The team is working in the village of Kom Truga about 60km from Alexandria.
The team?s chief, the Egyptologist Zsuzsanna Vanek, said it was the third season of excavation at the site. Remains of a Roman-era bath and mosaics were discovered by accident at the site in the 1950s, but it was never excavated before the Hungarian team arrived.
The site, called Psenemphaia in Greek, probably dates back to the time of Ramses II, but can be found in the geographical lists only from the 30th dynasty as a settlement in the third nome in Lower Egypt.
Between the time of the Ptolemies and the Roman era, the settlement lay on an important trade route to Libya.
Two Greek inscriptions uncovered at the site suggest that the site was a base for Macedonian cavalry in the 2nd and 1st centuries B.C. It probably had 10,000-15,000 inhabitants and was a large agriculture centre judging from the number of millstones uncovered there. The inhabitants likely grew grain as well as olives and grapes.
?What is interesting is that it turned out that the ancient settlement fostered close contacts with the island world of the Mediterranean already during the time of the Ptolemies as we have found a large number of Greek amphoras with stamped handles,? Vanek said.
The city survived several earthquakes and floods, but was always rebuilt. Even the Arabs renovated buildings there in the 17th and 18th centuries.
?So far we have excavated the middle part of the agriculture centre, a main building which we?ve tied to Cleopatra VII,? Vanek said.
The team found a small temple dedicated to Cleopatra at the site and discovered 69 corroded coins in a jar there, most from the time of Cleopatra, but some from as far back as the 3rd century.
These coins ? copper tetradrachma stamped with the name of Arsinoe II ? are quite rare as few were every minted, Vanek said.
Source: Múlt-kor
