A team of European underwater archaeologists announced Monday their discovery of a 2,000-year-old Egyptian pleasure barge off the country’s coast.
The discovery marks the first time that remains of a shipwrecked pleasure barge have been found in Egypt, the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology said. The barges were used on the Nile as well as on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast.
“It’s extremely exciting because it’s the first time ever that such a boat has been discovered in Egypt … Those boats were mentioned by different ancient authors, like Strabo, and they were also represented in some iconography,” European Institute for Underwater Archaeology Director Franck Goddio told The Guardian.
The archaeologists found roughly 92 feet of wood from the ancient barge, dated to the first century AD. The section corresponds to a boat that would have been roughly 115 feet long and about 23 feet wide.
Graffiti in ancient Greek was found on the ship, which supports the researchers’ hypothesis that the ship was constructed in Alexandria, where it was found. The city was a major center of the Greek population in Egypt from its founding in ancient times into the modern era. The institute has not yet deciphered what the graffiti says.
“This intriguing shipwreck could have been used along the canals in Alexandria as Strabo described, but as it was also found very close to our excavations on the temple of Isis … it could well have sunk during the catastrophic destruction of this temple around 50 AD (taking into account its dating),” Mr. Goddio said.
