Archaeologists Discover 'Lost Golden City of Luxor'
dw.com
dw.com
To give some idea of how old Egypt is, Amenhotep III was the 9th king of the 18th Dynasty. By the time he ruled, the Great Pyramid of Giza was over 1000 years old.
Also what is interesting is that some of our greatest finds are because of the Egyptian ruling class trying to erase the "apostasy" of Akhenaten from their memory. Thus Luxor and king Tut were heavily censored which probably led to their being passed over by grave robbers, which meant when they were finally discovered, we had a more intact find. I find it ironic that the pharaohs and cities that the ancient Egyptians tried to censor, may end up being the most well known as we go forward.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akhenaten:
> As a pharaoh, Akhenaten is noted for abandoning Egypt's traditional polytheism and introducing Atenism, or worship centered around Aten. The views of Egyptologists differ as to whether Atenism should be considered as a form of absolute monotheism, or whether it was monolatry, syncretism, or henotheism. This culture shift away from traditional religion was not widely accepted. After his death, Akhenaten's monuments were dismantled and hidden, his statues were destroyed, and his name excluded from lists of rulers compiled by later pharaohs. Traditional religious practice was gradually restored, notably under his close successor Tutankhamun, who changed his name from Tutankhaten early in his reign. When some dozen years later, rulers without clear rights of succession from the Eighteenth Dynasty founded a new dynasty, they discredited Akhenaten and his immediate successors and referred to Akhenaten as "the enemy" or "that criminal" in archival records.
> Though the size of the city has yet to be determined, its date is clear thanks to hieroglyphics on a variety of items. A vessel containing two gallons of boiled meat was inscribed with the year 37 — the time of Amenhotep III and Akhenaten’s speculated father-son reign.
Therefore i'm afraid i must condemn your joke as inaccurate.
The wiki on Egyptian Chronology explains various scenarios where the dates have had to be changed sometimes by hundreds of years according to new evidence: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_chronology
And who know what else undersea, in the jungle or dessert.
What do you mean? Everybody knows Professor Jones found it already - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Jones_and_the_Fate_of_...
He also prohibited the worship of most of the Egyptian pantheon, declared that he was the only one who was allowed to pray to the remaining one. Basically, he grabbed a lot of power from the priests. That, of course, also resulted in some destroyed religious texts.
Furthermore, many of the more mundane texts were on clay tablets that were occasionally wiped and re-used.
I spent some time in an Italian hill town that has been continuously inhabited since the Romans. At the same time I visited Pompeii. Most of the buildings in the center were Roman and had identical construction to Pompeii. They were living "ruins" and therefore could not be discovered because they had never been lost. There was a Roman Theater in that town that had been partially built into homes and partially quarried for building materials. There had been a set of giant marble masks originally in the theater, but now scattered around the town built into other building. Conservation of matter, it doesn't go anywhere unless someone carries it away.
Say you lay a road in a town, then the road starts developing holes; to even it out, you place a new layer on top. Over decades, this process raises the road so significantly that, when buildings are demolished, they get rebuilt at a higher level or their ruins are simply covered by new roads. Rinse and repeat for centuries, and you end up with Rome.
If instead you just abandon the settlement (like it happened in many Egyptian / Greek / Roman towns, like Volubilis in Morocco), then nature will do its thing, pushing detritus over the ruins, or growing plants that will slowly create new layers of organic material that eventually turns to dirt. Towns near rivers or coasts might be claimed by waters once people stop maintaining their protection. Etc etc.
I think post has what you need.
Now it is believed that the city was the capital of some (Assyrian?) kingdom, that just 200 years earlier was basically the capital of the civilised world and had stood for hundreds of years. It was destroyed by a particularly cruel horde, and everyone in it was slaughtered, the fields around it salted, the goods and artefacts taken.
It was so thoroughly destroyed that 200 years later a well read and knowledgable general couldn't even place it or find anyone to tell him about it. The only thing that remains were the basically indestructible stone walls.
I don't really have the mind for remembering history details, so I'm probably way off on some details, but I thought it was a cool story about how we've come to find these ancient ruins just all abandoned without even locals knowing what they are. Dan Carlin makes it really come alive, highly recommend listening to his stories.
And the guy who rediscovered it (from a European perspective) was an Italian called Pietro Della Valle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pietro_Della_Valle
1 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:abo:tlg...
“Why Ancient Rome Is Buried”: https://youtu.be/fz4ZdXpri04
A simplification of the process:
Tectonic plate movements create mountains, as they climb on top of each other (and where space was opened, lava there turns into new rock)
Then erosion carry material from high places, to low places.
Thus over time places in high areas get "shorter", while places in low areas get "taller".
Meanwhile some parts of tectonic plates are sinking again and melting again.
But as the planet core cools down, this process get slower and slower, and erosion speed remains "constant", so over time the tendency is the planet get rounder and rounder, eventually the planet would have cooled 100% and no new mountains would form, while erosion would make all mountains become flat over time.
In non-desert areas, dead biomass (fallen leaves, etc.) creates soil. My parents had a stone path through their yard that they didn't maintain, and within a decade it was covered over with soil and grass grew over it.
Over the course of a few thousand years, structures can be buried by several meters of earth.
Inorganic matter largely gets blown from other places, or washed down from mountain tops.
(had to reply with a gross out amusement, it's not sand, it's dead people!)
Also this video by Derek is very informative https://youtu.be/jn5M48MVWyg
Sure, ever since Thanos.