AI Summary
5 min readIn 1939, the French archaeologist Pierre Montet was digging in the northern Egyptian Delta when his team began pulling golden coffins, elaborate jewelry, and towering temple walls from the sand. He had rediscovered Tanis, the royal capital of Egypt’s 21st and 22nd Dynasties—a city so thoroughly buried that it later became Hollywood’s stand-in for the lost city in Raiders of the Lost Ark. But Tanis is only one entry on a much longer list. According to Egyptologist Chris Norton, who has visited Egypt more than sixty times and still finds something new each trip, the country holds dozens of cities that were once centers of power and have since vanished—either swallowed by the shifting Nile, drowned by the Mediterranean, or buried under modern settlements.
Two kinds of “lost”
Continue reading the full summary in the app — free to try.
Read Full Summary →Free • No credit card required
Never miss an episode of The Ancients
Get every new episode summarized in your inbox — free, ~5 minutes to read.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
What you'll learn
- 1 (02:59) **Defining "Lost Cities" and Why They Matter** - Chris Norton explains why the idea of a lost city is so compelling, contrasting it with the more famous search for lost tombs.
- 2 (11:12) **Two Categories of Lost Cities** - Chris outlines the source material and the two main types of lost cities in Egypt.
- 3 (12:50) **The Source: Manetho and the List of Capitals** - The episode dives into the work of the Ptolemaic-era priest Manetho, a critical source for identifying lost cities.
- 4 (19:39) **Why the Nile Delta is a Hotspot** - Chris explains the geographic and strategic reasons why many lost cities, especially capitals, are concentrated in the Nile Delta.
- 5 (25:26) **Case Study 1: Thinis – Egypt's First Capital** - Chris discusses the most famous "completely missing" city: the first capital of a unified Egypt.
- 6 (37:08) **Case Study 2: Memphis – The Missing Old Kingdom Levels** - Chris explains that while we know where Memphis was, its earliest layers are a "lost city."
- 7 (44:38) **Case Study 3: Amarna – The Found Snapshot** - Chris describes the "heretic" pharaoh Akhenaten's capital, a city that was deliberately forgotten and then perfectly preserved.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
What happens when an entire city disappears? Beneath the sands and wetlands of Egypt lie the remains of forgotten cities that once stood at the heart of one of the ancient world’s greatest civilisations.
In this episode of The Ancients, Tristan Hughes is joined by Egyptologist Chris Naunton to uncover the story of Egypt’s lost cities. From the rediscovery of Tanis, the mysterious city immortalised by Indiana Jones, to ancient capitals like Memphis and Amarna, they explore what caused these cities to vanish. And how many more are still waiting to be found?
MORE
The Silver Pharaohs
Alexandria: The Sunken City
Presented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor is Aidan Lonergan. The producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.
All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds
The Ancients is a History Hit podcast.
History Hit is part of Little Dot Studios, a Certified B Corp™
Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from this podcast
The Ancients →