Kyrenia shipwreck: the Penn Museum underwater excavation

Underwater work in 1968 and 1969 brought up the cargo and the hull of a ship that sank off Kyrenia in the last decade of the 4th century BC, in the account of Steffy, or in the early 3rd century, in the view of Harpster^1,2. The reconstructed hull, with part of the cargo and furnishings, is displayed in a gallery of Kyrenia Castle¹.

The wreck and the 1967 survey

Michael Katzev, an assistant professor at Oberlin College while he directed the dig, led the work for the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania (the Penn Museum)^1,3,4. The wreck lay on the seabed off the north coast near Kyrenia. Steffy gives nearly 30 m of water and about 1 km offshore; Harpster gives about 450 m offshore and 33 m deep^1,2.

A survey in September 1967, part of the Cyprus Underwater Archaeological Search, preceded the excavation. Late in the month Andreas Cariolou, a Kyrenia sponge diver and councilman who had found the wreck, took the team to it. They probed and surveyed it with a magnetometer, a metal detector and rods and estimated the site at about 19 by 10 m^2,5,6. The survey had been meant to devise and test a way of finding metal on a wreck without disturbing it, so that an excavation could be planned⁶. Harpster writes that the excellent preservation, the date and the risk of looting prompted Katzev to excavate the following summer⁵.

1968 and 1969

Underwater work in 1968 ran from 14 June to 18 August. The first month removed an average of 30 cm of algae and sand. Grids of three square metres were laid over the hull, and the site was recorded by stereophotogrammetric and continuous photography³. Harpster states that this was the first excavation to use a pair of handheld cameras for three-dimensional underwater images². That season the team mapped and raised 307 amphorae, about two thirds of the cargo, of at least nine types, with almonds in twelve jars. Below them lay hopper mills in three rows, 27 blocks visible, of which one set was raised. Small vessels, net weights, a bronze coin, lead hull sheathing with bronze rivets and sections of hull timber also came up³.

In 1969 the work went on almost continuously through the year, the second half of it given to raising and conserving the hull. A trench 3 m wide round the 1968 area exposed the hull outline at 4.8 by 11.4 m. David Owen assisted Katzev that year⁷, and Helena Wylde Swiny worked on the excavation and dived on the site⁸. Susan Womer Katzev was draftsman and photographer, and directed and wrote a film documenting the project⁹.

The cargo and the ship

Another 96 amphorae brought the total to 403 according to Karageorghis; Nicolaou gives 400, with 73 more removed in 1969^7,10. Virginia Grace attempted in 1967 to identify the commonest type as Rhodian, and 20 amphorae had stamped handles³. The 22 millstones raised in 1969 carry mason's marks; the number of blocks is odd, so pairing them is problematic, and the report calls them perhaps the largest collection of hopper-type millstones ever found⁷. More than 5,000 almonds lay in some jars and loose in the hull⁷.

In the cabins the team found cooking and table ware (black-glazed bowls, jugs, a guttus, a crushed copper cauldron, wooden spoons and a bowl), which the excavator read as suggesting a crew of four. Net weights came with a lead seal impression of Athena Promachos and bronze coins. An inkwell lay in the concretion mass, with about a hundred lead rings and a marble pedestal of unexplained purpose⁷.

The hull was sheathed in lead fixed with bronze tacks, and two rolls of spare lead sheet were found. About 60% of the hull area was preserved externally, the keel of Aleppo pine was recovered in 16 pieces, and the projected length is about 14 m^1,3. Steffy and Harpster describe a hull built with mortise-and-tenon joints in alternating stages rather than purely shell-first, and repaired and hauled out at least twice^1,2.

Radiocarbon measurements gave 2210 ± 40 BP (BM-1588) for almonds from the cargo, remeasured at 2205 ± 70 BP (BM-1588A), and 2124 ± 60 BP (P-1621) for almonds and 2222 ± 43 BP (P-1622) for hull wood¹¹. Wood from a stern strake (BM-1639) gave 2630 ± 45 BP, much earlier than expected; Katzev's comment in the list suggests that it may reflect the age of the timber when used¹¹. Pitch from the lining of a Rhodian amphora (BM-2294) gave 2090 ± 50 BP, which agrees statistically with the almond and wood dates; the list gives the expected date of the wreck as about 310 to 300 BC¹².

Conservation and display

Hull timbers were labelled on the seabed, raised and preserved in polyethylene glycol 4000, and nearly 6,000 fragments were catalogued and drawn¹. The timbers were taken to Kyrenia Castle for restoration⁷. J. Richard Steffy worked on the hull reconstruction from 1972 with Robin Piercy, and the two finished in May 1975⁵. From 1970 the Cyprus Government converted galleries of the castle for storage, conservation and display, and no division or export of the finds is recorded². Improvements to the display began in 2015².

Bass says that Katzev's excavation set a standard for ship archaeology in the Mediterranean, and Harpster ranks it as a foundational project in the formative years of maritime archaeology^2,4. Steffy's interim report on the hull construction appeared in 1985, and the final publication, under Susan Katzev, was still in progress in 2018^1,2.