A group of archaeologists have unearthed the world's oldest harbor in Suez, Egypt, along with the country's oldest papyrus collection.
According to the Egypt State Information Service, the harbor dates back to the fourth dynasty when Pharaoh Khufu ruled the country around 4500 years ago. Apparently, the harbor was built on the shores of the Red Sea in the Wadi al-jarf area, around 112 miles away from Suez.
Archaeologists say that the port was one of the most important harbors of Egypt. It was used to export copper and other minerals from the Sinai Peninsula. The group also found a number of docks and some carved stone anchors as well, reports NBC news.
Along with the discovery of the harbor, a collection of 40 papyri that give analyzed details of daily life of Egyptians during the twenty seventh year of Khufu's rule were also unearthed. The most interesting part of the discovery was the diary of a port official called Merrer, who spearheaded the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza, which is also the tomb of Khufu, reports livescience.com.
"He mainly reported about his many trips to the Turah limestone quarry to fetch block for the building of the pyramid. Although we will not learn anything new about the construction of the Cheops monument, this diary provides for the first time an insight on this matter," Pierre Tallet, an Egyptologist at Paris-Sorbonne University and the leader of the expedition organized by the French Institute of Oriental Archeology (IFAO), said to Discovery News.
Tallet said to the Huffington Post that the presence of the ancient ports was first noticed by J.G. Wilkinson in 1832. However, his group could not systematically explore the site. Tallet and his group began their study in 2011 and first focused on the structures described by Wilkinson, which were identified as "30 galleries measuring on average 65 feet long, 10 feet wide and 7 feet high."
Check out a video of the interesting finds below.
