It could almost be described as biblical: the oldest evidence of a shipwreck ever found in the deep seas has been discovered off the north of Israel, dating back to the time of the Canaanites and the Old Testament.
The 3,400-year-old trading ship was found at a depth of 1,800 metres and it appears to transform our understanding of the skill and abilities of ancient mariners. Being 90km from the nearest shore, it shows that Bronze Age sailors were able to travel without a line of sight to the coast.
“This is a world-class history-changing discovery: this find reveals to us as never before the ancient mariners’ navigational skills,” said Jacob Shavit, head of the Israel Antiquities Authority Marine Unit. “To navigate they probably used the celestial bodies, by taking sightings and angles of the sun and star positions.”
The ship was found last year during a survey by the gas company Energean, which identified an anomaly on the seabed that turned out to be a cargo of ancient jars emerging through the sediment. Remains of the ship are thought to survive underneath the sediment, but what was above it has decayed.
Energean organised an investigation of the site, which confirmed that the ship was between 12 and 14 metres long and could transport hundreds of vessels. A specially designed robot recovered two Bronze Age pots from the seabed, confirming that the cargo was Canaanite even if we cannot be sure that the ship was.
Advertisement
It is assumed that the pots would have once held oil, wine or foodstuffs but these have either diffused, decayed or been consumed over the years, with nothing but sediment to be found in them now.
It appears that the ship sank quickly, perhaps as the result of a storm or a raid by pirates who were known to be a threat at the time. The cargo of hundreds of pottery jars is still in position after more than 3,000 years, suggesting there was not time to disturb them.
• Ernest Shackleton’s last ship found in Canadian waters
Only two other shipwrecks from this era have been found in the Mediterranean, but they were both close to Turkey. In that context, the location of this ship is revelatory.
“This is a truly sensational find,” Shavit said. “There is tremendous potential here for research. The ship is preserved at such a great depth that time has frozen since the moment of disaster.”
