University professor finds ancient shipwreck

During the 56th annual meeting of the "American Research Center in Egypt" in Cambridge Saturday, Boston University archaeology professor Kathryn Bard and project co-director Rodolfo Fattovich presented evidence of ancient Egyptian sea-faring expeditions about 4,000 years ago to the southern Red Sea.

A team of researchers - led by the two archaeologists - found pieces from several ancient Egyptian sea-faring boats off the coast of the Red Sea during a joint project with Italy's University of Naples "L'Orientale" last December, Bard said. The facts included two cedar steering oars, the first whole pieces of a pharaonic sea-faring ship ever recovered.

Norman Hammond, archaeology department professor and chairman, said he hopes the findings will increase funding for Bard's future research projects and generate increased student interest in archaeology.

"We are very pleased that other people in the department, especially our students, can benefit from professor Bard's discoveries and the enhanced funding that we hope she will obtain as a result," he said.

According to Bard, the objective of the project was to investigate a pharaonic port dating to approximately 2000 B.C., but evidence from the team's excavations may show that the seaport was used even earlier.

"We found pieces from several different boats, dating from circa 2000 to 1800 B.C. and some dating to 1500 B.C.," she said.

Bard said she and her former student, Chen Sian Lim, a 2001 graduate of the College of Arts and Sciences, excavated a man-made cave on Christmas Day after noticing Egyptian pottery near the cave's entrance. The team found the oars two days later in a second, larger cave.

"You look for evidence on the surface to guide you where there would be something interesting to excavate," she said.

Farouk El-Baz, Center for Remote Sensing director, said his colleagues worked with Bard and Fattovich to find similar regions further north and south near the site and determine paths of Egyptian trade. Using remote sensing, the researchers analyzed satellite pictures to locate areas marked with river imprints.

"These people who had the port in Egypt landed somewhere," El-Baz joked.

He said only five universities in the country have a specialized archaeology departments.

"[BU archaeology] is already distinguished and now this adds a little flavor to it," El-Baz said.

According to Bard, the team's research began four years ago with a brief visit during March 2001 and expeditions by University of Naples "L'Orientale" archaeologists in December 2001 and 2002.

She said researchers have determined from ancient inscriptions that Egyptians sent ships in the Red Sea, possibly as early as 2500 B.C., and said the oars could be the first archaeological evidence of Queen Hatshepsut's famous expedition around 1500 B.C.

"We'll hopefully be able to reconstruct the size of these ships," she said, adding that the oars are possibly from vessels used in the queen's seafaring expedition to Africa's eastern coast.

"We'll never know for sure unless the pieces were stamped with her name, but that's unlikely," she said.

Bard said the team also found well-preserved stela, limestone engraved tablets, with a scene of King Amenemhat III, who reigned around 1800 B.C., giving an offering to the god Min. The hieroglyphic inscription below this scene describes two expeditions the king sent to Punt and Bia-Punt.

She said the artifacts must remain in Egypt in a storeroom of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, but noted a nautical archaeologist from Florida State University will study them in December 2005 and a researcher from Berlin will examine the different types of wood.

"The wood from the ships came from what is today Lebanon," she said. "But we need a botanist to identify this securely."

Bard teaches undergraduate courses in Egyptian Archaeology, The Origins of Civilization, Early States in Northeast Africa and graduate seminars and has previously excavated with Fattovich at Aksum, in present-day northern Ethiopia.