Mahdia shipwreck
The ship Fund of Mahdia in 1907 was made in the Mediterranean in the Tunisian city of Mahdia.
1907 moved the city through an ancient shipwreck in the focus of scientific interest. The ship's discovery was a discovery of the Greek sponge divers captain Giorgos Sourdos off the Tunisian coast. First, art objects and fragments of columns have been discovered, which suggested a lost city. The French archaeologist Alfred Merlin, then director of the Antiquities Service in the Protectorate of Tunisia, was aware of them. With the help of his colleague Louis Poinssot the finds have been studied scientifically and identifies the discovered pieces of wood as a ship's deck planks. The now recognized as a wreck near the present town of Mahdia find dates from around 100-80 BC This date is based on the accompanying ceramics. The largest part of the cargo was lifted 1907-1913. According to current knowledge of the heavily loaded glider was caught in a sudden storm occurring off the north African coast and sank. Marble and bronze sculptures, high quality furniture fittings and other interior design objects, catapult parts and capitals and column segments were aboard.
The sailor was to judge the type of cargo, from Piraeus, the port of Athens, go to Italy, which was to be delivered, inter alia, to rich Roman authority such as Cicero, a famous Roman statesman as an art lover what Merlin as an excellent connoisseur of Roman history already suspected at the time. Merlin has worked with the Finder Sourdos. Him, who himself could not dive to retrieve the reference with the sponge divers and perform the recovery with helmet diving suits succeeded. The diving campaign made the researchers for the first underwater archaeologist of the story, opening up this new scientific discipline.
For Fund, which is in the National Museum of Bardo ( Musee National du Bardo ) in Tunis, include, inter alia, a marble bust of Ariadne attributed more marble figures, two large-sized bronze statues, a herm of Dionysus wearing a turban -like headgear, laterally with the engraving ΒΟΗΘΟΣ ΚΑΛΧΗΔΟΝΙΟΣ ΕΠΟΙΕΙ " Boethos, the Chalcedonian made (it) " provided, and a number of small figures and objects made of bronze. Scientists at the Rheinische Landesmuseum Bonn restored a portion of the charge.