Photo: Israel Antiquities Authority

Last July, a routine oil and gas survey discovered hundreds of intact amphorae – ancient storage jars – believed to be 3,300 years old, in a shipwreck located 90km (56 miles) off the northern coast of Israel on the sea bed at a depth of 1,800m (5,905ft). 

According to the Israel Antiquities Authority, (IAA), which announced the find last week, the shipwreck is the “first and oldest” to be found in the region. This is only the third Bronze Age shipwreck ever found and the first in deep water. 

The IAA said that preliminary examination of two clay jars known as Canaanite amphorae indicated that the merchant vessel, an estimated 39 to 46 feet long, sank sometime between 1400 B.C. and 1300 B.C., an epoch when the Egyptian empire stretched from what is now northern Syria to Sudan, and the boy pharaoh Tutankhamun briefly sat on the throne.

“This find reveals to us as never before the ancient mariners’ navigational skills,” said Jacob Sharvit, head of the IAA’s marine unit, as reported by the BBC.

Dr. Sharvit speculated that lacking compasses, astrolabes, or sextants, seafarers in the 14th century B.C. probably relied on celestial navigation, taking sightings and angles of the sun and star positions. He said the wreck promised to advance scientific knowledge of late Bronze Age trade patterns and the peoples who controlled them.

“The two previous Bronze Age shipwrecks marked trading routes between Cyprus, the Levant and places in the eastern Aegean Sea,” Dr. Sharvit said. “Our wreck suggests a seagoing exchange was conducted west out of Syria and Canaan to southern Cyprus, Crete and other Greek lands.”

Whether the galley was the victim of a sudden storm, or attempted piracy is unclear. But judging from footage recorded by a remotely operated submersible robot, the craft settled to the bottom without capsizing, and the hundreds of storage jars in its hold survived largely intact.

3,300-year-old shipwreck discovered off Israeli coast redefines ancient maritime history

Thanks to Roberta Weisbrod for contributing to this post.