First major underwater archaeology exhibition at British Museum - video + photo gallery

London’s British Museum has mounted its first major exhibition on underwater archaeology. The artefacts that make up the exhibition come from two ancient cities discovered at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. The exhibition will be open to the public for the next six months (until 27 November 2016), so if you are visiting the English capital during this time, it is definitely worth taking the time to visit the British Museum.

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Magnificent artefacts resting since ancient times at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea near the mouth of the Nile will now be put on public display. The exhibition ‘Sunken Cities – A Lost World’ will take visitors to the ancient harbours of Heraklion and Canopus. More than 300 artefacts telling the extraordinary story of the ancient Egyptians and Greeks await anyone who chooses to cross the threshold of the British Museum. Nearly 200 of them were discovered in the sunken part of Alexandria between 1996 and 2012 and have never been displayed outside Egypt. So this is a unique opportunity to see with your own eyes the treasures of antiquity, known only from photographs.

The exhibition includes artefacts from many centuries, belonging to different cultures that have inhabited the region over the centuries. We find artefacts dating back to the 7th century BC and found in Heraklion and Kanopus, two cosmopolitan centres once located on neighbouring islands, right on the edge of the fertile lands of the Nile delta. There will also be many artefacts from the time when the ancient Greeks arrived in the region, under the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great in 332 BC. The exhibition captures in a wonderful way the mixing of cultures and the mutual influences they had on each other.

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In the eighth century AD, the sea claimed the area, burying its extraordinary past for many centuries several metres underground. Despite many attempts to search for the lost cities, they waited patiently for their discoverers hidden just under the sea until the end of the 20th century.

The excavated objects were very well preserved and their finding is considered one of the greatest archaeological discoveries in history. Magnificent statues, figurines, stone tablets, coins, vessels, jewellery and a whole host of other objects have survived to our times in exceptionally good condition.

Source: theguardian.com, artdaily.com