Old Town Sahl Hasheesh

This guide to Old Town Sahl Hasheesh explains the illusion offshore: what look like shipwrecked columns and hieroglyph-covered ruins are a replica, lowered into the water by a developer rather than left by the sea. It traces the local legend of Isis Bay, a Pharaonic trading port said to have been swallowed by the tide, and how a nineteen-nineties developer built cobbled lanes and a harbor to answer that legend instead of digging for it. Snorkel out past the beach to find the sunken half of the story.