A massive Saite-era building has been found beneath the Nile Delta using satellite radar. Discover the gods behind it on our 10-day Gods of Egypt tour.
Egypt never stops surprising us.
This week, Egyptian researchers revealed a building roughly the size of a football field. It has lain beneath the Nile Delta for around 2,600 years - and they found it from space.
Egypt's story is still being written. And you can be part of it.
The site is Buto, known today as Tell el-Fara'in, in the northwestern Nile Delta.
It was the sacred home of Wadjet, the cobra goddess who protected Lower Egypt.
For decades, digs here stopped at groundwater. Only the later Ptolemaic and Roman layers could be reached.
So the team looked down instead of digging.
Radar from the European Space Agency's Sentinel-1 satellite revealed a buried oval shape, about 128 by 62 metres.
Electrical scans then mapped what lay below, without disturbing a thing.
The result: a huge mudbrick building from the 26th Dynasty (the Saite period), 3 to 6 metres underground.
It may have been a tomb, a house for priests or a shrine.
Under the walls sat a thick layer of clean sand - placed there on purpose.
Delta clay swells and shrinks with water, slowly cracking anything built on it. The sand spread the weight and let water drain away.
It's the same idea behind modern foundations, used over 2,500 years ago.
A test trench turned up:
The Saite pharaohs ruled from nearby Sais and restored the Delta's temples. A grand building at sacred Buto fits their story.
Buto isn't on the usual visitor route. But its gods and traditions are everywhere on our 10-day Gods of Egypt tour.
Local graduate Egyptologists guide you throughout, bringing headlines like this to life.
Add-ons: sunrise balloon over Luxor, Abu Simbel, or Saqqara, Dahshur and Memphis.
Departures every Saturday, year-round.
Next departure: 19 December 2026. Secure your place with a deposit.
Discovery details as reported by Live Science on 2 November 2026, based on a study in the journal Acta Geophysica.
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