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Author: Mark ‘Crowley’ Russell
The oldest known deep-sea shipwreck, containing hundreds of intact amphorae, has been discovered in the Mediterranean Sea, 90km off the coast of Israel.
Estimated to be between 3,300 – 3,400 years old, the wreckage was found at a depth of 1.8km during an exploratory ROV survey by oil and gas company Energean in 2023. Energean contacted the Israeli Antiquities Authority (IAA) after sighting ‘a large pile of jugs heaped on the seafloor’, and set up a team to work with the IAA’s marine archaeologists over the next year to explore the findings.
The amphorae have since been positively identified by IAA researchers as Late Bronze Age storage vessels from the Caananite period – an ancient civilisation which flourished across modern-day Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan and parts of Syria between 3500-1150 BC.
The discovery is remarkable not only for the discovery of the artefacts but also the location of the wreck so far out to sea, where there is no line of sight to the coast to aid with navigation.
‘This is a world-class history-changing discovery,’ said Jacob Sharvit, Head of the IAA Marine Unit. ‘This find reveals to us as never before the ancient mariners’ navigational skills – from this geographical point, only the horizon is visible all around. To navigate they probably used the celestial bodies, by taking sightings and angles of the sun and star positions.’
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The wreck is approximately 12-14m long and was apparently ‘sunk in crisis’, either due to a storm or an attack by pirates, which were common occurrences at the time. Two amphorae have been raised using equipment specially designed to do so, but Sharvit says they have only seen the jars which lie on the surface of the sea floor, and hundreds more are buried in the muddy sand below, along with the wooden beams of the ship.
‘The vessel type identified in the cargo was designed as the most efficient means of transporting relatively cheap and mass-produced products such as oil, wine and other agricultural products such as fruit,’ said Sharvit. ‘Finding such a great quantity of amphorae on board one single ship is testimony to significant commercial ties between their country of origin and the ancient Near Eastern lands on the Mediterranean coast.’
Only two other shipwrecks from the same time period have ever been found, both of which lie in shallow water off the Turkish coast. Archaeologists had previously assumed that merchant vessels navigated from port to port by remaining within sight of the coast, but the new discovery implies that the navigational expertise of ancient seafaring peoples has been greatly underestimated.
‘The discovery of this boat now changes our entire understanding of ancient mariner abilities. It is the very first to be found at such a great distance with no line of sight to any landmass,’ said Sharvit.
‘There is tremendous potential here for research,’ he added. ‘The ship is preserved at such a great depth that time has frozen since the moment of disaster – its body and contexts have not been disturbed by human hands, nor affected by waves and currents which impact shipwrecks in shallower waters.’
The amphorae will be displayed at the IAA’s Jerusalem-based Archeological Campus during the summer.
The post World’s oldest deep-sea shipwreck discovered off Israel coast appeared first on DIVE Magazine.
