Spanish archaeologists have managed to recover a 2,600-year-old shipwreck from waters off the country’s southeast coast, two decades after the relic was first found, officials said.
The ancient Phoenician shipwreck dates back to the 7th century BC. It was discovered in 1994 off the coast of Murcia in southeastern Spain, near the town of Mazarrón. accordingly Spain’s Ministry of Culture.
This shipwreck, now called Mazarrón II, was one of two located in the same area. The first, called Mazarrón I, was originally found in 1993, lifted from the water in June 1995 and exhibited at Spain’s National Museum of Underwater Archeology in 2005 after years of conservation treatments. said the museum.
Spanish National Museum of Underwater Archaeology
Mazarrón II is of particular interest to archaeologists and researchers because it is one of the few Phoenician-era shipwrecks discovered largely intact, said Carlos de Juan, the head of the excavation project. in a video shared by the University of Valencia. The university collaborated with the regional Ministry of Culture in Murcia to carry out the excavations.
A team of 14 specialists worked with de Juan to lift the shipwreck from the sea in less than two months. The project started on September 13th and ended on November 7th. The video shows divers carrying wooden fragments of the wreck to the surface in pieces.
Phoenicia was an ancient civilization along the eastern Mediterranean coast in the area of modern-day Lebanon, Syria and Israel, which existed from around 1500 to 300 BC. BC existed The Phoenicians flourished for a time about trade and developed an alphabet that formed the basis for the alphabets later created in ancient Greece and Rome. However, many traces of this civilization were considered lost until the 20th century.
Artifacts like Mazarrón II could help shed light on Phoenician culture, de Juan said. In his comments to the University of Valencia, he pointed out that despite the wealth of information about ships built by the ancient Greeks near the Mediterranean, even today little is known about Phoenician shipbuilding.
“Therefore, this wreck is a very important contribution to this field of research,” said de Juan. He noted that elements of Mazarrón II resemble construction designs found in cultures throughout the surrounding region, but that some are, at least for now, distinctive and mysterious.
Every piece of the shipwreck was transferred to a laboratory at the Museum of Underwater Archeology in southern Spain. The lab will work diligently to preserve his remains, a process that will likely take several more years.
