A curious recent discovery has revealed a promising new underground archaeological find at the ancient site of Buto in Egypt’s Nile Delta.
Researchers who were testing a remote sensing technology designed to locate buried structures and other below-ground features reported the unique find earlier this year, which could be a previously undiscovered tomb or temple now believed to date as far back as 2,600 years.
The discovery was made at the Tell el-Fara’in site, more commonly known as Buto, which comprises the remains of an ancient city that thrived around 5,600 years ago during Egypt’s Predynastic period.
Origins of a Mystery
Buto underwent several periods of destruction and reassembly throughout its history, making it a significant focus of past archaeological work.
Some of the city’s oldest portions are currently entombed beneath several centuries’ worth of accumulated mud and soil, a factor that significantly complicates traditional excavations. To help them locate an ideal location for future excavation, the team employed an approach that combined SAR (Sentinel-1 GRD) satellite imagery with electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) measurements, which helped them pinpoint an ideal location to dig that would best enable an investigation of Buto’s settlement phases.
“Sentinel-1 (C-band) satellite imagery captured on May 5, 2018, was processed using SNAP software (version 9.0.0) to identify large-scale anomalies indicative of buried structures,” the team reports in a paper detailing their findings, which appeared in Applied Geophysics in March.
“Based on these detected anomalies, the locations for ERT profiles were strategically selected to maximize the likelihood of indicating significant subsurface features,” the team explained.
ERT technology is ideal for such carefully targeted excavation, since it relies on electrical currents placed into the ground, which researchers then use to collect data that helps them assemble a three-dimensional model of the buried structures. This imagery is generated based on differences in the way various materials either display electrical conductivity or resistance.
Buried Discoveries Emerge
Based on the team’s scans, the top three meters of the area revealed a distinctive layer of material, which the team judged to be broken pottery and debris—likely associated with Roman periods of occupation.
However, going further down in their scans, descending to a depth of approximately six meters, the team discovered something more intriguing: what appeared to be some kind of large buried structure.
Based on its depth, the team believes this unique structure is likely associated with the Saite period, which dates it to around 2,600 years ago. Although it remains unknown precisely what the structure is, or what its exact purpose may have been, one possibility is that it could be a large shrine, or even a tomb.
Uncovering Religious Artifacts
Following the initial discovery, the team undertook preliminary excavations of a small 10 x 10-meter area. This revealed walls constructed of mudbrick, as well as religious artifacts in locations that aligned with the team’s scans.
“The presence of a small offering basin along with numerous religious amulets depicting Egyptian deities such as Isis, Horus, Taweret, and Wadjet further supports the temple hypothesis,” the team writes in their study.
Also among the religious artifacts uncovered at the site were a “remarkable bronze amulet with a suspension hole, representing Horus the child” as well as amulets featuring a crouching lion, an amulet of Anubis, and the remains of limestone statues “in sexual positions” along with “a faience plaque with relief carvings of Hathor on both sides.”
However, the team reports that one of the most significant artifacts recovered from this area of the excavation was a steatite scarab bearing the name of King Thutmose III, which the team believes “may have functioned as an amulet or seal.”
“Collectively, these artefacts indicate the presence of a religious site with strong cultic and ceremonial associations, further reinforcing the interpretation of the structure as a temple from the 26th Dynasty,” the team says.
Ongoing Excavations
While still in the early phases, the team’s discoveries so far help to validate the geophysical and remote sensing techniques that made the discovery possible. “The results of this study demonstrate the effectiveness of combining geophysical measurements and remote sensing data,” the team writes, adding that they provided “a very accurate vision in detecting buried settlements in a complex region.”
“3D inversion algorithms were particularly effective in delineating buried mudbrick walls and architectural structures, significantly enhancing our understanding of site formation processes,” the researchers add.
Going forward, the team recommends further ERT surveys, which may help to reveal additional information about the site’s deepest occupation levels. For the time being, the team believes the evidence in hand points to the interpretation of the site and its features as an ancient temple, and that evidence points to the possibility that another may be located nearby.
“Our findings suggest that, in addition to the known temple, another temple may remain buried under a thick clay layer, which will be investigated through extensive measurements in forthcoming studies,” the team writes.
The recent paper, “Multi-scale detection of buried archaeological elements across different occupation phases: an integrated approach using radar satellite imagery and electric resistivity tomography at Buto, northwestern Nile Delta of Egypt,” appeared in Applied Geophysics on March 10, 2026.
Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.