Magicats – Witches cats
12 October 2024
Magicats – Why do witches have cats? The popular image of a witch wearing a pointed hat and riding
Sailing around the Mediterranean in the ancient world was very dangerous. Sailors risked their lives every time they set sail. Sometimes ships hit hidden rocks or sank in storms. The oldest shipwreck in the world is one of these ships, and it was piled high with expensive goods. The shipwreck itself, though, is precious treasure for archaeologists because it proves once and for all that all the civilisations of the Bronze Age were trading with each other 3,000 years ago.
This ship is called the Ulu-Burun Shipwreck, named after a nearby town on the coast of southwest Turkey.
But this 15-metre-long wreck remained undiscovered until 1983 when a man diving for sea sponges spotted it.
Archaeologists dived 50 metres down to the ship. A piece of firewood found on board was analysed using a science called dendrochronology (a way of dating wood by analysing the growth rings). Remarkably, it revealed that the ship sank 3,200 years ago! And, even more remarkably, its cargo was still nestling in and around the shipwreck, half-buried in the seabed.
The wreck was so complicated and so fragile (and there was so much of it!) that it took ten years and over 22,000 dives for archaeologists to salvage the ship and its contents from the ocean.
Ancient civilisations
They found that the ship had travelled thousands of miles. We know this because the traders had, on their journey, picked up anything of value to sell.
The ship contained expensive goods from Egypt, the island of Cyprus, the Canaanite people on the east coast of the Mediterranean, and from the Mycenaeans in Greece.
Most of the cargo had come from Cyprus. Over 350 ‘oxhide’ ingots (slabs of raw copper) and 120 ‘bun’ ingots (each so-called because of their shapes) altogether weighed 10 tons. Tin ingots added another ton to the weight of the cargo. When these two metals are melted together they make bronze (after which the Bronze Age is named). This was the first metal to be made into hard tools as well as ornaments, and was very valuable indeed.
Personal possessions found on the ship show that it probably belonged to people called Canaanites who lived in towns on the east coast of the Mediterranean. They were the first major traders in the Mediterranean.
Their bracelets and gold pendants were found, but they had also piled 150 jars on board when they left home. One held glass beads and ingots (the very earliest raw glass ever found). Glass was a very new invention then. When the archaeologists looked at the chemistry of this glass, it matched glass items found in both Egypt and Mycenae. Trading ships like this one clearly linked the great civilisations of the Mediterranean Bronze Age.
Archaeologists also found traces of terebinth resin in many of these jars. This was expensive incense made from a special local tree, and archaeologists know that the Egyptians were very fond of using it when they embalmed their dead. No Egyptian ships this old have been found beyond Egypt, but now we know how the Egyptians got this resin!
Smaller exotic goods from Egypt were also stowed away. These included ebony wood, ostrich eggshells (used as containers), elephant tusks, a number of hippopotamus teeth and tortoise shells (used as sound boxes for musical instruments). Egyptian gold and silver ornaments and two duck-shaped ivory cosmetic boxes were also found. A gold scarab (an Egyptian sacred beetle) inscribed with the name Nefertiti (the wife of a pharaoh who lived about 3,350 years ago) helped confirm when the ship sank.
The ship had recently stopped in Cyprus. Fine pottery, pomegranates and bronze and copper cauldrons all reflected this island’s distinctive culture.
The Mycenaeans lived on the mainland of Greece and some Mycenaeans may have been on board the ship. The style of a pair of swords, a bronze pin, knives and razors, and even amber beads and many pieces of pottery are all Mycenaean.
You have to eat on a long sea voyage and fishhooks, needles for repairing nets, a harpoon, a bronze trident for spearing big fish and the lead weights that hold down nets in the sea were all found.
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Words: AQUILA Team
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