Egypt

The Harbour of Naukratis, Dr Ross Thomas – 2016

The British Museum Naukratis Project’s fifth fieldwork season at Kom Ge’if, Egypt

(Beheira MSA site no.100253)

April–May 2016

Ross Thomas, Alexandra Villing, Astrid Lindenlauf, Ben Pennington, Edwin DeVries, Jeffrey Spencer, Wendy Reade, Louise Bertini, Giorgos Bourogiannis, Ashley Pooley, Camille Acosta, Eleanor Maw, Nicole Colosimo, Ahmad Rezk El Sayed Al Arabi, Waleed Abo Zeid Soliman Nosir, Bassem Mahmoud Morsi Abd El Gawad, Ahmed Abd El Mawla Mohamed Abd El Gawad and Radwa Sami Mohamed El Faramawy.

Read the 2016 Field Report

The Harbour of Naukratis, Dr Ross Thomas – 2015

The British Museum Naukratis Project’s fourth fieldwork season at Kom Ge’if, Egypt
(Beheira MSA site no.100253)

April – May 2015

Ross Thomas and Alexandra Villing, with Ben Pennington, Astrid Lindenlauf,
Edwin de Vries, Aurélia Masson, Emad Hamdy Abo Ismael, Hany Farouk Shalash, Abd Alhalim Abd Elhameed Mohammed, Essam Saed Aly and Amal Hamdy Sadek

Read the 2015 Field Report

Thonis-Heracleion (ship 43) – Dr Damian Robinson – Report 2015

A third season of excavation was undertaken on Ship 43, generously supported by the Honor Frost Foundation, by a four-person team from the Oxford Centre for Maritime Archaeology (OCMA), who worked alongside a member of the Underwater Archaeology Unit of the Supreme Council of Antiquities of Egypt.

The excavations took place in the Bay of Aboukir, some 30 km east of Alexandria, at the now submerged port city of Thonis-Heracleion. Located at the end of the Canopic Branch of the Nile, the port was Egypt’s gateway to the sea and the important markets of Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean. The excavation of Ship 43 is part of a much larger archaeological project at the site undertaken under the overall direction of Franck Goddio and the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology (IEASM) (Goddio 2007; Goddio and Fabre 2008; Goddio 2011; Goddio et al 2015).

Read Dr Damian Robinson’s full report.

Ross Thomas and Alexandra Villing – Naukratis: Mistress of ships – 2015

Ross Thomas and Alexandra Villing delivered the fourth annual lecture of the Honor Frost Foundation on Thursday 10 December 2015 at the British Academy

The port of Naukratis was the earliest Greek port in Egypt, established in the late seventh century BC, long before the foundation of Alexandria. As a base for foreign traders and the port of the royal Pharaonic city of Sais, it was an important hub for long-distance maritime trade and cross-cultural exchange, and remained so until the completion of Alexandria. Excavations in 1884–1903 revealed extensive archaeological remains, including Greek and Egyptian temples, domestic and industrial structures.

The British Museum’s Naukratis Project, directed by Alexandra Villing, has since 2012 begun a new programme of fieldwork at the ancient port, directed by Ross Thomas and funded by the Honor Frost Foundation since 2013. One of its key aims is to investigate a central but hitherto neglected aspect of the site: its harbours and its development as a major international port city.

Thonis-Heracleion (ship 43) – Dr Damian Robinson – 2015

robinson-egypt2015 — Photo: Christoph Gerigk ©Franck Goddio Hilti Foundation

Today ship 43 lies submerged in the waters of Aboukir Bay, on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast some 30 km from Alexandria. The vessel was discovered by the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology (IEASM), under the leadership of Franck Goddio, in the central harbour basin of the city of Thonis-Heralceion and is being excavated by a team from the Oxford Centre for Maritime Archaeology (OCMA). The city dates mainly from the Egyptian Late Period and into the Ptolemaic period, with ship 43 dating to 785-481 cal. BC.

Early investigations of the vessel would suggest that it was of a type of Nile river craft described by Herodotus as a baris (The Persian Wars 2.96), a flat-bottomed multi-purpose transport ship. At the end of its working life, ship 43 was deliberately sunk alongside at least ten others at the edge of a large ship graveyard. This was located in the middle of the central basin of the port and would have cut off access to the area of the central temple from the northern passage to the river Nile. Several hypotheses are currently under investigation as to why this should have happened.

Fieldwork in 2015 will pursue these two main areas of the investigation of ship 43: firstly it is to continue the excavation of the ship and the study of its nautical architecture; secondly, it is to investigate the structure of the stone mound covering the ship graveyard in more detail.