At 36 meters below the surface, the sky is a rippling mirror of light, the sand a dappled moonscape of silver and blue. In this alien world it becomes difficult to judge scale and distance. As we descend over the massive toppled wheels of the millstone wreck, it is easy to imagine a moss-hung Atlantian temple, or the Stonehenge of some forgotten Cthuluesque deity. It is hard to believe that these stones are only 110 cm in diameter, and probably weigh less than 500 kilograms each. They are just millstones, the humblest of all
cargoes,
used for grinding corn for the bread that was the staple food of the ancient Mediterranean world. And we are not here to admire them, but to clean them like mad with plastic kitchen brushes. The photo preparation team of Gokhan Bey, Orkan, Guzden, and Bridget goes into action, and within a few minutes the ghostly stone temple is obliterated in a sandstorm. Meanwhile, on the church wreck, "Saint Berta" is having a spiritual experience of another kind. Following directions indicated by a dead fish, she discovers more carved marble panels and yet another graven cross. In her narcotic state she unfortunately forgets to bring the fish back for lunch, to the dismay of the hungry unbelievers waiting on Millawanda. We have now tightened our schedule to get all the diving done before lunch (at 2 to 3pm), which makes for a very long morning. Even the millstones are starting to look strangely edible...
We know of about 50 Mediterranean shipwrecks that carried millstones, mostly for shipboard use. About 20 more appear to have carried millstones as cargo, but few of these shipwrecks have been closely studied. Two that have were apparently carrying ‘trade lots’ sourced from a number of different quarries. However, the regularity of our 30-plus visible millstones, which were neatly stacked in groups of 3 and 4, suggests a single source for at least the three main types (our cleaning uncovered a third smaller type just this morning). Dating the wreck will have to wait until we can make a closer study of the ship’s amphoras (which appear to be Byzantine) and iron anchors, 6 of which are still stacked head-and-tail as they must have been on the deck of the ship when it sank.
These huge millstones were obviously too big for the average private
household (one did not impress the neighbors by buying a bigger millstone) and it is difficult to imagine them being ‘traded’ in the same way as an amphora or a sack of corn. Needless to say, it would be inadvisable to place one of these things on the back of a donkey. Perhaps, as was suggested yesterday, we are dealing with a church or government-owned cargo sent from A to B with a specific purpose in mind, or an order from a very large estate. For the huge merchant ships of the Roman and Byzantine periods, a few of which could carry over 1000 tons, dealing in such heavy
cargoes would have been routine; we know that they sometimes carried building blocks weighing up to 40 tons. Even the comparatively small 4th century BC Kyrenia ship carried millstones, laid along the ship’s centerline to balance an irregularity of the hull. Great care went into the arrangement of cargo on ancient vessels of all sizes, equal to the craftsmanship of the boats themselves. Our millstone wreck provides a rare opportunity to learn about ancient stowage techniques.Today we found a number of unusual items that have yet to be identified or explained (and I don’t just mean the things living in our water tank). Stay tuned...
