Wreck of 2,000-year-old pleasure boat discovered off Egypt’s coast

Underwater archaeologists announced Monday that they have discovered the 2,000-year-old wreck of an ancient Egyptian pleasure boat off the coast of Alexandria.

Divers discovered the ship’s hull, which measured more than 115 feet long and about 23 feet wide, submerged in the port of Antirhodos island, the European Institute of Underwater Archeology (IEASM) said in a statement.

There was Greek graffiti on the ship which “may date from the first half of the first century AD” and “supports the hypothesis that the ship was built in Alexandria”.

The boat “would have had a luxuriously decorated cabin and appears to have been propelled solely by oars,” added the Alexandria-based institute.

Alexander the Great founded the city of Alexandria in 331 BC. A series of earthquakes and tidal waves that struck its shores submerged the island of Antirhodos, discovered in 1996.

Over the years, divers have recovered statues, coins and other treasures, some of which are on display at the Greco-Roman Museum in Alexandria.

IEASM director Franck Goddio recently published a report on Antirhodos and its temple of Isis, based on underwater explorations carried out since the 1990s.

“It’s extremely exciting because it’s the first time such a boat has been discovered in Egypt,” Goddio told the Guardian of the latest discovery. “These boats were mentioned by different ancient authors, such as Strabo, and they were also depicted in some iconography – for example in the Palestrina mosaic, where we see such a much smaller boat with nobles hunting hippos. But [an actual boat] has never been discovered before.”

Future research on the newly discovered wreck “promises to be a fascinating journey into the life, religion, wealth and river pleasures of ancient Roman Egypt,” the institute said.

Alexandria is home to ancient ruins and historical treasures, but Egypt’s second-largest city is particularly vulnerable to climate change and rising sea levels, which are sinking more than three millimeters each year.

Even in the United Nations’ best-case scenario, a third of Alexandria will be underwater or uninhabitable by 2050.

Several shipwrecks have been discovered in the bay, including the wreck of Napoleon’s fleet from the Battle of the Nile in 1798. Earlier this year, a well-preserved boat measuring approximately 20 feet long was discovered by IEASM in the eastern port of Alexandria, according to a podcast published by the Hilti Foundation.

In August, archaeologists announced that ancient statues, Roman coins and other artifacts from Alexandria had been discovered. taken from the Mediterranean Sea.

Authorities said the site could be an extension of the ancient city of Canopus, an important center of the Ptolemaic dynasty, which ruled Egypt for nearly 300 years, and the Roman Empire, which ruled for about 600 years.

News of the discovery of a pleasure boat comes just days after archaeologists revealed that 225 funerary figurines were found inside a tomb in the ancient Egyptian capital of Tanis, in the Nile Delta.

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