Remains of 2,000-year-old pleasure boat discovered off Egypt

Underwater archaeologists announced Monday that they had discovered the remains of a 2,000-year-old ancient Egyptian pleasure boat off the coast of Alexandria.

Divers found the hull of the ship, which measured more than 35 meters long and about 7 meters wide, submerged in the port of the island of Antirhodos, the European Institute of Underwater Archeology (IEASM) reported in a statement.

There was Greek graffiti on the ship that “could date to the first half of the 1st century AD” and “supports the hypothesis that the ship was built in Alexandria.”

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

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

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

The director of the IEASM, 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 a ship of this type has been discovered in Egypt,” Goddio told The Guardian about the latest discovery. “These ships were mentioned by different ancient authors, such as Strabo, and were also represented in some iconography, for example, in the Palestrina mosaic, where a much smaller ship is seen with nobles hunting hippos. But [an actual boat] “It had never been discovered before.”

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

Alexandria is home to ancient ruins and historical treasures, but Egypt’s second-largest city is especially 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.

Multiple shipwrecks have been found in the bay, including the remains of Napoleon’s fleet from the Battle of the Nile of 1798. Earlier this year, the IEASM discovered a well-preserved ship measuring about 20 feet long in the eastern harbor 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 taken from the Mediterranean Sea.

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

The announcement of the discovery of the 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.