Like many underwater cities, the conditions that the artifacts have been submerged in for centuries have preserved them extremely well. One bit of information that hasn’t been given up is exactly how the city ended up at the bottom of the sea, although it’s thought that it ultimately sank after an earthquake. Built on the already precarious series of deltas reaching out into the sea, the best guess is that the already questionably stable sand and clay eventually gave way after a tremor.

The city was once the official port-of-entry for Egypt, somewhere around 664 to 332 BC. Now, the city is far from the coastline – the first concrete evidence of the civilization was found 6.5 kilometers off the current coast.