Or, the Life Aquatic with Gold Scarabs

Around 1325 BCE (estimates vary) a vessel sank near the cape of Uluburun, Turkey. The cargo was immense: twenty tonnes of goods, including copper, ivory, ornaments, spices, and more. Amid the finds, a curious item came to light: a gold scarab, bearing the name Neferneferuaten Nefertiti… What was a Nefertiti scarab doing on a trade ship, far from Egypt? And what do the finds tell us about the ship, its crew, and ancient trade?

The Uluburun Shipwreck:

  • Date: c.1325 BCE (estimated).
  • Cultures: Multiple, including Egyptian, Canaanite, Syrian, and Mycenaean.
  • Ship destination: Possibly the Aegean, western Anatolia, or even the Balkans.
  • Catalogue of objects in Beyond Babylon, 2008. Free pdf from MMA.
  • Image gallery at The Institute of Nautical Archaeology website.
  • Artefacts in the Bodrum museum, on Flickr.com.
  • A replica of the ship, Uluburun II, at Underwater360.
  • A lecture by Cemal Pulak, one of the lead excavators on the Uluburun shipwreck. YouTube.
  • Banner image: Display of the Uluburun ship, reconstruction, at Bodrum museum. Public domain image by nisudapi on Flickr.com.
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Bibliography

  • G. Bass et al., ‘The Bronze Age Shipwreck at Ulu Burun: 1986 Campaign’, American Journal of Archaeology 93 (1989), 1–29.
  • C. M. Monroe, ‘Sunk Costs at Late Bronze Age Uluburun’, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 357 (2010), 19–33.
  • C. Pulak, ‘Analysis of the Weight Assemblages from the Late Bronze Age Shipwrecks at Uluburun and Cape Gelidonya, Turkey, Volume I’, Unpublished PhD. Thesis, Texas A&M University (1996).
  • C. Pulak, ‘The Uluburun Shipwreck: An Overview’, The International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 27 (1998), 188–224.
  • C. Pulak, ‘The Uluburun Shipwreck and Late Bronze Age Trade’, in Beyond Babylon: Art, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Second Millennium B.C. (2008), 289–310. Book available free, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
  • C. Pulak, ‘Uluburun Shipwreck’, in The Oxford Handbook of the Bronze Age Aegean (2012), 863—876.
  • C. Pulak, lecture on YouTube.
  • J. Weinstein, ‘The Bronze Age Shipwreck at Ulu Burun: 1986 Campaign, Part 3: The Gold Scarab of Nefertiti from Ulu Burun: Its Implications for Egyptian History and Egyptian-Aegean Relations’, American Journal of Archaeology 93 (1989), 17–29.
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1 Comment

  1. Ivonna Nowicka

    Oh my, I have heard so many episodes and only listening to this one and hearing you say /maiseneans/ or proto-Greeks I understood that this strange category is simply Mycenae or Μυκῆναι /mikenai/ in Greek. This English pronunciation, oh… : )

    Best and thank you, as we see little explanations that seem obvious to the speaker, may help the listerer a lot.

    Best,

    Ivonna

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