The shipwreck of Mahdia was found by Greek sponge fishermen off the coast of Tunisia in June 1907.[1] The shipwreck near the modern town of Mahdia is dated to between 80 and 60 BC.[2][3]
In a series of underwater campaigns, numerous items were recovered and placed on display at the Musée National du Bardo, Tunis. The greater part of the sculptures were salvaged between 1907 and 1913 by French archaeologist Alfred Merlin, at that time Director of Antiquities in the Protectorate of Tunisia.[4][5] Further survey work on the site was done by a team led by Mensun Bound, but unfortunately no further excavations have been possible.
- ^ Reported by Alfred Merlin, in Bulletin de la société nationale des antiquaires de France 1908:128-131 (noted by William N. Bates, "Archaeological News", American Journal of Archaeology 13.1 (January - March 1909), p 102f; a more complete catalogue is Werner Fuchs, Der Schiffsfund von Mahdia (Tübingen:Wasmuth) 1963; Fuchs' attribution of the assemblage to the workshop of Boëthius was resisted, e.g., by Jean Charbonneaux, extensively reviewing Fuchs 1963 in Gnomon 37.5 (September 1965:523-526).
- ^ Date based on the associated ceramics, late second century — 86 BCE (Thompson group E (Fuchs 1963).
- ^ "Recent research has tended to lower the date of the Mahdia ship's final trip (perhaps as far down as 60)", observes Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway (Ridgway, Hellenistic Sculpture: The styles of ca. 100-31 B.C p. 2002, p. 69).
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
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