British Team Uncovers Lost Nile Delta City Built Around Temple and Trade
Archaeologists have uncovered the remains of Imet, a once-prominent city in Egypt’s Nile Delta, buried for centuries beneath a mound in the Sharqia governorate. The discovery, led by a British team from the University of Manchester, was announced this week by Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.
What they found wasn’t a buried temple or a single statue, but the bones of a functioning city: multi-story homes, storage areas, and animal enclosures. These remains provide an unusually intact glimpse of life from the early to mid-4th century BCE.
Imet wasn’t a backwater. It stood at the crossroads of Delta trade routes and was once the capital of the 19th province of Lower Egypt. At its heart was a temple devoted to the goddess Wadjet, patron of Lower Egypt, which likely drew pilgrims and travelers from across the Delta.
Much of the excavation focused on the site’s eastern edge, where satellite scans had suggested dense urban buildup. Below the surface, thick foundation walls hinted at tall, tower-like dwellings typical of late pharaonic urban planning. Their survival is remarkable, especially in a region where mudbrick rarely endures.
A fragment of green faience—a funerary ushabti from the 26th Dynasty—turned up near a stele showing Horus trampling crocodiles. Alongside Horus is Bes, the dwarf god associated with both doorways and childbirth.
Also found at the site were a limestone platform, the remains of two large mudbrick columns, and signs of a ceremonial road linking two shrines—one to Wadjet, the other built during the Late Period. Experts said the processional path seemed to have fallen out of use sometime in the mid-Ptolemaic era.
The temple had staying power. Ramses II rebuilt it, and Amasis II later restored it. That continuity likely shaped the dense sprawl of housing and infrastructure surrounding it.
