SHIPWRECK MUSEUM

This museum (Batık Gemi Müzesi) houses the wreck and cargo of a Greek merchant ship that ran aground off Kyrenia around 300 BC and was recovered in 1965. Misleadingly described as "the world's oldest ship", the wreck is in fact of inestimable value. It has enabled researchers to develop new techniques for underwater archaeology, and to learn more about sea routes, carpentry and navigation in the Mediterranean during antiquity. The first room on the first floor shows the ship's presumed route from the Dodecanese islands (Greece) and photographs of the discovery of the wreck by Kyrenia's Greek-Cypriot diver Andreas Kariolou (1923-1977), followed by its recovery by an American team from the University of Pennsylvania. The next room houses a reconstruction of the ship and part of its cargo. This consisted of 375 wine and oil amphorae, 29 grain millstones used as ballast and around 9,000 almonds loaded in earthen sacks and pots. In all, the ship must have been carrying around 20 tons of cargo. Also on display are the cooking utensils and "barbecue" of the crew (four sailors), as well as parts of the sails (probably a single sail).

An unexpected Greek-Turkish collaboration. The wooden hull itself is displayed in a special room upstairs, behind glass walls that allow the wood to be preserved in a controlled environment. Preserved at 70%, it has notably lost its starboard bow. But it was easy to assess the ship's original size: 14.7 m long and 4.4 m wide. The wood used (cut around 390 B.C.) was essentially Aleppo pine, a common species in mainland Greece at the time. Working conditions for the archaeologists were particularly difficult. After clearing the cargo in 1970, it took two summers to reassemble the 5-ton hull, then made up of pieces of wood soaked in salt water and the consistency of a viscous sponge. In the courtyard of Kyrenia Castle, the long and delicate process of lyophilization (drying) lasted from 1972 to 1976. In the summer of 1974, in the midst of the invasion of Cyprus, the Turkish army allowed a Greek ship to enter occupied Kyrenia to unload the air-conditioning systems needed for the freeze-drying process. It was this unexpected Greek-Turkish collaboration that saved the wreck.