Bodrum Castle - Museum of Underwater Archaeology

Museum of Underwater Archaeology

In 1962 the Turkish Government decided to turn the castle into a museum for the underwater discoveries of ancient shipwrecks in the Aegean Sea. This has become the Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology, with a collection of amphoras, ancient glass, bronze, clay, iron items. It is the biggest of its kind devoted to underwater archaeology. Most of its collection dates from underwater excavations after 1960. These excavations were performed on several shipwrecks :

  • Finike-Gelidonya shipwreck (12th c. BC) : 1958 - 1959 ; first underwater excavation in Turkey,
  • Bodrum-Yassiada shipwreck (Byzantine, 7 th c. AD) : 1961 - 1964 ; Roman merchant vessel with 900 amphoras.
  • Bodrum -Yassiada shipwreck (Late Roman, 4th c. AD)
  • Bodrum-Yassiada shipwreck (Ottoman, 16th c. AD) (dated by a sixteenth-century 4-real silver coin from Seville (Philip II) )
  • Ṣeytan Deresi shipwreck (16th c. BC)
  • Marmaris-Serçe harbour shipwreck (glass, 11th c. AD) : 1977; collection of Islamic glassware
  • Marmaris-Serçe harbour shipwreck (Hellenistic, 3rd BC)
  • Kaṣ-Uluburun shipwreck (14th c. BC) : 1982 - 1995; 10 tons of Cypriot copper ingots; one ton of pure tin ingots; 150 glass ingots; manufactured goods; Mycenaean pottery; Egyptian seals (with a seal of queen Nefertiti) and jewelry
  • Tektaṣ glasswreck (5th c. BC) : (1996–2001)

The former chapel houses an exhibition of vases and amphoras form the Mycenaean age (14-12th c. BC) and findings from the Bronze Age (around 2500 BC). The commercial amphoras give a historical overview of the development of amphoras and their varied uses.

The Italian Tower houses in the Coin and Jewelry Hall a collection spanning many centuries.

Another exhibition room is devoted exclusively to the tomb of a Carian princess, who died between 360 and 325 BC.

The collection of ancient glass objects is one of the four biggest ancient glass collections in the world.

Two ancient shipwrecks have been reconstructed : the Fatımi ship, sunk in 1077 AD, and the large Uluburun Shipwreck from the 14th century BC.

The garden inside the castle is a collection of almost every plant and tree of the Mediterranean region, including the myrtle, and the plane tree.

  • Model of the Yassiada vessel (Byzantine, 7th c.)

  • Egyptian jewelry (Uluburun shipwreck)

  • Collection of amphoras from different parts of the Mediterranean

Read more about this topic:  Bodrum Castle

Famous quotes containing the words museum of and/or museum:

    “A Museum of fetishes would give special attention to the history of underwear.”
    —Mason Cooley (b. 1927)

    “When I go into a museum and see the mummies wrapped in their linen bandages, I see that the lives of men began to need reform as long ago as when they walked the earth. I come out into the streets, and meet men who declare that the time is near at hand for the redemption of the race. But as men lived in Thebes, so do they live in Dunstable today.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)