Alexandria Mission Report 2011

The European Institute for Underwater Archaeology’s 2011 mission took place in Egypt from 15th September to 30th October. The excavations concerned the site of the ancient port city of Heracleion-Thonis to the West of the Nile Delta (Aboukir Bay) and the Eastern port of Alexandria (Portus Magnus). With the collaboration of the Supreme Council for Antiquities, they were directed by Franck Goddio assisted by around twenty people including an Egyptologist, a ceramics specialist, a restorer/conservator, two engineers, a photographer, a videographer and eleven archaeological divers. They also involved two members of the National Museum of the Philippines who had been working with Franck Goddio for several years on shipwreck excavations in the Philippines. As the co-founder of the Oxford Centre for Maritime Archaeology, the IEASM also welcomed aboard The Princess Duda the Centre's director who focused his work on the excavation of an ancient shipwreck with the assistance of three Oxford University students. Furthermore, the IEASM also made its logistics available to two Oxford University students so that they could finalise their doctorate thesis on objects recovered from the excavations and kept at the Maritime Museum of Alexandria. Finally, the team received a visit from Andrew Meadows, Deputy Director of the American Numismatic Society, who had come to study the coins discovered on the sites of Alexandria, East Canopus and Heracleion-Thonis.
For the full list of participants please click here.

Portus Magnus of Alexandria

The programme of explorations and surveys that got underway in 2010 in Alexandria on one of the branches of Antirhodos Island raised hopes of interesting discoveries during this mission. The field work in this part of Portus Magnus confirmed the presence of a major building of limestone blocks with wall, mosaic and frieze facings (see top image). The archaeological information gathered indicates that it is the collapsed levels of a building belonging to the same architectural complex as the structures in ruin discovered on the East bank of this branch of Antirhodos. The statue of the priest carrying a Canopic vase and sphinxes representing Ptolemy XII which marked the site of a temple probably dedicated to Isis were found there. The excavation work confirmed the results of the geophysical explorations indicating a “split” in the substrate to the North-East of the Southern branch of Antirhodos Island, most likely caused by a seismic phenomenon that had destroyed the monuments towards the end of the 1st or beginning of the 2nd century A.D.

Surface explorations and surveys were conducted in parallel to this excavation to determine the topography of the entire Eastern Port of Alexandria, characterise architectural elements and structures or even locate shipwrecks. The explorations previously conducted in 2009 to the South of the central reef had enabled us to arrive at the assumption that a major structure faced the large breakwater at the end of the Poseidium peninsula; it was intended to break the swell entering from the main channel and reflected by Antirhodos Island. Both of them would have formed a channel providing access to the Royal ports while ensuring tight control. This assumption itself emphasized the complexity of the port infrastructures at Port Magnus and confirmed its “marvellously closed” nature (Strabon, Géographie, XVII, 28). A series of explorations and surveys were conducted in this area, taking account of the questions remaining concerning the organisation of such installations. For the time being, it appears that all of the structures carved into the limestone substrate were severely eroded and damaged. In the future, ad hoc surveys will be conducted to find and characterise any traces of occupation. Research was also conducted at several points on the Poseidium Peninsula, in particular to the South-East on the ancient coast, on a large quadrangular structure around twenty metres in length built from limestone blocks. It could be the relics of a fortification or even an element of the wall that ran along the seafront, a defence structure intended to protect the Royal Palaces district. The palace district indeed had its own defence system, as Cesar withstood a siege by the Alexandrians there.