As It Happens6:49Archaeologists unearth possible ‘pleasure barge’ off coast of Alexandria
Long before modern billionaires threw lavish parties at sea on their superyachts, the wealthy elite of ancient Egypt traversed the river Nile in luxury on their pleasure barges.
Now, for the first time, archaeologists believe they have unearthed one of those opulent vessels of yore from beneath the sediment off the coast of Alexandria.
“When you find a boat which has never been studied before … and never been found before, it’s always very exciting,” University of Oxford marine archaeologist Franck Goddio, told As It Happens host Nil Koksal.
If the boat is, indeed, what it appears to be, it brings to life a piece of Egyptian history that, until now, had only been depicted in art or described in ancient historical texts.
The discovery came from one of several recent underwater expeditions led by Goddio and the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology in partnership with Egypt’s Ministry for Antiquities. The findings have been published by Oxford Centre for Maritime Archaeology.
Lavish journeys on the Nile
The wooden vessel dates back to the early first century AD and was found off the island of Antirhodos, which was part of ancient Alexandria’s great port.
It’s about 35 metres long, with space for about 20 rowers, and a large pavilion in the centre, which Goddio says would likely have been “richly” decorated and “full of luxury.” Not built for seafaring, it likely would have travelled the channel between Alexandra and Canopus on the Nile.
But what makes it stand out among other vessels from that time, Goddio says, is a “bizarre peculiarity” of its architecture — a flat-bottomed bow paired with a rounded stern.
“It perfectly fits the iconography of those pleasure barges,” Goddio said.
Everything historians know about those pleasure crafts, called thalamegos, come from texts and imagery.
The shape of the vessel unearthed by Goddio’s team matches those historical depictions, especially those featured on the Nile mosaic of Palestrina, an ancient floor mosaic that shows the passage of vessels from from the Blue Nile to the Mediterranean.
It also appears to match the descriptions of Greek historian Strabo, who visited Alexandria between 29-25 BC and, according to the Guardian newspaper, wrote: “Every day and every night is crowded with people on the boats who play the flute and dance without restraint and with extreme licentiousness.”
Egyptologist Caroline Arbuckle MacLeod, who wasn’t involved in the discovery, called it “really exciting,” noting it’s exceedingly rare to find a preserved boat from that era, let alone a possible thalamegos.
“This would be the first, to my knowledge, the first preserved sort of pleasure craft we found from ancient Egypt,” MacLeod, a University of Saskatchewan archaeologist, told CBC. “So it’d be pretty amazing to have an existing piece of that kind of history.”
She compared the pleasure barges of ancient Egypt to modern-day yachts.
“You’d take journeys up and down the Nile, similar to what you might do now on one of the sort of dinner yachts or cruises,” she said. “And we know that this was something that kings did on a regular basis.”
The most famous example, she says, is the massive, two-storey palace barge commissioned by Ptolemy IV Philopator, a pharaoh, for himself and his wife Arsinoe III.
Or, it could have been a religious vessel
Goddio says more work needs to be done to confirm with certainty the discovery is, indeed, a pleasure barge.
He does, however, have a competing theory. It may have been the property of the nearby temple of Isis — goddess of magic, motherhood, healing, and fertility — used in religious rituals.
“In this case, in the middle of that boat, instead of having a pavilion, you will have a small temple dedicated to the goddess Isis,” he said.
That temple, he says, was destroyed in a series of catastrophic earthquakes and tidal waves around AD 50, which would explain how the barge sunk and became buried under the sediment that preserved it.
Whatever it is, MacLeod says it’s in an important piece of maritime history that speaks to the key role the Nile has played in Egyptian history.
“When we think about sort of the highway of Egypt, it’s actually the Nile,” she said. “It would have been full of different types of vessels for people moving back and forth, visiting friends, carrying their goods to be traded, journeying back and forth for business purposes, and then of course also for these types of pleasure cruises.”
Goddio says the team has done all it can to study the vessel underwater. They’ve taken wood samples for carbon dating and photographs from every angle in order to produce 3D models.
Then they covered it back up with sediment and left it as they found it, per the recommendation of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
That is is where it will stay, he says, unless the government of Egypt one day decides otherwise. Removing it from the water without damaging it, he says, would be a tremendously complex effort.
“It was there for 2,000 years,” he said. “It can stay still a few centuries in peace.”
