A 35-meter-long ancient pleasure boat has been found off the coast near Alexandria in Egypt. It matches the description of the Greek historian Strabo, who lived in the early 1st century AD. This is the first such vessel ever found,The Guardian reports.
Photo: Christoph Gerigk, Franck Goddio / Hilti Foundation
Excavations were carried out by the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology (IEASM) under the direction of Professor Franck Goddio, a marine archaeologist at Oxford University. The ship was found near the sunken island of Antirhodos, which was previously part of the Great Harbor of Alexandria (Portus Magnus), at a depth of 7 meters beneath a 1.5-meter layer of sediment.
Map of Portus Magnus ruins, overlaid on a satellite image. Photo: Franck Goddio, IEASM
Initially, Goddio believed these were two ships, as the construction was unusual: the bow was flat, while the stern was round, allowing navigation only in shallow waters.
3D image of the vessel. Photo: Christoph Gerigk, Franck Goddio / Hilti Foundation
The vessel dates to the first half of the 1st century, is 35 meters long, and features a special central pavilion with a luxurious cabin. The width of the beams is about 7 meters, and there are inscriptions in Greek on board. More than 20 people might have been needed for rowing.
Such ships were previously only found in descriptions by ancient authors and in mosaics, for instance, in Palestine, but a real vessel had not been found before. Strabo described that similar ships were used by the royal court for excursions and entertaining people on the canals of Alexandria, with music and dancing.
The ship was found less than 50 meters from the site of the temple of the goddess Isis, which Goddio is also excavating. It may have sunk during the catastrophic destruction of the temple around 50 AD, when earthquakes and tsunamis flooded the port and part of the coast. Another version suggests the vessel could have been a sacred barge participating in a maritime ceremony honoring Isis.
According to Goddio, the ship will remain on the seabed for now.
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