ABSTRACT
During the second millennium BCE the maritime trading system of the eastern Mediterranean spread westward into the Aegean Sea. Our knowledge of this expanded network has been greatly enhanced since the discovery in 1982 of a wreck off the rocky promontory known as Uluburun near the modern Turkish town of Kas. Sometime c. 1300 BCE a merchant vessel 50 feet in length sank here in waters about 150 feet deep. Its origin and crew are uncertain but were probably Canaanite. The principal cargo was copper in the form of 400 ingots totaling 10 tons in addition to a ton of tin ingots, enough to equip a good size army. Bronze weapons and tools were also found. Next to copper, the most abundant cargo was a resin made from the terebinth tree used by Egyptians in burial rites. It was carried in 150 terracotta amphorae carefully cushioned by dunnage made from shrubs. Other amphorae contained glass beads and orpiment, a yellow arsenic that could be used as a pigment or mixed with beeswax to make writing material. Also there was a number of pithos, large open-mouth storage jars used as barrels. One of these was filled with whole pomegranates; another was used to store smaller pieces of pottery, including juglets, oil lamps, and bowls. Among personal effects were drinking flasks, musical instruments, and a diptych (writing board). The ship also carried exotic goods, including a piece of unworked ivory,
four hippopotamus teeth, tortoise shell, and logs of African blackwood. From the north came Baltic amber beads and a ceremonial axe likely originating in the lower Danube River region of Romania. From the south were faience beads and a faience rhyton in the shape of a ram’s head, pieces of ostrich eggshell, a rectangular plaque made of green stone with hieroglyphs praising the Egyptian god Ptah, and two cylinder seals, one of quartz with gold caps and the other of hematite, a blood-red crystal. Old cylinder seals were a common gift item in this period. The hematite seal is especially interesting because it had been partially recycled depicting one scene of a king and a goddess with a horned headdress from eighteenth-century BCE southern Mesopotamia (Old Babylonian) and a later design from fourteenth-century BCE northern Mesopotamia (Assyrian) depicting a warrior facing a winged griffin engraved over a portion of the earlier design.
