Underneath the moving waters of Alexandria’s jap harbour, on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast, lie the drowned remnants of a once-splendid town – ports, palaces and temples swallowed by means of the ocean. Submerged by means of earthquakes and a emerging sea degree, those misplaced monuments have develop into the point of interest of survey and excavations by means of the Eu Institute for Underwater Archaeology, together with Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.
A lot of our fresh paintings has centred round Antirhodos Island, revealing a temple to the traditional Egyptian goddess Isis which was once renovated by means of Cleopatra VII, and the Timonium – a palace constructed by means of her spouse, the Roman basic Mark Antony.
The shipwrecks from the Royal Port of Antirhodos inform the tale of the way Alexandria modified from a spot emphasising the nice wealth and extravagance of the Ptolemaic dynasty to an financial powerhouse of the Roman global.
Our most up-to-date excavations have published a shipwreck relationship to the early Roman duration. Buried underneath the sand had been the stays of a thalamagos. This can be a form of Nile yacht with an excessively vibrant popularity in Roman literature as “party boats”. However the discovery of the sort of vessel in a hectic business harbour was once strange. We requested ourselves: had been we desirous about this smash in the precise manner?
Finding the send
The wrecks within the Royal Port had been found out thru a brand new high-resolution sonar survey of the seabed. This produced monumental amounts of knowledge that was once fed right into a system studying set of rules skilled to recognise the “signatures” of shipwrecks. The preliminary effects had been promising, with excavations on goals generated by means of the set of rules revealing a small boat and a 30m-long service provider send.
Along side a an identical service provider send discovered within the early years of the challenge, those unearths illustrate the commercialisation of the Royal Port within the Roman duration.
On the outset of the 2025 project, we had been assured the smash was once a service provider send. However with each and every dive, new findings reshaped our figuring out, progressively revealing a vessel not like the only we idea we had been investigating.
A 3-d view of the thalamagos, recorded by means of photogrammetry all through the excavation within the Portus Magnus, Alexandria, Egypt in past due October 2025.
Christoph Gerigk/Franck Goddio/Hilti Basis
The smash has many standard options of Roman Imperial shipbuilding, however the Greek graffiti carved into its planks means that it was once constructed and repaired in Alexandria. And its form is not like the shipment vessels discovered somewhere else within the Royal Port. At round 28m lengthy and 7m huge, the preserved stays indicated that we had been running on a flat-bottomed boat with a somewhat huge and boxy hull. The bow and stern had been asymmetrical, giving sweeping curves to the extremities of the send. However it lacked a mast step, suggesting that it was once rowed. The smash didn’t have the best form or propulsion gadget of a seagoing freighter, making it one thing of a thriller.
Searching for clues, we grew to become to the five hundred or so fragments of Ptolemaic and Roman papyri (the fabric produced from the pithy stem of a water plant that those civilisations used to put in writing on) that report nautical topics. About 200 of those identify several types of river vessels, that have been frequently referred to by means of the cargoes that they carried, from grain, wine and stone to manure and corpses.
Some of the now and again discussed kinds of boat is the thalamagos or cabin boat. This type of vessel is depicted at the Palestrina mosaic, a more or less recent panorama with the boat present in a temple outdoor Rome.
With its crescent form and collection of oars, the mosaic send bears a hanging similarity to the fabric stays from the Royal Port. Whilst investigations into our smash are simply starting, it kind of feels that we have got discovered a thalamegos – one of the vital notorious “party boats” of the Nile.
The Greek graffiti discovered at the central carling are dated to the primary part of the first century AD.
Christoph Gerigk/Franck Goddio/Hilti Basis
What took place on historic celebration boats
The instance at the Palestrina mosaic depicts a cabin boat getting used to seek hippopotami, a ritual related to the Pharaohs of historic Egypt. The hyperlink between this kind of boat and royalty is heard within the thinker Seneca’s dismissal of them as “the plaything of kings”.
Whilst the Ptolemaic royal circle of relatives did have Nile yachts, or even supersized variations of them, we will be able to think that vessels the dimensions of ours would had been a commonplace sight at the river. Certainly, the traditional geographer Strabo wrote about Alexandrians conserving feasts aboard cabin boats in shady spots at the waterways across the town. He described them as a part of the revelry and licentious behaviour related to the general public fairs on the within reach the town of Canopus.
Those Roman authors, on the other hand, had been most likely enjoying up the tradition of luxurious and way over their not too long ago defeated enemy’s court docket and the “degenerate” existence of its folks. To easily consider our thalamagos purely as a celebration boat could be to cherry select racy Roman tales and fall for his or her propaganda.
The mundane element of the executive papyri unearths that thalamagoi had been greater than sumptuous yachts. They might lift shipment and had been extensively utilized to move officers up and down the river. Because of this, the invention of a cabin boat in a bustling business port isn’t completely surprising.
There’s, on the other hand, any other chance. Our boat was once discovered on the subject of the temple of Isis and will even had been destroyed in the similar seismic tournament that led to the cave in of this sanctuary. Was once it a sumptuous temple barge used all through fairs such because the birthday party of the Navigation of Isis?
This celebrated the “opening of the sea” following the wintry weather season was once one of the vital fairs that were given Strabo so labored up concerning the behaviour of its contributors. It was once in reality a competition to verify the security of the grain fleet upon which Rome relied to feed its hungry city inhabitants. Strabo selected to overemphasise sides of the development to fit the anti-Ptolemaic prejudices of his Roman target audience.
Detailed post-excavation research in this smash is now underway. We wish to perceive precisely what our send seemed like and the way it carried out at the Nile. There could also be extra paintings to be carried out within the library with the traditional texts. What’s needless to say is that we’re simplest simply beginning to get to grasp the secrets and techniques of this thalamagos.
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