Speakers
Mr Franck Goddio
President, European Institute for Underwater Archaeology (IEASM)
Biography:
Franck Goddio is the Founder and President of the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology (IEASM) of the Far Eastern Foundation for Nautical Archaeology (FEFNA), Manila, the Philippines; and Co-Founder of and Senior Visiting Lecturer at the Oxford Centre for Maritime Archaeology (OCMA) at Oxford University (UK). Under Franck Goddio’s direction, the IEASM survey and excavation of the Eastern Harbor of Alexandria, Egypt, resulted in the publication of the first map of Portus Magnus in 1996. Goddio’s team also undertook in Abu Qir Bay, east of Alexandria, an extensive geophysical survey and mapping of the submerged area of the ancient Canopic region in Abu Qir Bay, 30 km north–east of Alexandria. The results revealed the topography of the area, the bed of the ancient western branch of the Nile, and led to the discovery of the city of Thonis–Heracleion in 2000 with its port and temples, and the city of Canopus in 1997. Selections of the artifacts discovered during excavation have been part of major traveling exhibitions, such as “Osiris, Mystères Engloutis d’Égypte” (2015/2016), “Sunken Cities, Egypt’s Lost Worlds” (2016), and “Egypt’s Sunken Treasures” in different countries. Franck Goddio has excavated fifteen wrecks in the Philippines in collaboration with the National Museum of the Philippines. He has several publications, such as The Sacred Topography of Thonis–Heracleion (2015), Geophysical Survey in the Submerged Canopic Region (2015), and The Development and Operation of the Portus Magnus in Alexandria: An Overview (2010).
Abstract:
Thonis–Heracleion and Alexandria, Emporia of Egypt
Franck Goddio
Thonis–Heracleion: Customs Station and Emporion
The discovery of Thonis–Heracleion at the mouth of a Nile branch in the Mediterranean, provides information that opens new avenues for research: the role of the site amongst the indigenous coastal communities, the patterns of occupation and management of coastal fringes, and its relation to the history of trade, etc.
Such an overview in which the maritime area, the Nile River basin and land areas are understood as places of transit, and travel permits the full consideration of the site in its technological and economic dimensions. It is at the heart of the interrogation of the role of Thonis–Heracleion as customs station and in the organization and regulation of the exchanges, and the complex politics which led Egypt to skirmish with the other Mediterranean countries.
The Portus Magnus of Alexandria
In Alexandria, campaigns of topography, expeditions and archaeological excavations made it possible to develop, for the first time, a complete panorama of the famous Portus Magnus based on observations made in situ. The topography obtained is very different from what had been previously imagined from textual interpretation. While the geophysical surveys of the harbor of Alexandria and the underwater excavations that followed, did not reveal the splendor of the Palace of Alexandria, they allowed a detailed map of the Eastern Port and its surroundings to be made. Research has established with some precision the contour and sometimes even the structure of facilities and buildings that once stood near the Palace: the Royal ports, the Timonium, the Island of Antirhodos, seaport piers, etc. They have revolutionized our topographic knowledge of the port facilities serving the Basileia, this ensemble of coastal palaces on the waterfront which housed, side by side, government buildings and cultural institutions. The results have radically changed our topographic knowledge of the ports and palaces of Alexandria. The study of the dock basins has been pursued to determine their depth and the type of sedimentation, to locate wrecks, and to draw up the plan of the quays. Identifying and studying the many architecture features covering the Palace area was accompanied by surveys to clarify the chronology of the building of the facilities, their abandonment and destruction. The organization of the ports does not seem as we visualized, it is technically more consistent. The Eastern Port of Alexandria was a wide bay, whose periphery was occupied by a succession of docks built from the Ptolemaic era and later structurally optimized by the Romans (port infrastructure sank to the sea floor or had built on it, dams, jetties, closed drainage, etc.).