Ruins of 2,000-year-old sunken city pulled from waters off Alexandria, Egypt

In 2001, Egypt signed the U.N. cultural body UNESCO’s Convention on Underwater Cultural Heritage, limiting the retrieval of submerged artifacts.

“The rest will remain part of our sunken heritage,” Fathi said speaking to the media.

“The artifacts that you see date back to successive periods, starting from the Ptolemaic era,” said Mohamed Ismail, secretary-general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities. The Ptolemaic era lasted for nearly 300 years and was followed by Roman rule, which lasted for around 600 years.