BRONZE
AGE WRECK'S REVELATIONS
By David Gibbins
The article below first appeared in the Christmas 1993 edition of The Illustrated London News, which regularly published colour features on archaeological excavations around the world. At that date, the excavation of the Bronze Age wreck at Uluburun off Turkey was nearly complete, and most of the finds had been made. Since then, a great deal of finds conservation, research and publication has taken place under the supervision of project director Dr Cemal Pulak of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology (INA), based at Bodrum in Turkey and Texas A&M University.
The
Uluburun wreck is one of the greatest archaeological finds ever made,
rivaling King Tut’s tomb. I was privileged to visit the excavation in
1984 when I was a travel scholar of the British Institute of Archaeology
at Ankara, and then in 1999 to handle and study finds from the wreck when
I was an adjunct professor of INA, working on the 5th century
BC wreck excavation at Tektaş. In that year the Bronze Age wreck hall
in the castle museum at Bodrum had just opened, complete with a full-scale
diorama of the wreck below an image of the
original ship as it may have looked. To walk into the hall is to walk into
the world of Homer and the Trojan Wars, bringing that extraordinary period
to life in a way I have never experienced in any other museum. The
dazzling catalogue of finds you can read about below really speaks for
itself. Unlike most ancient shipwrecks, such as the Plemmirio Roman
wreck, whose archaeological richness lies in the snapshot of
day-to-day economic life they provide, the Uluburun wreck is that greatest
of rarities – a treasure wreck in the true sense of the word. It was
carrying enough copper and tin to equip an entire army of Agamemnon or
Hector, and its loss could have changed the course of early civilization.
The
Uluburun wreck provided inspiration for the fictional Minoan wreck in my
novel Atlantis.
-------------------------
Copper ingots,
ostrich eggshells and a gold seal of Nefertiti are among the cargo
salvaged from a Bronze Age ship off the Turkish coast. David Gibbins
explains how the wreck is expanding our knowledge of ancient trade
patterns.
Underwater archaeologists are excavating one of the
oldest and richest shipwrecks yet discovered. Dating from the late 14th or early
13th century BC, when the Mycenaean Greek civilization
was flourishing, the wreck has yielded a wealth of finds, including metal
ingots, jewellery, pottery, anchors, tools and weapons.
It lies below the rocky headland of Uluburun, near Kaş,
in south-western Turkey, on the ancient sea route between the eastern
Mediterranean and the Aegean. In 1983 local sponge divers reported the
site to a team from the Institute of Nautical Archaeology, which is based
at Texas A&M University and at Bodrum, Turkey. Excavations have been
conducted since 1984 under Professor George Bass and Cemal Pulak, in
collaboration with the Turkish authorities.
The mound of material – undisturbed by looters –
lies spread down a slope at a depth of between 44 and 51 metres. Its size
suggests a ship between 15 and 18 metres long. Excitingly, some timbers
have survived, making this the earliest known seagoing hull. The keel and
strakes of fir were joined by pegged mortise-and-tenon, in which small
slats of oak (tenons) were fitted into holes (mortises) chiselled in the
edge of each timber at regular intervals. Once the adjacent plank was
slotted on, the tenons were secured by driving wooden pegs through the
front and back of each joint. The mortise-and-tenon, ‘shell-first’
technique, typical of later Greek and Roman ships, was thus
well-established by the late second millennium BC.
Wrecks can help preserve raw materials, such as metal
ingots, which would rapidly have been transformed into manufactured goods
at their destination, and are rarely found at land sites. The Uluburun
ship carried at least 24 stone anchors, of three basic sizes – the first
to be found in a Bronze Age wreck. Some were stacked in pairs athwartships
between rows of copper ingots.
At least 12 tonnes of cargo and stone ballast
included more than 250 metal ingots. Most are four-handled, oxhide-shaped
copper ingots, each weighing between 20 and 30 kilogrammes, and are
typical of this period; other copper ingots are of discoid and bun shape.
The four-handled types were laid in overlapping rows like shingles, the
lowest layer bedded in branches of thorny burnett. The second essential
ingredient of bronze is represented by tin ingots, the earliest well-dated
examples.
Alongside the ingots were at least 100
‘Canaanite’ (Syro-Palestinian) amphorae, early examples of the
capacious, two-handled pottery vessels later used throughout the
Mediterranean to transport liquid and perishable goods. Their main
contents were about 1 tonne of resin from the terebinth tree (turpentine),
perhaps used as incense or as a cleaner; among the other amphorae was one
filled with olive pits and one with orpiment, the yellow trisulphide of
arsenic used as a pigment. Seven pithoi, huge pottery jars each of about
100 kilogrammes capacity, have also been found. One may have carried
pomegranates, another contained an unknown liquid, preserved only as a
dark stain on the seabed, while in several others were stacks of Cypriot
table pottery, the main manufactured cargo of the ship. The smaller
pottery forms included a crater, nested stacks of Cypriot bowls, five
ram’s-head drinking cups, several Cypriot juglets in ‘white-shaved’
style and Cypriot lamps; there were also ‘pilgrim flasks’, probably
filled with liquids.
The extraordinary variety of raw materials at
Uluburun includes 100 kilogrammes of cobalt-blue glass ingots, the
earliest known. Other finds are murex shells, which were harvested for
their famous purple dye – an industry associated especially with Tyre,
in modern Lebanon. Astonishingly delicate finds were five ostrich
eggshells, perhaps intended as the bowls of cups to be reinforced with
silver or gold.
Three logs of African blackwood ebony were probably
from upper Egypt. Another exotic raw material was ivory – whole sections
of elephant and hippopotamus tusk as well as several hippo teeth, an
important source of ivory in the ancient Near East and Egypt. Examples of
ivory carving from the wreck are two exquisite ivory wings, the covers of
duck-shaped cosmetics boxes similar to examples from Syria-Palestine.
The ship’s galley has yet to be located with certainty. However, there is a range of bronze objects that could have formed an equipment store. These include a cache of weapons – arrowheads, a spearhead, swords and a dagger; tools – a double-bladed axe, adzes, a knife (its wooden handle intact), a chisel, drill bits, tongs, razors and a sickle; and the remains of several cauldrons, one harbouring a nest of three bronze bowls.
A remarkable find is a sharpening kit for bronze
blades,comprising medium- and fine-grain abrasive stones and an antler
tine for honing and polishing, which may have belonged to the ship’s
carpenter. A number of bronze hooks and several hundred lead weights are
probably from a casting net, while a stone mortar and grinding tray may
have been galley stores. The personal effects of the crew are not easy to
identify: a spindle whorl and an astragal (a knucklebone used for
divination or for playing a game similar to dice) may fall into this
category.
There were also an abundance of luxury items, some
perhaps belonging to wealthy passengers. Several of these finds are unique
and spectacular. Five tortoise shells may have been the sound-boxes for
musical instruments, perhaps lyres or lutes; there were also bronze
cymbals and a whistle-like tin object. Of great interest is a diptych, a
folding wooden writing tablet. A three-piece cylindrical hinge joined two
boxwood leaves, each 6.2 centimetres by 9.5 centimetres across. Their
inner faces were recessed and cross-hatched to retain a wax writing
surface. Although no identifiable characters remained on the surviving
wax, the Uluburun diptych, perhaps from coastal north Syria or Cyprus, may
be regarded as the oldest known book.
Other exotica were objects of faience (a molten
silicate similar to glass), including a drinking cup (rhyton) in the form
of a ram’s head. There were also many beads of faience, rock crystal,
green glass and Baltic amber, and rings made from seashells. But the gold
items are the most opulent: a magnificent chalice, perhaps Mycenaean; a
vulture-shaped pendant, and others of probable Canaanite origin; a small
gold-alloy bar; scrap jewellery, silver as well as gold, probably intended
for reworking; and four medallions, one decorated in repoussé with a
four-pointed star.
That there was at least one merchant on board is
indicated by small balance-pan weights, including one of haematite, one of
bronze in the shape of a fly and one of lead-filled bronze in the shape of
a recumbent bull. They appear to be based on weight standards common to
the Near East, Crete and Cyprus. Further evidence lies in several small
rock-crystal seals, intricately carved with merchants’ marks. One is of
Mycenaean type and may have belonged to a Greek; this and the Mycenaean
pottery have persuaded some scholars that the ship is of Greek origin.
But there were also Kassite, Assyrian and Cypriot cylinder seals and
Egyptian scarabs. The Kassite seal had gold caps partly covering the
scene, so may have been reused as jewellery.
A unique gold scarab of Nefertiti – so far the best
dating evidence for the wreck – points tantalizingly to an Egyptian,
even a royal Egyptian, connection. Certainly the rich catalogue of luxury
and prestige items in the wreck would seem compatible with a high-ranking
passenger or a royal consignment. On the other hand, the scarab was found
near a deposit of scrap gold, including an Egyptian ring deliberately cut
in two, so it may have little bearing on the ship’s origin. However, we
can be reasonably certain that it was heading west, perhaps towards one of
the great palaces of Mycenaean Greece.
The wreck is important, not only for the spotlight it
throws on Bronze Age trade and for its artefacts, but also because it
demonstrates the very early foundations of a Mediterranean maritime
tradition. The techniques of ship construction, the hull size, the types
of cargo goods and receptacles, and the merchants’ weighing equipment
would all have been familiar to Roman and Byzantine traders almost 2,000
years later. We can anticipate more insights and excavation and study
progresses.
David Gibbins, 1993. 'Bronze Age wreck's revelations.' The Illustrated London News 281 (7116), 72-3
Illustration
A rendering of an Egyptian painting from the Tomb of Kenamun, mayor of Thebes under Amenophis III (c. 1390-1352 BC). The ship is Syrian, and is offloading cargo in an Egyptian port. On board is a large pottery 'pithos', and the bearers are carrying amphoras - 'Canaanite jars' - as well as smaller pottery 'stirrup jars.' All three of these pottery vessels were found in the Uluburun wreck, also 14th century BC and probably sailing from a Syro-Palestinian port.