How it happens6:49Archaeologists have unearthed a possible “pleasure barge” off the coast of Alexandria
Long before modern billionaires threw lavish parties at sea on their superyachts, Ancient Egypt's wealthy elite crossed the Nile River in luxury on their pleasure barges.
Now, for the first time, archaeologists it is believed that they have unearthed one of those luxurious vessels of bygone times from beneath the sediments off the coast of Alexandria.
“When you find a boat that has never been studied before… and has never been found before, it's always very exciting,” Oxford University Marine. archaeologist Frank Goddio, Customs How it happens host Neil Coxal.
If the boat is indeed what it seems, it brings to life a part of Egyptian history that has until now only been depicted in art or described in ancient historical texts.
The discovery was made as the result of one of several recent underwater expeditions led by Goddio and the European Institute of Underwater Archeology in collaboration with the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities. The conclusions were published by the Oxford Center for Maritime Archaeology.
Luxury travel on the Nile
The wooden vessel dates from the early first century AD and was found off the island of Antirhodos, which was part of the great port of ancient Alexandria.
It is about 35 meters long, has a capacity for about 20 oarsmen, and has a large pavilion in the center, which Goddio says was probably “richly” decorated and “full of luxury.” Not built for seafaring, she would probably have traveled along the canal between Alexandra and Canopus on the Nile.
But what makes it stand out? among other ships from of the time, says Goddio, is a “bizarre feature” of its architecture – a flat-bottomed bow combined with a rounded stern.
“It fits perfectly with the iconography of these pleasure barges,” Goddio said.
Everything historians know about these pleasure craft, called Talamegoscome from texts and images.
The shape of the vessel discovered by Goddio's team matches historical images, especially those shown in Nile mosaic of PalestrinaAn ancient floor mosaic depicting the passage of ships from the Blue Nile to the Mediterranean Sea.
This also seems to correspond to the descriptions of the Greek historian Strabo, who visited Alexandria between 29-25 AD. BC And according to the Guardian newspaperwrote: “Every day and every night the boats are full of people playing the flute and dancing unrestrainedly and with extreme debauchery.”
Egyptologist Caroline Arbuckle MacLeod, who was not involved in the discovery, called it “really exciting”, noting that it is extremely rare to find a surviving boat from this era, let alone possibly Talamegos.
“As far as I know, this will be the first preserved form of a pleasure craft that we've found in ancient Egypt,” MacLeod, an archaeologist at the University of Saskatchewan, told CBC. “So it would be great to have a piece of history like that existing.”
She compared the pleasure barges of Ancient Egypt with modern yachts.
“You'll be going up and down the Nile, similar to what you might do now on one of the yacht restaurants or on cruises,” she said. “And we know that kings did this regularly.”
The most famous example, according to her, massive two-story palace barge upon request Ptolemy IV PhilopatorPharaoh, for himself and his wife Arsinoe III.
Or it could be a religious vessel.
Goddio says more work needs to be done to confirm with certainty that the discovery is indeed a pleasure barge.
However, he has a competing theory. It may have been the property of a nearby temple of Isis – the goddess of magic, motherhood, healing and fertility – used in religious rituals.
“In this case, in the middle of this boat, instead of a pavilion, a small temple dedicated to the goddess Isis will be built,” he said.
This temple, he said, was destroyed by a series of catastrophic earthquakes and tidal waves around 50 AD. BC, which explains how the barge sank and became buried under the sediment that preserved it.
Whatever it is, MacLeod says it's in important a piece of maritime history that speaks of key The role of the Nile in the history of Egypt.
“When we think of an Egyptian highway, it’s actually the Nile,” she said. “It would be full of different types of ships for people moving back and forth, visiting friends, carrying their goods for trade, traveling back and forth for business purposes, and also, of course, similar pleasure cruises.”
Goddio says the team did everything possible to study the vessel underwater. They took wood samples for carbon dating and photographed them from all angles to create 3D models.
They then covered it back with sediment and left it as they found it, as recommended by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
That's where it will remain, he says, unless one day the Egyptian government decides otherwise. He said getting it out of the water without damaging it would be an extremely difficult task.
“It’s been there for 2,000 years,” he said. “It may remain dormant for several centuries.”
