What if we told you Atlantis was real? Or at least, something close enough? The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is giving visitors a chance to see treasures from the ancient coastal cities of Thonis-Heracleion and Canopus, two centres of trade that brought Egyptian and Greek civilizations together in art, worship and everyday life - and have since sunk to the bottom of the Mediterranean. The exhibition, titled ‘Treasures of Ancient Egypt: Sunken Cities’, tells the story of one of ancient humanity’s mightiest cities, which fell at the hands of natural disaster in the eighth century.

The exhibition will house just under 300 objects from the underwater excavations made off the coast of Alexandria, as well as from a handful of Egypt’s biggest museums. These include the largest discovered representation of an Egyptian deity, the statue of Hapy, god of fertility. The showcase offers a glimpse into the culture of Ptolemaic Egypt, a period generally considered to be a golden age of science, visual and literary arts.

The exhibition kicked off on the first of July, and has been organized in collaboration with the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. These artefacts will return to Egypt after this exhibition ends.