You catch yourself holding your breath, as if under water, in front of the awe-inspiring objects that archaeologists have recovered from the Greek seabed. Ancient vases, jars from the Classical period, bronze figurines, 17th century Ottoman clay pipes and Byzantine coins. And most surprising of all, the contents of an amphora from Sinope on the Black Sea coast, found in a wreck off Fourni: the shells of 2,000-year-old crayfish, most likely a meal for the crew, stored away in an ancient form of Tupperware.

The largest museum

Visiting the Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities (EUA) on Dionysiou Areopagitou Street in the shadow of the Acropolis makes me feel grateful for being a journalist. I don’t know where to look first as my fingers itch to touch these relics of the past that lay at the bottom of the sea for centuries and only recently saw light again.

Welcoming me is the head of the EUA, Ageliki Simosi, to guide me through “the most special archaeological service, as it has to do with the largest museum in the country: the Greek seabed.”

It’s not just the size of the territory it covers, but the timeframes it encompasses; the findings may belong to a period from the Stone Age right up to the 20th century.

“When we find a shipwreck, we retrieve some sample objects so that we can attempt a rough dating. After that, we try to carry out a survey of the hull and subsequently we evaluate the conditions and whether carrying out an excavation makes sense.” notes Simosi, who has been working there since 1976, the year the EUA was founded.

As Simosi explains, there are hundreds of ancient shipwrecks in Greek waters, but the service focuses its efforts on the ones considered most important because of their cargo. “One of our tasks is to scan the seabed with new technology to find more than one site. In 2015, our archaeologist George Koutsouflakis identified 22 shipwrecks in a small area off Fourni.”

First Aid

When an object is retrieved from the water, archaeological “first aid” is administered. It is immediately placed in seawater and as soon as it arrives at the EUA it is held in water tanks to begin the descaling process which can last anything from a few months up to several years. If these protocols are not followed, there is an immediate risk of the artifact deteriorating due to the sudden and extreme change in the conditions under which it was preserved for hundreds of years.

“We periodically remove each object to gradually cleanse the coatings that have built up on its surface.” says Simosi. Once completed, this cycle is followed by the preservation of wood, metal, clay and marble. With patience and tenderness the experts sit bent over each object, trying to clean and restore it to its original form.

Emotion

“On many occasions we feel immense emotion that we have the privilege to touch these objects and somehow restore them to life,” say Angelos Tsompanidis and Spiridoula Papanikou, two of the diligent conservators working at the EUA. “What is etched in our memory is the time we did restorative work on a child’s skull found in a submerged ancient settlement in Metohi in the Pagasetic Gulf. It dates from the Middle Bronze Age, around 1700 BC. The characteristic of this settlement is that they buried their children within the family home.”

The conservators care for groups of objects from many locations: Modi, Syrna near Astypalaia, Antikythera and Fourni.

The mystery ruler

The most striking find is enclosed in a display case on the ground floor of the EUA. These are the parts of a large statue from the Late Hellenistic period, which come with a particularly interesting history. In 2006, a fisherman “caught” the foot of a bronze statue in his nets in the sea between Kalymnos and Kos.

Shortly after, another fisherman, a relative of the first, found the other leg in the same area. In 2009 he spotted part of the chest. A striking head found in these same waters could also belong to this man on horseback. Mysteriously, archaeological investigations conducted on the same spot as indicated by the fisherman turned up nothing.

Over the years, however, the other pieces of the puzzle gradually fell into place, revealing a horseman wearing a hat. One hand holds the reins while the other hails an invisible crowd.

The horse is missing from the collection. All parts have been preserved, but some are not in the EUA.

From Kos to Japan

“The chest stayed in the water tank for a long time, and it fits the legs like a glove,” explains Simosi. “For the head, we cannot be sure if it’s part of the same statue, as it’s not currently in Greece. We have lent it to important exhibitions overseas for the time being. It first went to Florence, then America and is now about to appear in a large exhibition of ancient Greek art to be held in Japan. From our experience, however, we believe that it is indeed part of this very beautiful statue,” she says.

To help us take photographs, the conservators perform a small presentation. They carefully open the display case and bring out a wooden box stuffed with foam, inside which the legs have been placed.

Then, Tsompanidis places the feet in the right position to give us a sense of the statue’s overall composition. The same procedure will be followed for the head when it returns from abroad. “As you can see, every day is special for each of us, full of surprises,” say the conservation staff who see us to the door.

Originally published in Kathimerini newspaper