Spanish archaeologists have successfully removed a 2,600-year-old shipwreck from waters off the country's southeast coast, two decades after the relic was first discovered, officials said.
The ancient Phoenician shipwreck dates back to the 7th century BCE It was discovered in 1994 off the coast of Murcia in south-eastern Spain, near the town of Mazarron, according to Ministry of Culture in Spain.
Now known as the Mazarron II, this wreck was one of two located in that same general area. The first, called Mazarron I, was first located in 1993, raised from the water in June 1995, and displayed at Spain's National Museum of Underwater Archeology in 2005 after years of conservative treatment, said the museum.
Underwater photo of the Mazarron II, an ancient Phoenician shipwreck. / Credit: National Museum of Underwater Archeology of Spain
Mazarron II is of particular interest to archaeologists and researchers because it is one of the few Phoenician-era shipwrecks that have been found largely intact, said Carlos de Juan, director of the excavation project, in a video shared by the University of Valencia. The university partnered with the regional ministry of culture in Murcia to carry out the excavation.
A team of 14 experts worked with de Juan to raise the wreck from the sea in less than two months, starting the project on September 13 and ending on November 7.
Phenicia the ancient civilization on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, in the area of modern Lebanon, Syria and Israel, which existed from about 1500 to 300 BCE Although historians say Phoenicians were successful for a time traded and developed an alphabet that was the basis for those that came out later with ancient Greece and Rome, many traces of the civilization were thought to be lost until the 20th century.
Artifacts like Mazarron II can help shed light on Phoenician culture, said de Juan. He noted in his remarks to the University of Valencia that little is known about the construction of the Phoenician fleet, even now, despite the wealth of information about ships built nearby in the Mediterranean Sea by the ancient greeks.
“Therefore, this wreck is a great contribution to this area of study,” said de Juan. He noted that elements of the Mazarron II resemble building designs seen in cultures throughout the surrounding area, but some of them are special and secret, at least for now.
Each piece of the wreck was moved to a laboratory at the Museum of Underwater Archaeology, in southern Spain. The laboratory will work carefully to preserve his remains, in a process that will take several more years.
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