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Uluburun shipwreck
Also called: Uluburun ship, Uluburun wreck
A merchant ship wrecked off southern Turkey at the very end of the fourteenth century BCE, carrying about ten tons of Cypriot copper.
Found near Kaş on the Lycian coast, the Uluburun wreck carried one of the richest Bronze Age cargoes known. Besides the copper, most of it in oxhide ingots, it held about a ton of tin, glass ingots, ivory, ebony, some 150 Canaanite jars, many with terebinth resin, and Cypriot pottery packed inside large storage jars. A gold scarab of Nefertiti and tree-ring dates place the sinking at the very end of the fourteenth century BCE.
Much of the cargo came from Cyprus; the ship itself probably did not. Its anchors, galley wares and most of its jars came from the Carmel coast, and analysis of the hull's cedar points to northern Syria, so most scholars see it as a Levantine vessel. See seafaring and ships.
Full entry: Seafaring and Ships in Ancient Cyprus
Related terms
- Oxhide ingot
A flat copper slab with four projecting handles, weighing about 24–30 kg: the standard form in which Late Bronze Age Cyprus exported copper.
- Levant
The lands along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, roughly modern Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine and Jordan, facing Cyprus to the east.
- Alashiya
A copper-rich Late Bronze Age kingdom named in Near Eastern texts and widely identified with all or part of Cyprus.