2,300 years ago, it would just take a breath of wind, a breeze from the Mediterranean – today air conditioning – to have Queen Arsinoe standing before us naked. Her robes fall off her shoulders so easily, the characteristic Isis knot is tied so elegantly over her half-covered breast, the cloth drapes over the navel, hips and knees so subtly that the stony dress, the work of a Greek master, seems almost transparent. It's rare to find such fine lingerie chiselled out of black granite.

A black granite statue believed to show Ptolemaic queen Arsinoe II. All photos by Christoph Gerigk. © Franck Goddio/Hilti Fountdation

When underwater archaeologist Franck Goddio lifts statues as brilliant as this deep black torso out of the Mediterranean, co-workers and onlookers should actually break out in spontaneous applause to celebrate the grandeur of the last Pharaohs. Goddio is an amateur, he used to work as a financial consultant and then he started diving in shipwrecks. Now the Frenchman has perfected his PR and sponsoring strategy to the point that scientifically more scrupulous but less monied researchers do the looking and he gets to analyse his treasures. And these are pieces which, as the exhibition "Egypt's Sunken Treasures" in berlin's Martin Gropius Bau shows, are worthy of notice. The 500 objects being shown in this abundance for the first time outside of Egypt make up only a fraction of all the finds of the last 14 years. But they still give an insight into the later phase of the Egyptian empire, immensely productive in the arts and sciences.

Some objects can only be comprehended in the context of the newer finds, such as the "Naos of the decades," a shrine for the god Shu. The pyramid-like roof had been in storage in Paris, the side parts were found in 1940 in Egypt. But now we can decode the symbols on its outside: Egypt's oldest astrological calendar.

Goddio's finds bring back to life rituals, cult locations and places on Egypt's Mediterranean coast that had been so completely obliterated by the sea that often all that remained of them was their mention in the writings of antiquity. In the time of the beautiful Arsinoe, however, they shone. Restaurants, baths and brothels lined the street along the coast. After Alexander conquered Egypt, the Greeks ruled the Nile, the dynasty of Ptolemy, founded by Alexander's general, Ptolemy I. For three hundred years, seven million Egyptians were ruled by a tiny Hellenistic clique until, following Cleopatra's suicide, the empire was reduced to a Roman province.



A black granite sphinx believed to represent Cleopatra's father Ptolemy XII

Before that, however, the Ptolemians in the delta had built the first megalopolis of the ancient world, Alexandria, built by Alexander in 331 BC. And half a million people, Greeks and Egyptians, Nubians, Galls and Jews lived in the city. It was the centre-point of the antique world but its greatest wonders are only legends today: Pharos, the monumental light-house, the library, Alexander's grave, Cleopatra's palace – not to be found again, undiscovered.

At the beginning of the middle ages, earthquakes shook up the delta's underground. Kilometre-long strips of coastline sank several metres and entire neighbourhoods of Alexandria sank into the ocean. Part of the city of Canopus and all of Heracleion sank with them. Three cities whose situation - as in the case of Heracleion – can be known in their entirety for the first time, have been resurrected in the exhibition in a most spectacular way. One of the most important finds is a stele of Nectanebo I from the fourth century, a twin piece to a stele from Naucratis, a few kilometres up the Nile. As commanded by the Pharaoh, ten percent of all duty on Greek goods from Thonis belonged to the goddess Neith. "Thonis" was the Egyptian name for Greek Heracleion; the legendary trading centre Heracleion must have been located where the stele was found, Egypt's gates to the Mediterranean.

Like Canopus, the city lay to the east of Alexandria, before what is today Aboukir Bay. But it was only with Alexandria that the streets and canals came to form an urban ensemble. Here, colonial permissiveness mixed with popular piety, sacred cults with decadent excess, the Greek and Egyptian gods met. The Egyptians were considered the "most pious of all people." Alone in Alexandria, there were 2,500 places where the gods could be worshipped. But that's only half of the truth.

It was mainly the laid back, spa-like flair in Canopus that provoked the straitlaced thinkers. Osiris, ruler of the dead, was worshipped here as well as the new, powerful über god Sarapis. Thousands made the pilgrimage to sleep in the healthy Sarapeion – or at least they sent a representative. For Seneca, however, Canopus remained a "den of iniquity", a name that sold well and enhanced the infamous prestige of antiquity's Las Vegas.



Statues of a Ptolemaic queen (left) and Nile god Hapi, the largest freestanding statue of a Nile god ever found

Even in Heracleion, there was as much praying as partying, at least this is what the artefacts suggest. At the feet of three colossal, pink statues of a pharaoh, over five metres tall, of his wife and the saggy breasted fertility god Hapi in a halo, are windows glinting with wine bowls and oil lamps, trowels and mugs. The Ptolemian cosmos contained healing Ibis-amulets as well as pictures of tiny buxom voluptuaries.

More interesting than this evidence of sensual pleasure are the pieces that prove the facility with which the new kings made their way into the Egyptian world of the gods. After Alexander crowned himself king in the desert of Libya, it was clear that the godlike statues would be used to legitimate the foreign ruler. With the permission of the Egyptian clergy, the Greeks – like Ptolemy XII, Cleopatra's father – represented themselves as sphinxes, imitating the style and position of the figures of their predecessors, right down to the accessories like the Uraeus serpent that was worn over the Hellenistic headband on their foreheads.




Caesarion (Ptolemaios XV), son of Cleopatra VII and Julius Caesar

Without further ado, the Ptolemians imported their own gods into the existing sacntuaries. The great temple of Heacleion was originally devoted to Amun, the Egyptian god. In the course of the centuries, the cult was expanded to include Isis and Orisis and the son of the divine couple, Chons, whose worship the Greeks understood as the honouring of their own divine fathers and his son: Zeus and Heracles. The polytheistic principal, by which gods transform themselves, are reborn or fuse, was in fact strengthened by this double cult.

The exhibition proves that art can outlive ideological fanaticism. The first strike against this lively business on the Mediterranean didn't come from the Romans but from the Christians, who razed the pagan temples and destroyed the godly statues by the wagon load. The torso of an Isis statue, holding Chons holds in her lap – dug up in 1930, never cleaned and eroded by salt - clearly anticipates Mary with the Jesus child in her arms.

A spectacular show, in which it wasn't really necessary to plaster every room from floor to ceiling with posters of a dazzling green underwater world, with sphinxes by the dozen lying around in it. The screens showing Goddio laying his Neoprene hand on the sandy head of a pharaoh also don't add much. And the room that was cleared for the display of his plans for an underwater archaeology museum on the Mediterranean suggests something approaching a personality cult. But we don't have to dwell on that.





Franck Goddio and his divers view the colossal statue of the god Hapi

The presidents of Germany and Egypt opened the show on Thursday. For Hosny Mubarak it's a nice opportunity. Egypt's image has deteriorated more than that of any other nation, to a crumbled centre of despotism, torture and fundamentalism that's also home to some brilliant antiques. In Alexandria, this contrast is particularly glaring. Today the city is a stronghold of Muslim brotherhoods. A few weeks ago, blood flowed again between Muslims and Copts.

Generally speaking, cultural tolerence has been on the wane since the time of Ptolemy. The grand mufty Ali Gomaa recently issued a fatwa which made erecting statues a sin. Its exegetes explain that it only applies to non-Islamic idols in private homes, and not in museums and public spaces. Egyptian intellectuals see that differently. The next iconoclasm is coming; it's just a matter of time.


"Egypt's Sunken Treasures" will be on at Martin Gropius Bau museum in Berlin until September 4, 2006. The catalogue costs 29 euros.

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The article originally appeared in German in the Süddeutsche Zeitung on May 11, 2006.

Sonja Zekri is a journalist and editor at the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Translation: nb.

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