Homer wrote the Iliad, an epic poem set at the end of the legendary Trojan War, around 800 BC. And thousands of years later those texts continue to give surprises. The details included within its pages have served as a guide for archaeologists to find several shipwrecks off the coast of Greece.
Experts from the Greek National Research Foundation and the Ministry of Culture located, in the four missions that have been carried out since 2019, the remains of up to 10 vessels that sank around the island of Kasos between the year 3000 BC and the Second World War.
Homer refers to Kasos as a commercial center that joined the fight against Troy. As explained in the catalog of ships in song II of the Iliad, the inhabitants of this island were part of the contingent commanded by Fidipus and Antiphus, the sons of Thessalus and Chalciope.
The ships found now include shipwrecks from prehistory, the classical period (around 450 BC), the Hellenistic period, the Roman era (200 BC to 300 AD), the Byzantine period, the medieval and Ottoman era, as well as a 25 to 30 meter wooden boat with metal components believed to date from World War II.
As explained by the Greek Ministry of Culture in a statement, these findings have been produced “in recent years using evidence, sources, testimonies and archaeological and historical references about the island of Kasos that appear in Homer’s Iliad.”
The team of archaeologists first located the vessels before photographing them extensively and combing the area using sonar. They also recovered artifacts and took samples of the remains of ships, which has offered information about the history of the area.
The work was completed at the end of October 2023 after taking more than 20,000 underwater photographs that were used to study and synthesize digital images of the wrecks, stranded at depths ranging from 20 meters below sea level to 47 meters.
Greek specialists discovered that the ships contained goods from Europe, Africa and Asia, including an amphora from the Iberian Peninsula with a seal on the handle that has been dated to around 150-170 AD, and jars of terra sigillata (ceramics from bright red color) African that dated back to Roman times.
The exhaustive study also brought to light a stone anchor from the archaic period or drinking vessels. In addition, mapping of the reef between the islands of Kasos and Karpathos and the Karpatholimnion area was carried out for the first time using side-scan sonar.
The investigation was followed by a film team that made the film Diving into the History of the Aegean, a documentary available in English and Greek that has been selected to participate in the main archaeological film festivals such as the Archeofilm of Florence or the Archeology Channel. of the United States.
The National Research Foundation plans to expand its work to the Karpathos marine area, which forms a single geographical entity with Kasos, starting next June.
