The oldest deep-sea shipwreck, and possibly the oldest complete underwater shipwreck, has been discovered in the Mediterranean Sea, about 56 miles off the coast of northern Israel.
Announcing the discovery Thursday, the Israel Antiquities Authority said a preliminary examination of two clay jars known as Canaan amphorae showed that the merchant ship, estimated to be 39 to 46 feet long, sank sometime between 1400 and 1300 B.C., a period when the Egyptian empire stretched from what is now northern Syria to Sudan and when the boy pharaoh Tutankhamun briefly reigned.
It's unclear whether the galley was damaged by a sudden storm, strong winds or even piracy, but footage recorded by a remotely operated submersible robot shows the ship sank to the ocean floor without capsizing, and the hundreds of storage bottles in its hold remained largely intact.
“We think any discovery of a Bronze Age shipwreck is very important because ships from this period are extremely rare,” said Cemal Pulak, a maritime archaeologist at Texas A&M University who was not involved in the discovery. Late Bronze Age shipwrecks are so rare that there are only two other known cargo-laden wrecks in the Mediterranean Sea. Both, unlike the new one, were found relatively close to shore off the coast of Turkey and accessible with standard diving gear. The more recent of the two ships was discovered in 1982; no notable discoveries have been made since.
The new Bronze Age wonder was discovered about a mile underwater last summer during an expedition conducted by Energean, a London-based company looking to develop natural gas fields. The undersea land was claimed by both Israel and Lebanon but came under Israeli control in 2022 under a US-brokered agreement.
Energean's remotely operated vehicle (ROV) is tethered to a surface ship by a steel cable and controlled by an on-board pilot with a video-game-style joystick. About 3,300 feet below the surface (about 2,000 feet above the location of the wreck), even the faintest light disappears, leaving behind an area where the sun doesn't reach, called the aphotic zone. The robotic ROV's camera is fitted with a powerful light that shines into the perpetual darkness.
Last July, an ROV captured footage of a large pile of jugs on the seafloor, which was sent to the Department of Antiquities, who identified the jugs as storage jars from the Late Bronze Age. They were designed to hold honey, olive oil, or the resin of the Pistacia atlantica tree, which was used as a preservative for wine and in Egypt during the New Kingdom as incense and a varnish for funerary objects.
This caught the interest of archaeological authorities, so Energia built two mechanical attachments for the ROV that would enable it to remove the artifact from the pile with minimal risk of damaging the entire object. Over two days at sea in May of this year, the ROV mapped the site and located the amphora in a container half-buried in the sediment, with no sign of the anchor, mast, or square sails that were common on Mediterranean trading ships of the time.
“Because the ship is preserved at such a deep seabed, it has remained frozen in time since the incident,” said Jacob Sharvit, head of the Israel Antiquities Authority's Department of Marine Archaeology and leader of the May expedition. “The hull and contents have not been disturbed by human hands, nor have they been subject to the waves and currents that can affect shipwrecks in shallow waters.”
The ROV extended its robotic arm and removed two bottles, one from each end of the ship's hull, both filled with silt. “Analyzing the trace elements in the bottles should answer questions about what was in them when the ship sank,” Dr Sharbit said.
The 14th century BC in the eastern Mediterranean was a time of vibrant international trade and great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few. Canaanite commercial centers dotted the Levant coast, supplying the Aegean region and beyond with raw materials and manufactured goods that were both strategic and practical. The main exports were copper and tin, which, when mixed together, became bronze, used to make powerful agricultural tools that increased crop yields, and weapons and armor to equip entire armies.
Much of what is known about the nature of trade in the Late Bronze Age is based on two shipwrecks excavated in southern Turkey: the first at Cape Gelidnya in 1960, and the second at Uluburun between 1984 and 1994. Based on these finds, scholars have inferred that Late Bronze Age commerce was carried out by hopping from port to port safely along the coastline within sight of shore.
In 1982, a Turkish sponge diver reported the first sighting of a “metal biscuit with ears” off the coast of a rocky promontory known as Uluburun. Scientists speculated that the ship he spotted may have sunk around 1300 BCE while sailing from the Levant to Greece. According to Dr. Pulakh, the leader of the Uluburun expedition, the ship was loaded with 10 tons of copper and one ton of tin, as well as everyday and exotic materials, including a gold scarab inscribed with Nefertiti's name, glass ingots, ivory, ebony, hippopotamus teeth, ostrich eggs, tools made from objects from at least 11 Asian, African and European cultures, and about 150 Canaanite amphorae, about 120 of which contained resin.
A ship previously found at Cape Gelidnya sunk around 1200 BC and was also carrying copper and tin, but in smaller quantities, as well as bronze scrap in the form of agricultural tools for recycling.
“The two wrecks illustrate different forms of trade,” Dr Pulaq said. “The Uluburun represents long-distance, inter-regional elite exchange, while the Cape Gelidnya was involved in local coastal cabotage, or opportunistic trade, buying and selling goods and services in ports to make quick profits.”
Newly discovered shipwreck suggests Bronze Age traders sailed further from the port.
“The discovery of this ship has completely changed our understanding of the navigational skills of ancient mariners,” said Dr Sharbit. “It is the first time that it has been discovered so far away that no land is visible. From this geographical point, all you can see around you is the horizon.”
Dr Sharvit speculates that 14th century BC sailors would have lacked compasses, astrolabes or sextants and would have relied on celestial navigation, measuring the positions and angles of the sun and stars. He said the wreck will advance scientific knowledge of Late Bronze Age trade patterns and the people who controlled them.
“Two previous Bronze Age shipwrecks indicated a trade route linking Cyprus, the Levant and various parts of the eastern Aegean,” Dr Sharvit said. “Our shipwreck suggests that maritime trade took place from Syria and Canaan westwards to southern Cyprus, Crete and other Greek countries.”
Alternatively, he suggested, the doomed crew of the deep-sea galley may have set sail from an Aegean port, loaded up and disembarked in a Levantine port, then loaded Canaanite amphorae onto their ship for the homeward voyage. If so, Sharvit said, they could have been Mycenaean civilization, which by 1400 BCE had controlled Crete and much of southern Greece and held a virtual monopoly on commerce in the eastern Mediterranean.
Dr Pulakh called the three Bronze Age shipwrecks valuable time capsules. But although the Uluburun wreck was unearthed through 22,413 dives, Dr Sharvit said Israeli authorities would not attempt to raise any more of the wrecks for the time being and would instead preserve the deep-sea site in its current state.
“We think this is the best way to keep the wreck safe at this point,” he said. “We hope to be able to use better technology and methods to excavate it to that depth and preserve it for future generations.”
