Photos

This is a picture of a cargo ship with its amphorae which is about 2300 years old. It is located at a museum inside the Kyrenia (Girne) castle. This ship is the oldest trading ship known to us with her cargo, which was raised from the bottom of the sea.

The ship sailed in the Mediterranean during the life time of Alexander the Great and his successors. She sank in open waters less than a mile from the anchorage of Kyrenia.

The evidence point to her being taken by rough seas around the year 300 B.C, when she was rather old.

Michael Katzev of the University Museum of Pennsylvania directed a team to survey the coast of Cyprus for shipwrecks in 1967. In Kyrenia a sponge diver took the team to the site. Using a metal detector, protonmagnetometer and probes, the group spent a month surveying the site to find the ship and the cargo over an area measuring 60 x 30 feet.

During the summers of 1968 and 1969 the expedition consisting of 50 under water archaeologists, students and technicians employed stereo-photography and other developed techniques to record the position of each object before they were raised.

Then the ship's wooden hull which was well preserved in the sand mud was "mapped" labelled and lifted in pieces to the surface.

The objects in the museum are the original ones carried on her during her last voyage about 2300 years ago. From them we can learn about the life of those traders. More than 400 wine amphoras, mostly made in Rhodes, consist the main cargo, and they indicate that the ship made an important stop at that island.

On the other hand, ten distinct amphora shapes on boar show a different port of call, such as Samos in the north. Another part of the cargo of the ship was perfectly preserved almonds, 9000 in number, which were found in jars and also amassed within the ship's hull. The 29 millstones, laden on over the keel in three rows, were being transported as cargo, but at the same time serving as ballast. At the stone quarry, probably on the island of Kos, masons carved letters of indentification on the sides of these stones.

From all these it can be assumed that the ship sailed southwards along the coast of Anatolia, calling at Samos, Kos and Rhodes before continuing eastwards to her destruction in Cyprus. What you see in the glass casing are, believe it or not, almonds found in the wreck..
(http://www.cypnet.co.uk/ncyprus/city/kyrenia/castle/shipwreck/index.html)
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Dünyada bulunan en eski yük gemisinin kalıntısı ve yükü (amforalar) Girne kalesindeki müzede sergilenmektedir. Geminin Girne açıklarında M.Ö. 300 yıllarında battığı tahmin edilmektedir. Resmin önündeki camekanda 2300 yıllık bademler görülmektedir.