Navis Lapidaria
The military - of whatever large country you care to mention - are fond of claiming that their equipment and research represent the height of modern scientific development, which then spills over into the civilian world and brings innumerable benefits. America's space programme, for example, which was military in its initial intention, has been justified because of the innumerable benefits we have all received from the invention of Teflon.
I have my doubts as to whether a non-stick frying pan justifies the vast expenditure required to put a man on the moon - a better argument, in my opinion, could be made on the basis of Google Earth (The recent revision of the lessons offered elsewhere on this website makes extensive use of Google Earth.) The picture is even less clear when we consider the ancient world: quite what civil benefits resulted from the development of the mangonel or the ballista I am not sure, and the "corvus" of the Roman navy is even less translatable into the civilian world.
Nowhere is this more clearly seen than in the largest and most sophisticated ships of the Roman world, the navis lapidaria - the stone carriers.
In 1994 the Institute of Nautical Archaeology in Texas discovered one of these stone carriers at Kizilburun, Turkey. The ship sank in 155' of water, which is close to the limits for feasible excavation, and since then the Institute has been working on the wreck. The initial discovery was that the ship had been carrying eight large marble column drums, each weighing seven tons.
56 tons is a pretty substantial cargo for an ancient ship, but this massive vessel had a good deal more packed around the drums. There were half-finished grave stones, marble washbasins with pedestals, and a number of marble blocks, presumably either for building or for a sculptor's workshop. In addition there was a top cargo of amphorae whose contents have not yet been identified.
The excavation of this ship is providing all sorts of information about the trade routes it followed - pottery fragments found in the wreck come from eastern Greece, the Adriatic and Egypt - but also the way in which the ship was constructed. In 2006 four of the drums were lifted and moved away from the wreck to expose the timbers beneath which have been preserved by the fact that the stone pressed them into the mud and thus kept them from oxygen and burrowing worms. The shipwright skills that could enable a wooden boat to withstand the hammering of the waves while filled with more than 60 tons of stone blocks must have been impressive.
Personally I would be just as interested in finding out about the dockside equipment used to load and unload such a cargo. We are happy to consider teams of slaves dragging seven-ton stones up earthen ramps when it comes to pyramids, but slaves and earthen ramps simply will not do for loading a ship! There had to have been a movable crane that could lift such a weight from the dock, then turn and lower it gently into the hold of the ship.
© Kendall K. Down 2009
