Archaeologists armed with top-notch technology have scoured one of the richest shipwrecks of antiquity for overlooked treasures, recovering a scattering of artefacts amid indications that significant artworks may await discovery under the seabed.
Lying 50 metres (164 feet) down a steep underwater slope off Antikythera Island, in southern Greece, the Roman commercial vessel’s wreck was accidentally located by sponge divers more than a century ago.
Using primitive suits and assisted by the Greek navy, they raised marble and bronze statues, luxury tableware and the so-called Antikythera Mechanism, an entrancingly complex clockwork computer that tracked the cycles of the Solar system and could predict eclipses to a precise hour on a specific day.
I don’t know what is there – perhaps more works of art or parts of the ship’s equipment – but we really have to dig
A Greek Culture Ministry statement on Thursday said divers raised sample artefacts – a bronze spear probably belonged to a larger than life-sized statue, metal fittings from the 1st century B.C. wooden ship, a pottery flask that may have contained wine or oil and a metal leg from a bed. But excavators hope much more may lie beneath the sand.
“I don’t know what is there – perhaps more works of art or parts of the ship’s equipment – but we really have to dig,” said Angeliki Simossi, head of Greece’s underwater antiquities department.
The ship was at least 40 metres (130 feet) long, and sunk some time in the 1st century B.C. on what is still a busy trade route between mainland Greece and the island of Crete.
Senior team archaeologist Brendan Foley, of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, said evidence from the site shows it to be “the largest ancient shipwreck ever discovered.”
“It’s the Titanic of the ancient world,” he said.
