Overview

• Archaeologists led by Kathleen Martínez, with marine explorer Bob Ballard, identified a submerged port near Taposiris Magna west of Alexandria, an announcement confirmed by Egypt’s antiquities ministry.
• The seafloor site, roughly two miles offshore at about 40 feet deep, features columns, polished floors, amphorae, multiple anchors, and large rectangular structures rising over 20 feet.
• A previously discovered tunnel under the Taposiris Magna temple extends more than 4,200 feet toward the Mediterranean, and Ballard said its line points directly to the newly mapped underwater features.
• Findings suggest Taposiris Magna functioned as a maritime hub during the Ptolemaic period rather than solely as a religious center, reinforcing but not proving Martínez’s burial-location hypothesis.
• Ballard’s team mapped nearly six miles of seabed, with new excavations planned to target a feature dubbed “Salam 5” later this month, and the work will be profiled in National Geographic’s Cleopatra’s Final Secret on September 25.