The water of the Nile River appears murky brown in color due to the flooding in southern provinces, Beni Suef and Sohag, south of Cairo. (Amr Nabil/AP)

Egypt has unearthed a city and cemetery that are more than 7,000 years old, dating to its First Dynasty, in the southern province of Sohag, the Antiquities Ministry said Wednesday.

The find could be a boon for Egypt’s ailing tourism industry, which has suffered endless setbacks since an uprising that toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak in 2011 but remains a vital source of foreign currency.

The city probably housed high-ranking officials and grave builders. Its discovery may yield new insights on Abydos, one of the oldest cities in ancient Egypt, the ministry said in a statement.

Experts say Abydos was Egypt’s capital toward the end of the Predynastic Period and during the rule of the first four dynasties.

The discovery was made about 1,300 feet from the temple of Seti I, a New Kingdom period memorial across the Nile from present-day Luxor.

Archaeologists have uncovered huts, pottery remains and iron tools as well as 15 huge graves, the ministry said.

“The size of the graves discovered in the cemetery is larger in some instances than royal graves in Abydos dating back to the First Dynasty, which proves the importance of the people buried there and their high social standing during this early era of ancient Egyptian history,” the ministry said.

Egypt’s tourism industry has struggled to recover since the bombing of a Russian plane carrying 224 people from a Red Sea resort in October 2015.

More than 14.7 million tourists visited Egypt in 2010, dropping to 9.8 million in 2011. In the first quarter of 2016, just 1.2 million tourists traveled to Egypt, compared with 2.2 million a year earlier.

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