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When I was a child growing up in Maine,

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one of my favorite things to do

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was to look for sand dollars on the seashores of Maine,

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because my parents told me it would bring me luck.

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But you know, these shells, they're hard to find.

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They're covered in sand. They're difficult to see.

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However, overtime, I got used to looking for them.

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I started seeing shapes

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and patterns that helped me to collect them.

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This grew into a passion for finding things,

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a love for the past and archaeology.

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And eventually when I started studying Egyptology,

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I realized that seeing with my naked eyes alone wasn't enough.

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Because all of the sudden in Egypt

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my beach had grown from a tiny beach in Maine

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to one eight hundred miles long

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next to the Nile,

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and my sand dollars had grown

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to the size of cities.

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This is really what brought me to using satellite imagery.

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For trying to map the past, I knew that I had to see differently.

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So I want to show you an example of how we see differently

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using the infrared.

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This is a site located in the eastern Egyptian delta

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called Bendix.

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And the site visibly appears brown,

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but when we use the infrared

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and we process it, all of the sudden, using false color,

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the site appears as bright pink.

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What you are seeing

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are the actual chemical changes to the landscape

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caused by the building materials and activities

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of the ancient Egyptians.

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What I want to share with you today

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is how we've used satellite data

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to find an ancient Egyptian city,

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called Itjtawy,

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missing for thousands of years.

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Itjtawy was ancient Egypt's capital

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for over four hundred years,

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at a period of time called the Middle Kingdom

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about four thousand years ago.

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The site is located in the Faiyum of Egypt

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and site is really important because in the Middle Kingdom

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there was this great renaissance for ancient Egyptian art,

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architecture and religion.

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Egyptologists have always known the site of Itjtawy

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was located somewhere near the pyramids

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of the two kings who built it, indicated within the red circles here,

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but somewhere within this massive flood plane.

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This area is huge --

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it's four miles by three miles in size.

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The Nile used to flow right next to the city of Itjtawy,

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and as it shifted and changed and moved over time to the east,

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it covered over the city.

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So, how do you find a buried city

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in a vast landscape?

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Finding it randomly would be the equivalent

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of locating a needle in a haystack,

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blindfolded wearing baseball mitts.

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So what we did is we used NASA topography data

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to map out the landscape, very subtle changes.

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We started to be able to see where the Nile used to flow.

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But you can see in more detail -- and even more interesting --

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this very slight raised area

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seen within the circle up here, which we thought could possibly be

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the location of the city of Itjtawy.

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So we collaborated with the Egyptian scientists

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to do coring work, which you see here.

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When I say coring, it's like ice coring, but instead of

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layers of climate change you're looking for layers of human occupation.

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And five meters down,

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underneath a thick layer of mud,

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we found a dense layer of pottery.

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What this shows is that at this possible location

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of Itjtawy, five meters down,

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we have of layer of occupation for several hundred years

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dating to the Middle Kingdom, dating to the exact period of time

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we think Itjtawy is.

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We also found work stone --

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carnelian, quartz and agate that shows

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that there was a jewelers workshop here.

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These might not look like much,

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but when you think about the most common stones

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used in jewelry from the Middle Kingdom,

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these are the stones that were used.

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So, we have a dense layer of occupation

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dating to the Middle Kingdom at this site.

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We also have evidence of an elite jewelers workshop,

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showing that whatever was there was a very important city.

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No Itjtawy was here yet,

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but we're going to be returning to the site

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in the near future to map it out.

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And even more importantly,

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we have funding to train young Egyptians

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in the use of satellite technology

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so they can be the ones making great discoveries as well.

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So I wanted to end with my favorite quote

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from the Middle Kingdom --

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it was probably written at the city of Itjtawy four thousand years ago.

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"Sharing knowledge is the greatest of all callings.

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There's nothing like it in the land."

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So as it turns out, TED was not founded in 1984 AD.

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(Laughter)

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Making ideas actually started in 1984 BC

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at a not-lost-for-long city, found from above.

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It certainly puts finding seashells by the seashore in perspective.

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Thank you very much.

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(Applause)

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Thank you.

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(Applause)