Credit: Christoph Gerigk © Franck Goddio / Hilti Foundation
Archaeologists excavating the submerged harbor of ancient
Alexandria have found remains of a rare and luxurious type of vessel described
in classical sources but never before recovered: an ancient Egyptian pleasure
barge known as a thalamagos. The discovery was made near the sunken island of
Antirhodos, once part of Alexandria’s Portus Magnus, during underwater
excavations led by the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology (IEASM).
This wreck
consists of remarkably well-preserved wooden timbers, approximately 28 meters
in length, from a boat that was originally about 35 meters long and about 7
meters wide. The design was worked out in order to provide maximum width,
allowing space for a central pavilion and an elaborately decorated cabin. Its
flat-bottomed hull, with a sharp chine at the bow and a rounded stern, is
highly specialized; it is unlikely to have been designed for travel across open
water but rather for calm, shallow waterways. According to archaeologists, the
vessel was powered solely by oars and required more than 20 rowers.
Greek
graffiti found on the ship’s central structure date it to the first half of the
first century CE and indicate that it was locally built in Alexandria. This
timeline corresponds with the accounts of geographer Strabo, who visited the
city decades earlier and spoke of cabin-boats used in festivals, leisure, and
religious ceremonies along canals lined with dense vegetation.
The wreck
is less than 50 meters from the remains of the Temple of Isis, another focus of
ongoing excavation. By its location and dating, researchers believe the vessel
might have sunk in a catastrophic event around CE 50, when earthquakes and
tidal waves caused large parts of Alexandria’s shoreline, palaces, and temples
to collapse into the sea. A quite different interpretation proposes a ritual
function: the barge may have belonged to the Isis sanctuary and thus played a
role in the annual navigium Isidis, a ceremonial procession reenacting the
goddess’s solar voyage toward Canopus.
Similar
vessels appear in ancient art, such as the famous Nile mosaic of Palestrina,
but the newly found wreck is much larger than most known depictions. The
discovery also calls to mind the legendary floating palaces of the Ptolemaic
rulers, including those said to have belonged to Cleopatra VII, a testament to
the long tradition of ceremonial and pleasure barges in Egypt.
