Mini: Nefertiti and the Wreck of the Uluburun

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.

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.

References:

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of the Weight Assemblages from the Late Bronze Age Shipwrecks at Uluburun and Cape Gelidonya, Turkey, Volume I’, Unpublished PhD.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.

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