Underwater archaeology: Hunt for the ancient mariner

Foley, a marine archaeologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, and his colleagues at Greece's Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities in Athens have spent the day diving near the cliffs of the tiny island of Dia in the eastern Mediterranean. They have identified two clusters of pottery dating from the first century BC and fifth century AD. Together with other remains that the team has discovered on the island's submerged slopes, the pots reveal that for centuries Greek, Roman and Byzantine traders used Dia as a refuge during storms, when they couldn't safely reach Crete.

It is a nice archaeological discovery, but Foley was hoping for something much older. His four-week survey of the waters around Crete last October is part of a long-term effort to catalogue large numbers of ancient shipwrecks in the Aegean Sea. And the grand prize would be a wreck from one of the most influential and enigmatic cultures of the ancient world -- the Minoans, who ruled these seas more than 3,000 years ago...

Archaeologists have precious little information about the seagoing habits of the Minoan civilization, which erected the palace of Knossos on Crete -- linked to the Greek myth of the Minotaur. Minoans far exceeded their neighbours in weaponry, literacy and art, and formed "part of the roots of what went on to become European civilization", says Don Evely, an archaeologist at the British School at Athens, and curator of Knossos. Archaeologists are keen to understand what made the Minoans so successful and how they interacted with nearby cultures such as the Egyptians.

Although researchers have studied scores of Roman ships, finding a much older Minoan wreck "would add 100% new knowledge", says Shelley Wachsmann, an expert in ancient seafaring at Texas A&M University in College Station.

Ancient treasure trove uncovered
Wednesday 18th December 2002
Archaeologists have found a 2,700-year-old temple which contains objects from across the ancient world. Gold and silver figures, jewellery and shells from throughout the Mediterranean were gathered in one place on the small Greek island of Kithnos in the Aegean Sea. The finds suggest the temple was for a female god.

"Female gods" are sometimes referred to as "goddesses". ;')

Many of the objects were originally from Egypt, Italy and Phoenicia which is now Lebanon and Israel. The ancient city was founded during the 10th century BC and abandoned four centuries later, said Alexander Mazarakis-Ainian, overseeing the dig. He is an associate professor at the University of Thessalia in Larissa in central Greece. The temple was probably destroyed by an earthquake... Some of objects date back to the Minoan era, around 1,600 BC. They may have been offered at the temple as relics, Mr Mazarakis-Ainian said.

Wow, a 10th century temple abandoned in the 6th century, but containing Minoan objects of the 16th century. I'm so surprised. Not. I'll not be surprised to see an artifact from the Kingdom of David turn up in this cache.

King Hammurabi is the best known of the early monarchs of ancient times... belonged to the First BabyIonian Dynasty which came to an end, under circumstances shrouded in mystery, some three or four generations after Hammurabi. For the next several centuries, the land was in the domain of a people known as the Kassites. They left few examples of art and hardly any literary works -- theirs was an age comparable to and contemporaneous with that of the Hyksos in Egypt, and various surmises were made as to the identity of the two peoples. A cartouche of the Hyksos king Khyan was even found in Babylonia and another in Anatolia, a possible indication of the extent of the power and influence wielded by the Hyksos. Until a few decades ago, the reign of Hammurabi was dated to around the year 2100 before the present era... At Platanos on Crete, a seal of the Hammurabi type was discovered in a tomb together with Middle Minoan pottery of a kind associated at other sites with objects of the Twelfth Egyptian Dynasty, more exactly, of its earlier part. This is regarded as proof that these two dynasties were contemporaneous... however... At Mari on the central Euphrates, among other rich material, a cuneiform tablet was found which established that Hammurabi of Babylonia and King Shamshi-Adad I of Assyria were contemporaries. An oath was sworn by the life of these two kings in the tenth year of Hammurabi, The finds at Mari "proved conclusively that Hammurabi came to the throne in Babylonia after the accession of Shamshi-Adad I in Assyria"... The Khorsabad list ends in the tenth year of Assur-Nerari V, which is computed to have been -745... the first year of Shamshi-Adad is calculated to have been -1726 and his last year -1694... it reduced the time of Hammurabi from the twenty-first century to the beginning of the seventeenth century... "a puzzling chronological discrepancy", which could only be resolved by making Hammurabi later than Amenemhet I of the Twelfth Dynasty... If Hammurabi reigned at the time allotted to him by the finds at Mari and Khorsabad -- but according to the finds at Platanos was a contemporary of the Egyptian kings of the early Twelfth Dynasty -- then that dynasty must have started at a time when, according to the accepted chronology, it had already come to its end. In conventionally-written history, by -1680 not only the Twelfth Dynasty, but also the Thirteenth, or the last of the Middle Kingdom, had expired.

[Immanuel Velikovsky, Hammurabi and the Revised Chronology]

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