Beneath the ancient Egyptian city of Buto in the Nile Delta, archeologists have uncovered the remains of a massive structure that may have once served as a religious complex more than 2,600 years ago. The discovery offers another glimpse into a settlement that was once an important religious center in Lower Egypt with a mysterious period of abandonment in its history.

A team of Egyptian researchers made the discovery using a combination of satellite radar imagery and electrical resistivity tomography, a non-invasive technique that uses electrical currents to map underground structures. The findings, published in the Acta Geophysica journal, offer a rare look into a previously inaccessible layer hiding beneath Egypt’s ancient settlements.

Buto, known today as Tell al-Fara’in (or the mound of the pharaohs), is one of the most historically significant archeological sites in the Nile Delta. It once served as a major religious and political center of ancient Lower Egypt, with a history stretching back more than 5,000 years.

The settlement was associated with the worship of Wadjet, the cobra goddess who served as the protector of Lower Egypt and its rulers. The ancient city remained an important religious center throughout much of Egypt’s history, although the city was largely unoccupied for roughly 1,500 years before it was resettled.

Because Buto was inhabited across several different periods, later buildings and accumulated cultural deposits buried older archeological remains. Some of those remains lie beneath thick layers of clay and silt, with parts of the archeological deposits extending below the groundwater level.

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