Hull:
wood. Built:
ca. 85 bce
The Antikythera wreck is a first-century bce. merchant ship lying in 35°52N, 23°20E near the island of Antikythera off the northwest tip of Crete. In the spring of 1900, sponge divers from Syme discovered the wreck site at a depth of 50 to 60 meters. The site was the object of one of the earliest underwater excavations, conducted by the sponge divers working under their captain, Dimitrios Kondos, with the assistance of the Greek navy. Provided with only primitive helmet-diving equipment, the divers suffered from the bends and narcosis and could remain on the bottom only for short stretches of time. The effort is better described as a salvage operation than an archaeological excavation. As Peter Throckmorton later wrote,
It was ... as if the tomb of Tutankhamen had been excavated in five-minute shifts by drunken stevedores who had never seen an Egyptian tomb, working in semi-darkness, dressed in American football pads with coal scuttles on their heads.
Small sections of elm planking from the hull were recovered and stored at the National Museum in Athens; however, the original shape or dimensions cannot be determined. The planks were fastened edge to edge by mortises and tenons, and copper nails were used to attach a sheathing of lead. The wreck site was revisited by Jacques-Yves Cousteau and the crew of
Calypso in 1953. Using a portable airlift, divers located the well-preserved hull under about 40 centimeters of sand. A second visit by Cousteau in 1976 resulted in the discovery of a treasure of gold bars.
The Antikythera ship's last port of call is unknown, but an intriguing possibility is that she was carrying loot from Pergamon (in what is now western Turkey) to Rome—part of the massive reparations exacted by Rome after her victory in the First Mithradatic War (88-85 bce). This idea is suggested by Pergamene coins dated 88-86 bce found during Cousteau's 1976 excavation. The site is best known for its remarkable cargo of bronze and marble sculpture, amphorae from Rhodes, Kos, and Taranto, pottery, glass vessels from Alexandria, and a bronze bedstead decorated with animal heads. The "Antikythera Youth," a larger-than-life-size bronze statue of a nude athlete or hero, dates probably from the 4th century bce Already an antique when the ship sank, this work is now a showpiece of the National Museum in Athens. Still more interesting is an astronomical device with a clockwork mechanism used to predict the motion of the sun through the zodiac, the rising and setting of the stars, constellations and planets, and the phases of the moon. Careful study of this artifact, which is the most complex scientific instrument preserved from antiquity, indicates that it was probably made in 82 bce and "set" in 80 bce.
Price, "An Ancient Greek Computer." Throckmorton, ed., Shipwrecks and Archaeology. Weinberg, "Antikythera Wreck Reconsidered."
