Egypt's first shipwreck excavation in the Red Sea continued to provide unique and wide-ranging information about international trading relationships in the time just before the Industrial Revolution. The immense ship-more than 900 tons burden-remains the most enigmatic and fascinating artifact on site, and its study, along with that of the large collection of Chinese export porcelain for the Middle Eastern market (the first ever scientifically excavated), organic cargo from coffee and incense to coconuts and spices, and the handful of crewmen's possessions, will contribute a great deal to understanding seafaring in the western Indian Ocean of the late 17th and 18th centuries. 

The 1998 excavation of the 18th-century Sadana Island Shipwreck off Egypt's Red Sea coast provided new and important information about the ship's construction, its cargo, and the site's history. An international team diving between 25 June and 14 August documented ship structure to provide a more comprehensive understanding of its construction, addressed questions related to both objects and their stowage on the ship and the ship's origin, and removed portable, attractive artifacts in an attempt to discourage looting. 

About 800 dives made between depths of 20 and 40 m allowed us to establish three transverse trenches 8-10 m long and 2 m wide as well as a 13-m-long fore-and-aft trench along the deepest, best preserved part of the site. The ship's minimum beam is 18 m at midships, and its 
overall length is 49.8 m. 

As in previous years, excavators worked carefully to recover organic remains and artifacts. We continued to find porcelain objects, both complete and broken, including unique types such as a small cup from trench 5.4 and a broken plate from near the anchors. The largest number of objects came from trench 1, and most are Type 4 porcelain cups. Ten clay pipe bowls, and one pair, add to our collection of personal objects from the galley area just aft of midships. 

More prestigious items discovered in the midships bilge area include an ivory handle or pommel with some of its original three-color inlay remaining and a small fleck of gold foil. We also excavated a fabulous 33-cm-long, bi-lobed coconut from the disturbed area just aft of the anchors. The bi-lobed coconut grows only in the Seychelles Archipelago, and is a rarity even today. These are the world's largest seeds and weigh more than 20 kilos when ripe, a process which requires ten years. Its presence on the ship is probably due to its potential value as a curiosity. Europeans in the late 18th century found ordinary coconuts worthy of display in cabinets of curiosities; the bi-lobed coconut was four times the size and of an extraordinary shape. 

In the stern quarter, a gimbaled copper ring and a unique porcelain cup, a handful of porcelain sherds, a new type of resin (purple, and shipped in cakes), and more than 1500 qulal (earthenware jugs) were excavated. The qulal remain on the bottom, but a representative sample of lids from the same area and two of the larger pitchers (Arabic abri') add to our ceramic collection. 

Interestingly,  but not surprisingly, qulal were packed in ways that reflect their basic dimensions which previous seasons how to be roughly the same in terms of height and diameter with few clear instances of types being grouped together. The exception to this is perhaps found in those qulal packed between stringers in the bottom of the hull. Throughout much of the ship's length, including in the bow, stevedores nestled qulal along the centerline. 

As in previous seasons, all objects were taken to the INA-Egypt/Supreme Council of Antiquities Alexandria Conservation Laboratory for Submerged Antiquities in Alexandria, Egypt, for further treatment and storage. 
                                                                                                                        by Cheryl Ward 
  

I arrived back in Egypt in late February of this year ready to start work in Hierakonpolis in early March,  thanks to funding for the project from Dr. Clive Cussler. On arrival,  I discovered  that the project’s  magnetometer technician, Dr. Tomasz Herbich, Director of the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology in Cairo, had contracted appendicitis at Dendara earlier. Thankfully, he was alive, but horizontal. We waited for two weeks while he regained his strength and then carried out the survey. We eventually investigated just over three hectares 
(30,000 square meters) of desert, 50 square centimeters at a time. 

We searched in front of the fort not finding anything remotely resembling a boat shape,  then turned our sights on the flat bed of the wadi next to the Fort. In the hundred years that archaeologists have excavated at Hierakonpolis, no one ever looked in the wadi assuming that whatever was there had been washed away long ago. 

On the first day in the wadi, we came across the tail end of a what belonged to a large, keyhole-shaped anomaly, measuring c. 30 x 10 meters, at the edge of a parallelogram-shaped enclosure (c. 60 x 45 meters) containing several roughly lozenge-shaped anomalies. Boats? 

We’ll find out next January when Dr. Friedman investigates the anomalies thanks to continued funding from Dr. Cussler. INA-Egypt has pledged to support Dr. Friedman in the conservation, study and publication of any boats discovered as part of the Hierakonpolis Expedition. 

INA-Egypt's 1998 NW survey was the second shipwreck survey ever conducted in the Egyptian Mediterranean and like the 1996 survey we discovered shipwreck remains dating from the 4th century BC to the 7th century AD. We conclude from this that the amount of seafaring to and from Egypt soared during the Greek, Roman and Byzantine periods. and tapered off in the Arab period when merchants shifted primarily to land transport. Over the centuries, waves scattered the shipwreck remains we found in the shallow water behind the Umm-al Rakham reef. We must go deeper. 

Since the seabed in these waters is terra incognita, we can only learn this by going, literally, `where no one has gone before.' With  the experience gained in 1996 and `98,  we have developed a survey strategy based on towed underwater sleds that we developed and underwater scooters donated  by Scubapro. We plan to return to the Marsa Matrouh area next summer and survey the area between 20 and 30 meters.  In the future, we plan to combine this information with a series of side-scan sonar surveys out to 50 meters deep. 

The Amoco Foundation, The John and Donnie Brock Foundation, Danielle Feeney, Mark Easton and The American Research Center in Egypt, Orascom, Harry Kahn, Richard and Mary Rosenberg, George Lodge, Chip and Fran Vincent, The Arab Contractors, Scubapro, Uwatec/Dynatron, The National Geographic Society, Stephen Lowder, Mr. And Mrs. John Stern, DHL, Bill and Cary Cavness, Patricia Cericola, Lyman Labry, Pamela de Maigert, Peter Revay, and John and Mary Villaume.