A commercial and scientific diver from Seattle emailed me some questions about our on-going excavations here in the Bay of Abu Kir "I am particularly interested in your excavation and recovery methods.", he asked.
Thanks for writing in. I can appreciate how working divers want to know the nuts and bolts of how we actually work underwater. Today I have some time to answer, as the wind picked up overnight, and although 2 of us were in the water at 730 am, the conditions were still too bad for archaeological excavations. 50 cm visibility and a surge on the bottom. we secured the gear in place and returned to the ship. The broad strokes of our excavation tools and methodology are covered on the Franck Goddio Website under the heading "System Approach and Technology" including descriptions for sume tools you are probably thinking of, such as the unromantic water dredge, as well as a lot of detail about that most difficult subject of all underwater work, Positioning. What is not mentioned so much there is that every diver, after every dive, gives Franck a full reporting of everything done and seen during the dive, as well as observations and impressions, that can lead to a better overall understanding of work progress on the site. I hope that provides some interesting reading, and if anyone has more questions about our work and life on board as the dive team of L'INSTITUT EUROPÉEN D'ARCHÉOLOGIE SOUS-MARINE, please send them my way. All the best, Eric See Exposition Osiris in Zurich http://www.osiris-zuerich.ch/ http://www.franckgoddio.org/ http://www.hiltifoundation.org/en/ http://www.ieasm.org/ http://www.arch.ox.ac.uk/ocma.html When I first heard of this team of French Divers, who travel the world making fantastic discoveries, lead by a passionate Underwater Archaeologist, who had been together for years, I had to learn more about them. The introduction came through team diverr Sue Hendrickson (The Paleontologist ), and imagine my amazement when I was offered the opportunity to join the team. The irony is that now, 20 years of exploration and amazing discoveries later, the team is still exploring, and most of the faces have remained the same. Today L'INSTITUT EUROPÉEN D'ARCHÉOLOGIE SOUS-MARINE dive team are still a French Team, although the number of nations represented on board is great, the culture remains overwhelmingly French.
That being said, the passports represented on board today, at anchor in the Bay of Abu Kir, Egypt, include: French, Egyptian, Czech, Cuban, Russian, American, and British Can you imagine the cacophony at the Dinner table? Its a type of camaraderie that I think ony can exist at sea after hard labor in pursuit of a common goal, over a fine meal, and with the knowledge that another amazing discovery awaits us the following day. These are the thoughts I have today. Proud to be part of the team. http://www.osiris-zuerich.ch/ http://www.franckgoddio.org/ http://www.hiltifoundation.org/en/ http://www.ieasm.org/ http://www.arch.ox.ac.uk/ocma.html Franck Goddio and the Survey Team are continuing the sub-bottom profiler survey on the site of the sunken Egyptian City of Heracleion/Thonis. The next-gen technology be Innomar is providing spectacular 3-d imagery of things hidden under the settlement, including elements of the cities construction and evidence of the cataclysmic events that caused it to disappear into the sea.
In the wheel house, Gildas has a tough job keeping the SeaPro on line for the very close lane spacing chosen for the survey. Franck, Gerard, Elodie and Peter keep an eye on the incoming data stream in the survey control room. At the same time, the Egyptian crew of the Sea Pro keep all the machinery running perfectly. The results of this survey are already interesting, and will lead to better understanding of the site and planning for future archeological excavations on the sunken city that revealed the artifacts currently on display in the British museum, and destined soon to be on display in Zurich as the Osiris Exhibition makes its stop there. In the mean time, I cant wait to dive and investigate the information from the survey! http://osiris-zuerich.ch/ http://www.franckgoddio.org/ http://www.hiltifoundation.org/en/ http://www.ieasm.org/ http://www.arch.ox.ac.uk/ocma.html This is why we keep diving and excavating; To share the discoveries of a sunken civilization with the world. AFTER PARIS AND LONDON, THIS FASCINATING EXHIBITION OF THE LATEST UNDERWATER ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES OPENS FOR THE FIRST TIME IN A GERMAN-SPEAKING COUNTRY NEXT FEBRUARY: MUSEUM RIETBERG IN ZURICH WILL HOST THE SHOW Osiris, Egypt’s Sunken Mysteries (German title: „Osiris - Das versunkene Geheimnis Ägyptens“) opens 10 February 2017 at Museum Rietberg in Zurich. The exhibition features some 300 objects, many of them on display for the first time outside Egypt. The focus of the exhibition is on finds that have come to light mainly over the past ten years of research conducted in the submerged ancient cities of Thonis-Heracleion and Canopus off the coast of Egypt by the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology (IEASM) led by Franck Goddio in collaboration with the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities and supported by the Hilti Foundation. The show is supplemented by 40 masterpieces from museums in Cairo and Alexandria. Together, they illustrate the legend of Osiris, the Egyptian god of the afterlife. Osiris, so the legend says, was killed and cut into pieces by his brother Seth. Osiris’ sister-wife Isis reassembled the pieces which led to his resurrection in order to conceive their son Horus. Osiris was therefore worshipped for bringing new life to death, including the circle of vegetation and the flooding of the Nile. The “legend of Osiris” is one of the great founding myths of ancient Egypt. It was remembered, perpetuated and renewed in the annual celebration of the “Mysteries of Osiris”, one of the great religious ceremonies of ancient Egypt. The 1300 m² exhibition takes visitors to the sunken cities and to where the ceremonies took place, and affords further glimpses into ancient ceremonies and rituals that were once performed under the strictest secrecy inside the temples. The exhibition organiser is Museum Rietberg in Zurich. “We are proud to be able to show this unique exhibition at Museum Rietberg,” says the museum’s director, Dr Albert Lutz. “The stories the exhibition tells here had me spellbound from the first – and I believe our visitors will feel exactly the same.” I wish I had written this post yesterday. It was gorgeous. By that I mean 3 meters vis, schools of fish everywhere, very little wave action on the bottom, and a reasonable current taking the inevitable stirred up sediment on our work site gently off to the north east. Today is a different story. after jumping off the ship, as Ahmed ws captured doing in the photo above, I was leisurely adjusting my gear as I descended the 5 m to the bottom when I hit it, face first, with no warning. Vis had dropped to below a meter, and even less once the action began. But underwater archaeology on the team of the INSTITUT EUROPÉEN D'ARCHÉOLOGIE SOUS-MARINE is not for those who go weak in the fins the first sign of adversity, so to work we went, albeit very, very slowly Several brave readers have sent me some questions about the excavations being performed here by the IEASM ( INSTITUT EUROPÉEN D'ARCHÉOLOGIE SOUS-MARINE) Reader Zac pinged me with the following: "As a geophysicist, I am interested in the processes that lead to the city sinking in the first place and the conditions that have allowed such amazing preservation." If I was answering that for kids or non-geophysicists, I would say " An Earthquake probably caused soil liquification , especially under monuments and buildings, and was followed by a tsunami which knocked the whole lot into canals where they were covered by Nile flooding and then coastal subsidence submerged the whole are under the sea over the next odd thousand years. But for the real story Zac, you'll want to start here on the IEASM website with the following by Franck Goddio and David Fabre: "Research shows that the sites were struck at different times by cataclysmic geological events. They also confirm the slow land subsidence that affected this part of the south-eastern Mediterranean basin. Geological observation revealed these through the discovery of seismic after-effects in the seafloor substrate. Geological analysis also showed in some places, principally in the Bay of Aboukir, the signs of soil liquefaction. These local events can be triggered by the action of a high pressure on land of a clayey nature. The weight exerted by monuments, combined with the extra weight of an exceptional flood or a tsunami, creates compression, which then causes the expulsion of the water contained in the structure of clays. These latter suddenly lose their volume which creates sudden subsidence. An earthquake can also induce the same phenomenon. These events, occurring independently or concurrently, could cause major destruction, and explain the disappearance under the waters of a large portion of the Canopic region and the Portus Magnus of Alexandria. Regular collapse and sea level rise- recognized since antiquity- have obviously contributed significantly to the flooding in this area". Here is a photo of a fissure in the clay under the site. There's also an article in Nature magazine linked below;
Nature 412, 293-294 (19 July 2001) | doi:10.1038/35085628
Topof pageAbstractSediment failure caused these riverbank sites to drown over 1,200 years ago. Concerned about your own city sinking? The closest thing I have to an advice column is siummed up in thes article, 8 Things to do Before Your City Sinks While Franck's team of divers are busy underwater, somebody has to take care of the ship. Hats of to the crew of the Princess Duda, sailing her from Malta to Egypt to support our Underwater Archaeological excavations.
Some people might recognize Bo from other vessels he has served on sailing out of Malta that also are involved in Underwater Archaeology and undersea exploration. Anyone want to guess which outfit? Attention Marine Geophisics geeks. Innomar's new 4 head High Def tight beam sub-bottom profiler produces 3-d immagery of features hidden in top 5 meters of the bottom. Applications for this new tech seam boundless, but Underwater Archaeologist Franck Goddio has put it to task on the site of a sunken Egyptian City.
Peter, (pictured above) is one of Innomar's hydrographic engineers who joined us on site to ensure smooth opperation during the survey, conducted on the Sea Pro V. Thanks for joining us Peter, we look forward to diving on the results. I have had the pleasure of working and diving with Bassem and Islam for many years on shipwrecks and sunken cities in Egypt.I wonder what amazing artifacts we might find today?
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My Name is Eric and My Job is Scientific Exploration.
That means I'm lucky enough to join expeditions to excavate sunken cities, climb volcanoes, find missing bombs, and Sail old research vessels, while searching for the mysteries of the natural world. Categories
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