A grotesque in bronze from the Mahdia wreck. 





This marble head of Aphrodite, eroded by 

 sea water, was found in the wreck off Mahdia, 

 Tunisia. The wreck may be the remains 

 of one of the ships that took part in the 

 capture of Athens by Suiia in 86 B.C. 



government heard of the scheme and forced the men to reveal the 

 site. The wreck was seven hundred yards from shore in 144 feet 

 of water and contained a magnificent fifth-century Zeus, a statue 

 of a small boy, and the forepart of a galloping horse. Pottery from 

 this wreck dates it from about the first century b.c, and the ship 

 seems to have been another Roman loot ship. 



Random finds aside - and they could continue for many more I 

 pages - wrecks with their cargoes clustered in place are to the 

 archaeologist-diver a much more rewarding find, and there havej 

 been several of these. 



The wreck of Mahdia, off Tunisia, was discovered by Greek| 

 sponge divers in 1907, and from then until 191 3 a series of expedi- 

 tions to explore the wreck were organized by Alfred Merlin,! 

 Director of Tunisian Antiquities. The wreck was three miles from I 

 the shore in 130 feet of water. Lying on the bottom were sixty! 

 slime-covered columns, each twelve feet long and twenty-five inches I 

 in diameter; and scattered around were overgrown masses of J 

 broken amphorae and statues. Beneath the columns the divers! 

 found a layer of rotting timbers eight inches thick, which theyl 

 believed to be the deck. When they cut their way through theyl 

 found a cargo of artistic masterpieces to which no description can! 

 do justice. This amazing hoard, perilously lifted from its envelopel 

 of mud, now fills six rooms in the Bardo Museum in Tunis. Thel 

 main items included a bronze Eros fifty inches high; a herma ofl 

 Dionysus, by Boethus of Chalcedon; two large cornices; eight! 

 statuettes, of which three are grotesques; and many decorative! 

 motifs, fragments of furniture, and candelabra. The marbles include! 

 a bust of Aphrodite, a Pan, a Niobe, two Niobids, and two satyrs. 

 A lamp of characteristic design puts the date of the wreck in thel 

 early first century B.C., and the presence of so many Athenian! 

 sculptures suggests that this was loot from the capture of Athens! 

 by Sulla in 86 b.c. 



In 1948 a team of nine free-divers, under the leadership ot 

 Cousteau and Philippe Taillez, revisited the wreck of Mahdia onl 

 board the sloop Elie Monnier. They had great difficulty finding ii 

 because the original fixes had been so vague. As a result, they had! 

 so little time left for work that they managed to bring up only four! 

 of the columns and two anchors. However, this operation did provej 

 that there was still a lot more to be found on the site. 



In 1954 the search was taken up again, this time by members of 

 the Club d'Etudes Sous Marines de Tunisie, who found the wreckl 

 after only two and a half days' search. They drew a plan of her and,! 

 by using two air-lifts, cleared most of the mud, then moved the re- 

 maining columns clear of the ship. The following year they dis-j 

 covered the keel, which was 194- inches wide and 85 feet long,j 

 and estimated the original cargo at 200 to 250 tons. 



On August 8, 1948, Henri Broussard discovered a large heap of 

 amphorae off Antheor Point. At first there was no suspicion of a 

 wreck, just rows of amphorae. The following year Taillez worked 

 the site from the Elie Monnier, but it was so overgrown that work 

 was difficult and slow; nevertheless they did bring up several 

 amphorae in good condition. In August 1950, Capitaine de Fregate 

 Rossignol returned with the Elie Monnier and succeeded, with an 

 air-lift, in exposing the ribs of the wreck. He found that the copper 

 nails from this ship had almost exactly the same composition as 



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