Sponsored by: Archaeological Institute of America
The Kyrenia ship, so named when it was discovered in 1964 largely intact one mile north of the northern Cypriot town of Kyrenia, is the best preserved small Greek merchant ship ever found. Its cargo included 400 amphoras, most from Rhodes along with some from Knidos, Samos, Paros, and Cyprus, 45 sizeable unused millstones, iron ingots, nearly 10,000 almonds, a consignment of oak planks and logs – and 109 whole and fragmentary vessels that comprised the goods of the crew. The cargo was of course the point: it’s the currency of the sea. The goods of the crew are more like small change: portable, available, and functional. But those goods allow us a glimpse of life on board for the ship’s crew’s. In this lecture I present these goods, explain what they tell us of the place and date of the ship’s final departure, what they tell us about the character of the ship’s crew – and what some of the smallest fragments reveal of the ship’s beginnings before it became a Greek merchantman.
Short bibliography on lecture topic:
Susan Katzev, “The Kyrenia Ship: Her Recent Journey,” Near Eastern Archaeology 71 (2008), pp. 76-81.
Cesnola Lecture
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