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To: SunkenCiv

Interesting that the ship is identified as a royal ship with a scarab bearing the name Nefertiti.

She disappeared from Egyptian history sometime around the 14th year of Ankenaten’s reign. There are lots of theories about her disappearance. We could make one up that includes this ship

Maybe she got caught in somebody’s bed and beat feet—or was on a diplomatic/pleasure cruise of the Med—or whatever and wound up on this ship?


7 posted on 09/09/2008 12:47:44 PM PDT by wildbill
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To: wildbill
It sez here, most of the cargo was copper "oxhide" ingots from Cyprus, about ten tons of 'em.

Well, last I knew, the Nefertiti scarab (which was found in a small pile, or perhaps clay jar, with a bunch of other valuables) was considered to have been on the ship because it was going to be sold at a destination port and melted down for reuse.

The wreck itself was found in pretty deep water, and a radiocarbon date of wood from the wreck gave a date that seemed to agree with the age of the ship as otherwise estimated.

Turned out that the date (which is from when the wood was alive, not from when it was cut) was far too young, since no one builds a ship out of year-old trees, and there's reason to believe the ship was some years old when it sank, so the date was eventually rejected, and the wood (which may or may not have been part of the ship itself) was cast off (so to speak) as having (*get this*) sunk onto the wreck at a later time.
Dendrochronological Dating of the Uluburun Ship
by Dr. Cemal Pulak
The unique gold scarab of Egypt's Queen Nefertiti, Akhenaten's beloved wife, appears to be fairly worn from use, which suggests that it had been around for some time before it was taken on board the ship. Furthermore, it may have been part of a jeweler's hoard, as it was discovered in the midst of complete, cut, and folded jewelry pieces and other bits of scrap precious metals. If the scarab was a part of the scrap hoard, which is debatable, it almost certainly arrived on the ship after Nefertiti's time, when her scarab would have been worthless except for its gold value.
So, this "worn from use" scarab -- unique, but that's not a criticism -- with the name of Nefertiti on it, was found on a wreck for which the date had to be rejected on other grounds.
In the hope of obtaining an absolute date for the ship, seven wood samples taken from the keel-plank, planking, and cedar logs were submitted to Peter Kuniholm of Comell University for dendrochronological dating. While some samples did not have a sufficient number of tree rings to match the established master sequence, others with more rings appeared not to match at all. A large log-like piece of undetermined purpose, but with its outer layers trimmed, yielded a date of 1441 B.C. ±37 years, the uncertainty factor arising from the carbon dating of samples constituting the floating master conifer-ring sequence.
The biggest mystery is, if the (at the time) 100 year old piece of log was part of the wreck, how is it that the rings tested from "the keel-plank, planking, and cedar logs... didn't match at all"? IMHO, the reason is obvious -- the ship doesn't date from that time, so the dendrochronological wiggle-match wouldn't work, or rather, yielded a date incompatible with other features of the wreck. The rings which didn't match at all instead matched a series of years such that the trees themselves hadn't grown when the ship went down. ;')
10 posted on 09/09/2008 10:10:30 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/_______Profile hasn't been updated since Friday, May 30, 2008)
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