Construction Project on Hold Pending Excavations : Archeologists Resurrecting Egypt City Where Phoenix Rose From Ashes

Ancient Heliopolis, where legend says the Phoenix was resurrected from its own ashes, is buried or in ruins. But like the fabulous bird that brought it fame, the city itself is emerging from the ashes of time.

Egyptian archeologists are discovering remains under farmlands, in the shadow of apartment high-rises, down alleyways and in mid-campus at Ein Shams University.

“So much is left, but there’s so much trouble getting to it,” said Mohammed Abdel-Galil, chief antiquities inspector for Al-Matariya, a crowded suburb 6 miles north of downtown Cairo. He is heading the search for ancient Heliopolis, struggling to keep a step ahead of a critical need for space to accommodate an exploding population.

The isolated temple columns, mud-brick houses, fallen obelisk, decorated tombs with star-studded ceilings and pieces of mummies hint of the glory of the lost spiritual center the Greeks named Heliopolis--City of the Sun. It honored the sun god Ra, whose temple complex dominated ancient Egypt’s history.

An elegant reminder of Heliopolis’ past, an obelisk, stands in New York’s Central Park. Its twin, the misnamed “Cleopatra’s Needle,” graces the bank of the Thames in London.

The most impressive Heliopolis remnant in its original home is a solitary obelisk of red Aswan granite, erected almost 4,000 years ago by Pharaoh Senwosret I. It weighs 121 tons and towers more than 67 feet above a quiet park amid the daily hubbub of modern life.

Gamal Fares Abu-Fares, a young antiquities inspector, plucked a blue faience statuette from a desecrated brick tomb more than 2,000 years old.

“Grave robbers took the valuable things and tossed relics like this one aside,” he said. “The whole area is one vast cemetery.”

Nearby, an angry-looking man paced back and forth--the owner of the construction site where the tomb was discovered.

“Every time we find another relic, he shakes his head,” Abu-Fares said, explaining that it means that the owner can do no work until the excavators finish.

By law, construction cannot begin in Egypt without a permit from the Egyptian Antiquities Organization certifying the site’s historical unimportance.

In Al-Matariya, where the probability of archeological significance is high, Abu-Fares spends part of each day riding through new housing areas checking building permits. His reception can be far from friendly.

“Sometimes, we get into fistfights,” he said.

Historians fear for the city whose intellect dazzled early Mediterraneans. It gave the world the obelisk. Its mathematicians and astronomers created a solar calendar, 365 days divided into 12 months.

Ancient Heliopolis’ high priests created a think tank that beckoned the leading brains of the day: the law-giver Solon came, as did the mathematician Pythagoras. Plato spent years absorbing Heliopolis’ storehouse of knowledge.

The sprawling modern suburb that Cairenes know as Heliopolis lies southeast of the ancient city, which covered what is now Al-Matariya and nearby areas.

For almost 3,000 years of Pharaohs, Heliopolis stood undaunted, bowing only to a brash young Macedonian, Alexander the Great, who in 331 BC founded a rival city 130 miles to the north, Alexandria.

By the time Christianity took hold more than 400 years later, Heliopolis--called “On” in the Old Testament--was a ghost town. Its remains were slowly covered by sand or they were carted away to build the medieval city of Cairo.

In legend, ancient Heliopolis lives side-by-side with the Phoenix. That dying magical bird set fire to itself on the altar in the great temple of Ra, and a new Phoenix would rise from its own ashes to heaven, a promise to the ancients of resurrection.

But two years ago, the city became far more than legend to construction workers digging the foundation for an engineering school at Ein Shams University, named for the spring where ancient Egyptians believed the sun took its daily baths morning and night.

As they dug, they unearthed evidence of a tomb, the first of an eventual 15 that archeologists would find.

On a recent day at the dig, a tin can sat on the ground, holding hundreds of colorful mummy beads that once adorned the dead. Skulls, pieces of mummies hacked by grave robbers searching for jewelry and layers of mummy wrappings were clearly evident in the cross-sectioned hillside, frozen in time.

To the din of nearby construction, excavators gingerly removed remains with picks and shovels.

A mile away, inspectors are excavating a large cemetery with tombs decorated for officials 2,500 years ago. Sarcophagi line uneven ground where a high-rise had been planned.

Al-Matariya’s Abdel-Galil, a soft-spoken man, constantly tours such excavation sites, trying to piece together the meaning of relics saved from steam shovel and pile driver. His work takes him bumping from one rocky road to another, from modern suburb to remote village, a 10-minute trip through a time tunnel.

He said the most important find so far is a mile-long double mud-brick wall separating a suburb from farming fields. According to surviving accounts of early travelers to ancient Heliopolis, the wall stretched for more than three miles, surrounding an enormous city.

In a quiet village about a mile from the wall, Abdel-Galil walked among columns heralding the exploits of Pharaohs Ramses III and Ramses IV.

“We think a large temple of Ramses III is near here, maybe under the fields,” Abdel-Galil said. “We have to find out, but we have problems. The villagers don’t have a sense of history.”