walls and mud-brick homes with reception halls and vaulted roofs.
That layout suggests Dakhla was not some remote oasis stop. It was an organized urban community, tied to the up-and-coming Christian religion, food production, trade and defense. The oasis itself is already on UNESCO’s Tentative List as part of Egypt’s “Southern and Smaller Oases, the Western Desert,” a step toward possible World Heritage recognition.
Inside the homes, archaeologists found the traces of ordinary day-to-day life in Late Antiquity, including bread ovens, kitchens and stone tools for grinding grain. These are not treasures in the usual museum sense. But they are often the objects that tell archaeologists the most. They show how people ate, worked and organized households on the desert edge.
A Window into Ancient Life
One house belonged to Tisous, identified in reports as a church deacon. Archaeologists believe it may have served as a house church before the city built its basilica. Archaeologists also reported another important residence, linked to a man named Tabibos, which archaeologists likewise interpret as part of this early Christian phase. Together, the buildings suggest that worship in the settlement may have begun in adapted homes before moving into a dedicated public church.
The most telling discovery may be the written records discovered at the site. The team found about 200 ostraca — broken pottery pieces used as writing surfaces — bearing Coptic and Greek inscriptions. The texts include commercial transactions, contracts, correspondence and other records of daily life, which are still being deciphered and studied.
Additionally, archaeologists found bronze coins with portraits of Byzantine emperors, Latin inscriptions and Christian symbols, along with gold coins from the reign of Constantius II (the son of Constantine the Great, who converted the empire to Christianity), who ruled from 337 to 361.
Long-running research in the oasis, including the Dakhleh Oasis Project, has shown that these desert communities preserved unusually rich evidence for ancient social life, from housing and religion to economy and literacy.
Tombs on the Mediterranean
A second major discovery came far to the north, at Marina el-Alamein, about 62 miles west of Alexandria.
There, archaeologists uncovered 18 ancient tombs: 11 rock-cut tombs about eight meters deep and seven surface tombs built from limestone. The new finds bring the number of tombs at the site to 48, according to the Egyptian Ministry of Culture reports.
The site is widely identified with Leukaspis, an ancient Greco-Roman port city on the Mediterranean that flourished between the second and fourth centuries. Earlier excavations at Marina el-Alamein have revealed streets, houses, public buildings, shops, burial grounds and signs of a busy coastal settlement tied into Mediterranean trade.
The new tombs yielded pottery vessels, amphorae, lamps, plates, altars and limestone basins. Archaeologists also found a 2.5-meter granite sarcophagus containing skeletal remains, now under study, and the remains of a plaster sphinx statue.
Four gold pieces were found in the mouths of some of the dead — a practice known as “the golden tongue.” In Egyptian funerary belief, the dead needed to speak in the afterlife. This would allow them to answer divine judgment, address the gods and secure their passage beyond death. A gold tongue, or a gold piece placed where the tongue had been, symbolically restored that power of speech.
Together, the two sites show Egypt in a period of profound transition. Though we’re not offered the spectacle of a royal tomb, we’re treated to something subtler and in some ways more revealing: the texture of ordinary life in late antique Egypt, when desert towns and Mediterranean ports helped carry the country from the classical world into the Christian Byzantine age.
This story originally appeared on ZME Science. Want to get smarter every day? Subscribe to our newsletter and stay ahead with the latest science news.
