The last divers expedition to the wreck of the Mentor, which sank just off the island of Kythira (also spelled Kithira and Kythira) in 1802, has several pieces of ship’s gear, coins, the leather sole of a shoe, a metal buckle , a token for playing cards, two chess pieces, fragments of cooking utensils and other seemingly everyday objects.
When it sank, the ship bore marble sculptures chipped from the badly damaged Parthenon in Athens – later known as the ‘Elgin Marbles or Parthenon Marbles. These spectacular sculptures – depicting Greek gods, heroes and animals – are now on display at the British Museum in London.
Related: 20 of the Most Mysterious Shipwrecks Ever
But the small objects recovered from the wreck reveal intriguing aspects of the lives of the people aboard the ship when it sank, said marine archaeologist Dimitris Kourkoumelis of the Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities, a division of the Greek Ministry of Culture and Sports. .
“The goal is to understand how people lived and what life was like on board, not only for the passengers but also for the crew,” Kourkoumelis told Live Science. “We found gold coins from Utrecht in the Netherlands, but also from Spain, and also coins from the Ottoman Empire – so it was really a cosmopolitan group [of people] on the mentor. ”
Disputed sculptures
The mentor was an American-built brig that belonged to the British diplomat Thomas Bruce, a Scottish nobleman called the seventh Earl of Elgin. Elgin, as he was known, used the ship to transport to England antiquities that he had collected while stationed in Constantinople as the British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. Although the ship arrived in Kythira, where its passengers and crew scrambled on the rocks, the Mentor soon sank under about 20 meters of seawater.
Elgin’s secretary, William Hamilton, then spent nearly two years on Kythira, overseeing the salvage of the sculptures by sponge divers, who were paid to retrieve them from the wreck without diving equipment.
Related: 30 of the world’s most precious treasures that are still missing
The sculptures were then shipped to England and Elgin sold them to the British Museum in 1816.
Elgin claimed that he paid for the sculptures and that he obtained a decree from the ruling Ottoman government to take them. But no evidence of the decree has ever been found, the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles, a non-governmental organization.
When Greece gained independence from the Ottomans in 1832, it began a series of projects to bring back looted art, and the Elgin Marbles topped the list. Since then, every successive Greek government has demanded that the sculptures be returned. So far, however, the British Museum has refused, although it has offered to loan them out temporarily.
Famous shipwreck
Kourkoumelis has been leading diving expeditions to the wreckage of the Mentor every summer since 2009, after the Greek government passed legislation to protect the shipwreck and formally ordered state archaeologists to excavate it.
According to Kourkoumelis, the construction of the Mentor is very different from that of comparable ships built in the Mediterranean. “The American ships were built to travel in the open ocean, so they were much stronger – it’s very interesting to work on a ship like that,” he said.
The wooden ship is now rotting after more than 200 years under the waves, and excavations will only be possible for a few more years, he said.
No more items from Elgin’s collection have ever been found, but the wreck has yielded numerous small artifacts over the years, including gold jewelry, ancient coins and Greek pottery that likely came from the private collections of some of the passengers on board when it sank. said.
The most recent finds from last year included two wooden chess pieces – another six pieces from the same set were found in previous years – and a metal token or coin likely used in a deck.
Archaeologists plan to scientifically investigate all items, many of which will be shown in the Acropolis Museum in Athens, Kourkoumelis said. The museum already displays about half of the Parthenon sculptures remaining, and space has been set aside for the Elgin Marbles should they ever be returned to Greece.
“We are excavating the ship associated with one of the most painful episodes in Greece’s recent history,” said Kourkoumelis. “I think it is very important to show that we not only ask for things, but that we are committed to protecting everything that goes with it.”
Originally published on Live Science.