Archaeologists May Have Unearthed The 'Lost Golden City' Of Egypt

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

In the desert, hundreds of miles south of Cairo, archaeologists are celebrating a history-making find, the largest ancient city ever found in Egypt. Not far from the storied tombs of the Valley of the Kings is another site outside Luxor that dates back some 3,000 years. It's likely the lost Golden City.

ZAHI HAWASS: This city gives us lots of important information about the life of the Egyptian during the time of the Golden Age. That city was lost. Egyptologists never thought it would be discovered.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Famous Egyptologist Zahi Hawass told the Luxor Times that it may have been built by the pharaoh Amenhotep III and then abandoned by his heretic son, Akhenaten.

HAWASS: This excavation is really proving for the first time that we still have to do more and more excavation to be able to find out the limit of this large settlement.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Just as today's urban planners might map it out, the city is laid out in districts with places for administration, industry and workers' quarters. And buried beneath the sand, they found walls and rooms littered with jewelry, colored pottery and scarab beetle amulets. Johns Hopkins professor Betsy Bryan calls it one of the most important archaeological discoveries since King Tut's tomb was unearthed nearly a century ago, a precious and well-preserved glimpse into life in the ancient world. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.