Two scuba divers, understood to be Egyptian nationals, are reported to have illegally collected a large number of Greek and Roman treasures in Mediterranean Egypt’s Aboukir Bay before being apprehended and their finds recovered.
According to the country’s Interior Ministry, the divers’ haul comprised no fewer than 448 artefacts, made up of 305 coins, 53 intact statues and three heads, 20 bronze ‘pieces’ and 14 bronze cups, 41 axes and 12 spears. The items all date to the Age of Antiquity, between around 500 BC and 400 AD.
Photographs of the items removed from seawater showed them to be heavily oxidised.
One of the divers was described as already having a criminal record by the Interior Ministry, which stated that the pair had admitted their intent to traffic the items. ”Legal action has been taken,” it said, without providing any details, although comments on its social media pages appeared to reflect a high level of sympathy in Egypt towards the two divers for what was regarded as their initiative.
Aboukir Bay lies near the city of Alexandria and for decades has been the subject of extensive archaeological excavations led by French diver Franck Goddio of the European Institute of Underwater Archaeology (IEASM) in collaboration with Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities.
Goddio originally set himself the task of locating all the possible archaeological sites in the western part of the Nile delta, an area covering some 110sq km with no landmarks to which to refer, and large amounts of silt concealing remains and reducing underwater visibility.
His team succeeded in discovering the city of Thonis-Heracleion 7km offshore in 2000, and went on to reveal and work on the sunken cities of Canopus and Menouthis and Alexandria harbour. The archaeological divers continue to excavate more recently discovered shipwreck, temple and harbour sites in Aboukir Bay.
Also on Divernet: DIVERS REVEAL TREASURES FROM EGYPT’S LOST TEMPLES, ANCIENT SHIPWRECK FOUND OFF EGYPT, UNIQUE SHIPWRECK PROVES THE ANCIENTS RIGHT, MESSAGES FROM THE PAST
The coins are fake. Every single one illustrated is a really bad fake. The Venus de Milo statues are already missing their arms. I suspect everything seized if fake and they actually caught the counterfeiters in the act of retrieving stuff they put in the water to artificially age the “artifacts.”
The Greek inscriptions are also awful in many ways