We have no examples of Ugaritian boats, although texts speak of both a navy and a commercial fleet. Two Late Bronze Age shipwrecks of undetermined nationality discovered off the southwest coast of Turkey may, however, give an idea of what such boats looked like. In addition, since these wrecked ships filled with a great range of objects were clearly on commercial voyages,
They offer us valuable evidence for trading practices in the east Mediterranean that complements information retrieved from land sites and from texts.
The first wreck was discovered in the late 1950s by sponge divers off Cape Gelidonya, southwest of Antalya (see map, Figure 8.1). It was subsequently excavated in 1960 by George Bass, then of the University of Pennsylvania. This excavation was a pioneer project with Bass and colleagues, all archaeologists, doing the diving themselves. Previously, archaeologists had tried to direct underwater excavations from the surface by giving instructions to and interpreting reports from divers with no training in archaeology. With the excavation of the Cape Gelidonya wreck, nautical archaeology became a scientific field of its own, an important and technically demanding sub-field of archaeology.
The Cape Gelidonya wreck dates to ca. 1220 BC. The second shipwreck, found in 1982 in deep (40m—60m) waters at Uluburun, near Kas, sank in the late fourteenth century BC. The hull of this ship was much better preserved than that of the Cape Gelidonya wreck. Both ships were built by the “shell-first” method. Instead of starting with a framework onto which planking is fastened, shipwrights built the hull first. They laid planks in place; joined the plank edges with tenons, locked into place with pegs; and lastly, added internal supports, the equivalent of the frame. A similar technique was used also by the Egyptians from the twenty-sixth century BC as well as by the Greeks and the Romans, and it is of great interest to see its practice here in the late fourteenth century BC. The modern system, “frame-first,” is first attested in the Middle Ages, in the eleventh century AD shipwreck found at Serge Liman, west of Marmaris (south-west Turkey).
One or even both ships may well have been Canaanite, but the nationality of the ships has caused controversy, with some specialists championing a Mycenaean identity. Mycenaean pottery has traditionally been the artifact easiest to spot in foreign lands, whereas Levantine objects have rarely come to light in the Aegean. As a result, Aegean prehistorians in particular have favored a reconstruction of east Mediterranean trade dominated by Mycenaean shipping. Opponents consider this view a distortion created by the peculiarities of archaeological preservation. They believe that materials traded by Levantines for Mycenaean pottery and their contents might have been invisible in the archaeological record, notably raw materials that would be consumed (such as foodstuffs) or manufactured into objects.
The results from Cape Gelidonya and Uluburun have shown that the trade in raw materials was indeed important and that Canaanites and other Levantines in fact took part in maritime commerce. Seaborne trade was not a Mycenaean monopoly. The personal objects of the crew members on the Cape Gelidonya wreck were Near Eastern, such as Syrian and Egyptian weights, a Canaanite lamp, and a cylinder seal. The cargo proper consisted of metal: oxhide ingots from Cyprus, scrap bronze tools also from Cyprus, and tin ingots from an unknown source. The only Mycenaean objects were in fact two stirrup jars, a distinctive shape in Late Bronze Age Aegean pottery. It thus seems likely that the ship with its Canaanite captain and crew set sail from a Levantine or Cypriot port and was heading for the Aegean when it sank off Cape Gelidonya.
The shipwreck from Uluburun shows similar features, but the ship was larger than the Gelidonya wreck (approx. 17m vs. 10m), its cargo richer and much more varied. The date of the ship, late fourteenth century BC, is given by finds of Mycenaean pottery and a gold scarab inscribed with the name of the Egyptian queen Nefertiti, wife of Akhenaten. The cargo featured metal, with ca. 10 tons of copper shipped as over 500 ingots, and ca. 1 ton of tin ingots. Other raw materials included: over 170 glass ingots of various colors, the earliest ever found; elephant ivory; hippopotamus teeth, which would be carved like elephant tusks; tortoise shells; African black wood logs; ostrich egg shells; and, stored in Canaanite amphoras, the remains of 1 ton of terebinth resin, a substance used especially by Egyptians, apparently for incense, and by Mycenaeans for perfume. Cypriot pottery was another major item in the cargo, with several pithoi filled with new Cypriot bowls and jars. Food items found include figs, olives, grapes, almonds, chickpeas, pomegranates, and spices such as coriander and sumac. Worked objects in this amazing inventory include: swords, both Canaanite and Mycenaean types; seals, from various places; jewelry and precious objects, such as silver bracelets, amber beads, and the gold scarab of Nefertiti already mentioned; and twenty-four stone anchors, of Near Eastern or Cypriot type. A tiny diptych and one side of a second were also recovered. These folding wooden books with an ivory hinge, with cavities on each leaf for wax which could be wiped smooth when a new message was to be written, are the earliest examples of this kind of writing medium.
The raw materials on board suggest that the ship began its voyage in the Levant and was heading westward, via Cyprus, like the ship later wrecked off Cape Gelidonya. The heterogeneous nature of the objects on the Uluburun wreck makes it difficult to pinpoint the nationality of the ship. Opinion is divided on the issue; perhaps it was Canaanite like the Cape Gelidonya wreck, but it could possibly have been a Mycenaean ship on its return voyage to the Aegean. Whatever the truth, both shipwrecks demonstrate clearly the international nature and complexity of the trade in raw and manufactured materials in the Late Bronze Age Mediterranean.
World History
