Nefertiti and the Uluburun Shipwreck

The History of Egypt Podcast

Dominic Perry

Society & Culture, History

4.8 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 1 March 2022

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Or, the Life Aquatic with Gold Scarabs... Around 1325 BCE (estimates vary) a vessel sank near the cape of Uluburun, Turkey. The cargo was immense: twenty tonnes of goods, including copper, ivory, ornamental objects, spices, and more. Amid the finds, a curious item came to light: a gold scarab, bearing the name Neferneferuaten Nefertiti... What was a Nefertiti scarab doing on a trade ship, far from Egypt? And what do the finds tell us about the ship, its crew, and ancient trade? The Uluburun Shipwreck: Date: c.1325 BCE (estimated). Cultures: Multiple, including Egyptian, Canaanite, Syrian, and Mycenaean. Ship destination: Possibly the Aegean, western Anatolia, or even the Balkans. Website: www.egyptianhistorypodcast.com. Support the show via Patreon www.patreon.com/egyptpodcast. Make a one-time donation via PayPal payments. Logo image: Divers working on the Uluburun wreck, via The Institute of Nautical Archaeology website. Catalogue of objects in Beyond Babylon, 2008. Free pdf from MMA. Image gallery at The Institute of Nautical Archaeology website. Artefacts in the Bodrum museum, on Flickr.com. Miscellaneous items, at Wikimedia. A replica of the ship, Uluburun II, at Underwater360. A lecture by Cemal Pulak, one of the lead excavators. YouTube. Select Bibliography: G. Bass et al., ‘The Bronze Age Shipwreck at Ulu Burun: 1986 Campaign’, American Journal of Archaeology 93 (1989), 1–29. C. M. Monroe, ‘Sunk Costs at Late Bronze Age Uluburun’, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 357 (2010), 19–33. C. Pulak, ‘Analysis of the Weight Assemblages from the Late Bronze Age Shipwrecks at Uluburun and Cape Gelidonya, Turkey, Volume I’, Unpublished PhD. Thesis, Texas A&M University (1996). C. Pulak, ‘The Uluburun Shipwreck: An Overview’, The International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 27 (1998), 188–224. C. Pulak, ‘The Uluburun Shipwreck and Late Bronze Age Trade’, in Beyond Babylon: Art, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Second Millennium B.C. (2008), 289–310. Book available free, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. C. Pulak, ‘Uluburun Shipwreck’, in The Oxford Handbook of the Bronze Age Aegean (2012), 863—876. C. Pulak, lecture on YouTube. J. Weinstein, ‘The Bronze Age Shipwreck at Ulu Burun: 1986 Campaign, Part 3: The Gold Scarab of Nefertiti from Ulu Burun: Its Implications for Egyptian History and Egyptian-Aegean Relations’, American Journal of Archaeology 93 (1989), 17–29. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Howdy, folks, Dominic here.
0:05.9	This episode comes with a disclaimer about chronology.
0:09.5	These events happened sometime in the late 14th century BCE, between 1350 and 1,300, give or take.
0:19.2	I have gone with 1325 BCE, based on one study, but to be clear,
0:25.5	the exact dates are uncertain. Scientific analyses can provide timelines, but scholars are always
0:33.1	refining and updating their methods, so chronologies could change. It's not a big deal, but it's
0:39.7	worth bearing in mind.
0:47.9	In 1986, archaeologists were diving off the coast of Turkey. Working on an area just 250 metres square,
0:57.5	they sifted through mud, sand and ocean life. They were studying the wreck of an ancient ship,
1:04.4	one that sank more than 3,000 years ago. Deep below the waves, off the coast of Ulu-Burun, the archaeologists were studying
1:14.0	a fascinating treasure. In the course of their work, a curious item came to light. Small,
1:21.5	made of gold, the object glittered in the water. Examining it closely, the team found it was a scarab, an ornament shaped
1:30.2	like a beetle and decorated with hieroglyphs. The scarab was Egyptian, one of many items from
1:36.7	the wreckage that had African origins. But this scarab was special. On the surface, hieroglyphs
1:43.9	recorded a name, Nefer Neferu-Aten, Neferititi.
1:49.9	This was the official name of Nefertiti, the legendary Queen of the Nile, and possibly Pharaoh in
1:57.2	her own right. What was the scarab of Nefertiti doing off the coast of Turkey?
2:03.7	Well, there be a tale to shiver your timbers,
2:07.5	a tale that, ironically, is told by dead men.
2:25.2	Around 1325 BCE, in the eastern Mediterranean, a ship set sail.
2:29.7	It pulled away from the dock or anchorage and headed out to sea.
2:35.2	The vessel headed north, hugging the coast, making for distant lands.
	...

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