Hollande hails choosing France to host Egyptian sunken antiquities exhibition

French President Francois Hollande expected an exhibition for Egypt's sunken antiquities to achieve great success.

Addressing the inaugural ceremony of the exhibition, Hollande expressed gratitude for President Abdel Fattah El Sisi and attending Egyptian ministers for choosing France to host the event.

The exhibition is dubbed "Osiris… Egypt's Sunken Mysteries". It is organized at the premises of the Arab World Institute in Paris.

Antiquities Minister Mamdouh Damaty and Tourism Minister Khaled Ramy were present.

Hollande termed as exceptional the exhibition. He hailed also cooperation in the political, military and cultural fields.

The exhibition will open for the public on Tuesday and run till January 31 with the aim of promoting tourism in Egypt.

The exhibition will illustrate the “legend of Osiris”, the Egyptian god of the afterlife. Osiris, so the legend says, was killed and cut into pieces by his brother Seth.

The showed artifacts were discovered by French underwater archaeologist Franck Goddion.

In 1996, Goddio launched a vast survey in Aboukir Bay, some 30 km northeast of Alexandria, in order to create a precise map of the submerged Canopic region.

Geophysical research on such a grand scale resulted in the mapping of the precise contours of the Canopic region under the sea, as well as the location of the main archaeological deposits and the course of the river bed of the ancient, but no longer extant, western branch of the Nile.

Preliminary excavations followed and led to the discovery of the town of Thonis-Heracleion, its harbour and temple 7 km out to the sea, as well as the town of Canopus, some 2.5 km off the coast.