Archaeological divers exploring Egypt’s Nile river near Aswan have discovered depictions of four pharaohs in rock engravings and paintings made at least 2,300 years ago.
The inscriptions refer to two kings of ancient Egypt’s New Kingdom (1550-1077 BC), Amenhotep III and his son Thutmose IV, and two more from its Late Period (713-332 BC), Psamtik II and Ibris.
The discoveries were made on scuba during a joint Egyptian-French archaeological survey project at Philae and Konosos islands near the Aswan High Dam. The presence of inscriptions had been noted in the early 1960s when the dam project was launched but they had not been studied before, according to Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism & Antiquities.


The project was carried out by divers from Egypt’s Department of Underwater Antiquities and the Paul Valéry University of Montpellier, led by Dr Chris Cracillon. The inscriptions were largely concealed by algae but once this had been cleaned from the surface of the rock slabs the images were found to be well preserved enough to be fully deciphered.
The archaeological team have produced 3D models of the inscriptions for further examination. They believe the find will shed light on the rule of the pharaohs, and say that there is a possibility of further such discoveries in the area.
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