Warship Wreck Found In Egypt’s Ancient Port

Divers in Egypt exploring the ancient sunken port city of Thonis-Heraklion have discovered the wreck of a warship buried in the seabed for more than 2,000 years.

The Egyptian-French team says the flat-bottomed vessel, with oars and a wide sail, sank while moored next to a temple which collapsed into the sea in the second century BC.

The city lies a few kilometres off the coast of Alexandria.

Once ancient Egypt’s largest port on the Mediterranean, Thonis-Heraklion eventually sank after being battered by a series of earthquakes and tidal waves.

Some of the techniques used in building the warship are clearly Greek, like the mortise-and-tenon joints (ones in which a tab from one piece of wood fits into a slot cut into the adjoining piece) that hold many of its timbers together.

But other aspects of the ship’s design and construction are distinctly ancient Egyptian. Those clues, combined with some timbers that had evidently been salvaged and re-used from older ships, suggest that the warship was built somewhere in Egypt.

The warship was clearly built for the Nile and the shallow channels of the river delta.