Chapter 5
Into the Aegean and out of the
Bronze Age
During the second millenniumBCE the maritime trading system of the
eastern Mediterranean spread westward into the Aegean Sea. Our knowledge
of this expanded network has been greatly enhanced since the discovery in
1982 of a wreck off the rocky promontory known as Uluburun near the
modern Turkish town of Kas. Sometimec. 1300 BCEa merchant vessel 50
feet in length sank here in waters about 150 feet deep. Its origin and crew
are uncertain but were probably Canaanite. The principal cargo was copper
in the form of 400 ingots totaling 10 tons in addition to a ton of tin ingots,
enough to equip a good size army. Bronze weapons and tools were also found.
Next to copper, the most abundant cargo was a resin made from the ter-
ebinth tree used by Egyptians in burial rites. It was carried in 150 terracotta
amphorae carefully cushioned by dunnage made from shrubs. Other amphorae
contained glass beads and orpiment, a yellow arsenic that could be used as a
pigment or mixed with beeswax to make writing material. Also there was a
number of pithos, large open-mouth storage jars used as barrels. One of these
wasfilled with whole pomegranates; another was used to store smaller pieces
of pottery, including juglets, oil lamps, and bowls. Among personal effects
were drinkingflasks, musical instruments, and a diptych (writing board).
The ship also carried exotic goods, including a piece of unworked ivory,
four hippopotamus teeth, tortoise shell, and logs of African blackwood. From
the north came Baltic amber beads and a ceremonial axe likely originating in
the lower Danube River region of Romania. From the south were faience
beads and a faience rhyton in the shape of a ram’s head, pieces of ostrich
eggshell, a rectangular plaque made of green stone with hieroglyphs praising
the Egyptian god Ptah, and two cylinder seals, one of quartz with gold caps
and the other of hematite, a blood-red crystal. Old cylinder seals were a
common gift item in this period. The hematite seal is especially interesting because
it had been partially recycled depicting one scene of a king and a goddess
with a horned headdress from eighteenth-centuryBCEsouthern Mesopotamia
(Old Babylonian) and a later design from fourteenth-centuryBCEnorthern
Mesopotamia (Assyrian) depicting a warrior facing a winged griffin engraved
over a portion of the earlier design.