Submarine Discoveries in the Mediterranean

Hidden beneath the Mediterranean is a matchless collection of antiquities; but for centuries the sea has jealously watched over its treasures, allowing us no more than an occasional peep. Sometimes when a harbour is being deepened the dredger brings up an important specimen, such for instance as the massive silver patera with designs in gold, a splendid example of Alexandrian art, now in the Bardo Museum at Tunis; or the bronze statuettes from the harbour of Bona (found in July 1912), one of which, representing a girl—unfortunately headless—seated on the ground, is a rare combination of grace and artistic skill. At other times again it is the lucky haul of a fisherman which gives back to us a fine piece of sculpture. Thus it was that in 1832 near Piombino there was fished up out of the sea the Apollo of the early 5th century B.C. which is the pride of the Salle des Bronzes in the Louvre. Other objects found in the same way are the fine bronze headless statue of a boy found near Eleusis in 1879, and acquired by the Berlin Museum from the Sabouroff collection; Poseidon holding a dolphin, of the early 5th century, found near Creusis on the Boeotian shore of the Gulf of Corinth and now restored and exhibited at Athens; and the marble Aphrodite found in 1929 not far from Rhodes. One might easily prolong the list

Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Bronze · Harbour · Mediterranean climate · Mediterranean sea · Sculpture · Shore · Statue · Ancient Mediterranean Archaeology and History · Archaeology and Historical Studies · Geology · History · Maritime and Coastal Archaeology · Oceanography