ALEXANDRIA, EGYPT—According to a report in The Guardian, the well-preserved timbers of an Egyptian pleasure vessel have been discovered off the coast of Alexandria, near the underwater site of the temple of Isis that once stood on the island of Antirhodos. Franck Goddio of the University of Oxford and the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology (IEASM) said that it is the first time that such a vessel has been recovered. Dated to the first half of the first century A.D., the newly discovered vessel is said to resemble an Egyptian pleasure boat described by the first-century B.C. Greek historian Strabo. He wrote that such vessels were used by the royal court and their revelers to travel to festivals and engage in “extreme licentiousness.” Goddio said that an Egyptian pleasure boat was also depicted in the Palestrina mosaic, a floor mosaic in central Italy featuring the course of the Nile River. In this image, a pleasure boat measuring about 50 feet long carries noblemen hunting hippopotamuses. At an estimated 115 feet long, the newly discovered boat was much larger, Goddio explained, and it had a flat bow and a round stern, perhaps making it maneuverable in shallow water. The boat’s size suggests that it may have required more than 20 rowers, he added. “It could have … [been] part of the naval ceremony of the navigium Isidis, when a procession celebrating [the goddess] Isis encountered a richly decorated vessel—the Navigium—which embodied the solar barque of Isis, mistress of the sea,” he concluded. To read about the submerged remnants of one of the ancient world's most famous monuments, go to "Secrets of the Seven Wonders: Lighthouse of Alexandria."
