The work of raising an ancient Greek shipwreck known as Gela II, associated with a cargo of rare ‘Atlantis’ metal, is on the verge of completion under the supervision of Sicily’s Superintendency of the Sea.
The exceptionally well-preserved 5th century BC vessel, some 15m long and 5m wide, was found by divers at a depth of 6m in 1988, near the southern Tyrrhenian-coast port of Gela.
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First excavated in 1995, the merchant vessel was notable not only for its state of preservation but because it contained a cargo of a rare metal alloy known as orichalcum or “mountain copper”.
Orichalcum is mentioned in ancient texts by writers including Plato, described as second only to gold in value and once mined in Atlantis to clad the buildings of that mythical city. The references were thought to refer to pure copper or an alloy such as bronze or brass.
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Eighty-six of the rare orichalcum ingots were recovered from the Gela II site in 2015 and 2017. Also retrieved in the past have been amphoras and other pottery, metal items and Corinthian-style military helmets.
Archaeological excavations began in July to expose and recover all the boat’s timbers and any other remaining artefacts, with the work carried out by divers from underwater works specialist Atlantis Palermo di Monreale under the Superintendency’s supervision.
Now the boat-restoration process is about to begin at premises in the Bosco Littorio archaeological park, which contains the remains of ancient Gela from between the 8th and 5th centuries BC.
The entire 900,000-euro (£753,000) project, paid for through the EU’s Cohesion Fund, is expected to take nine months, after which the ship will go on display at the Archaeological Museum of Gela, where items such as the orichalcum ingots and helmets are already displayed and where the Gela I shipwreck was first revealed to the public.
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