Starts to excavate sacred site extremely close to Egyptian city (5)
I believe the answer is:
essen
'city' is the definition.
(Essen is an example)
'starts to excavate sacred site extremely close to egyptian' is the wordplay.
'starts to' says to take the initial letters.
'extremely' says to hollow out the word (remove centre letters).
'close to' indicates one should take the final letters (the close/ending of).
'site' with its middle taken out is 'se'.
The first letters of 'excavate sacred' is 'es'.
The final letter of 'egyptian' is 'n'.
'es'+'se'+'n'='ESSEN'
(Other definitions for essen that I've seen before include "German industrial city on the Ruhr" , "city in the Ruhr valley" , "European city" , "Industrial centre of the Ruhr" , "German industrial centre" .)