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Ancient pleasure barge found off Alexandria coast
The wreck of a pleasure boat from the 1st century A.D. has been discovered off the coast of Alexandria, Egypt. It is the first one of these luxurious ancient yachts from the Roman period to be found in Egypt.
The wreck was found off the island of Antirhodos, site of Ptolemaic palace which was submerged in an earthquake in 365 A.D. The hull of the boat was found 23 feet under the water’s surface buried under five feet of sediment, which helped preserve it largely intact. The ship was originally about 35 meters (115 feet) long and seven meters (23 feet) wide, and 28 meters (92 feet) of the hull survives. There were no sails, so the boat was entirely man-powered, requiring around 20 rowers to propel.
The hull design was flat and broad for navigating in shallow water and to support a central cabin with luxurious appointments. This type of vessel was called a thalamegos, and was most famously used on the Nile as palatial royal barges by the Ptolemies. Less elaborate ones were used by government officials for administrative business, also for religious ceremonies, community festivals and as houseboats.
An inscription in Greek carved on one of the structural reinforcement beams date the vessel to the first half of the 1st century A.D. and indicate that it was built in Alexandria. It sank close to the Temple of Isis, which was destroyed in an earthquake in 50 A.D. Archaeologists hypothesize that the ship sank in the same earthquake that took down the temple, and that it may have been used by the temple for ceremonies, including the annual “navigatio iside” procession where a ship representing the solar barque of the goddess Isis traveled the Canopic Canal from the Great Harbour to the sanctuary of Osiris in Canopus.
First century B.C. geographer Strabo described “cabin-boats” being used for feasting, by the prefects sailing to Upper Egypt and by “crowd of revellers who go down from Alexandria by the canal to the public festivals; for every day and every night is crowded with people on the boats who play the flute and dance without restraint and with extreme licentiousness, both men and women.” He also describes Alexandria’s Great Harbour in some detail, including the island of Antirhodos, in Book XVII of The Geography.
Below these lies the harbour that was dug by the hand of man and is hidden from view, the private property of the kings, as also Antirrhodos, an isle lying off the artificial harbour, which has both a royal palace and a small harbour. They so called it as being a rival of Rhodes. Above the artificial harbour lies the theatre; then the Poseidium — an elbow, as it were, projecting from the Emporium, as it is called, and containing a temple of Poseidon.
The European Institute for Underwater Archaeology (IEASM) has been surveying and excavating the modern eastern port of Alexandria since 1996, identifying the remains of the ancient Portus Magnus and creating the first accurate map the harbor infrastructure, monuments and landscape, some of which differs from the descriptions in ancient sources. For example, the island of Antirhodos, found by the IEASM team in the first year of excavations, is located on the opposite side of harbor from where Strabo said it was.
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