In Poseidon’s Realm

Zea Harbour Project 2010 – Week 10: In Poseidon’s Realm.

Fig. 1 Dr. Rune Frederiksen visiting the site of the newly discovered shipsheds in the northern side of Mikrolimano.

This week in Mikrolimano (ancient Mounichia) started out as usual with both the survey team and the excavating team getting a lot of good work done even though the team was short a few members in the name of Democracy, as municipal elections caused our team members from Corfu and Ioannina to return to their local provincial ballot places. But already in the afternoon we started to receive notice that we were intruding into Poseidon’s Realm as the swells started to pick up.

Tuesday morning Poseidon was rattling his trident rather badly and caused the Seas to send seawater and even pebbles over the breakwater down on both the team and the diving container (Fig. 2). At the end of the morning dives the swells moved the divers around on the seabed, and it was decided that the wrath of Poseidon was too severe to continue work in a safe manner, so we aborted the afternoon dives. As the meteorologists predicted the same treatment from Poseidon the next day, we decided to take Wednesday off, and work on a calm weekend day instead.

This kind of weather is an important reminder that major parts of the ancient Mounichia harbour were useless until some form of breakwater was constructed. The fortified moles that formed the fortified harbour mouth in the 5th century BC would have provided very good protection from the sea (Fig. 3).

Thursday was an important day, as Poseidon gave us calm sea and an amazing two meters of visibility under water. But even more importantly – Sanne had her first real working dive. So all together a perfect day – a new diver baptized in the murky waters of the Piraeus and lots of good surveying and excavation work carried out. This week excavations continued in the three test trenches opened in the newly discovered shipsheds in the northern part of the harbour, and in all three trenches we are finding solid stratigraphy, that will in all probability give us a preliminary idea of the date of these buildings.

As Friday came Poseidon still showed us his kind side, but his brother, the Supreme God: Zeus decided to shake his Thunderbolt over Mikrolimano’s picturesque Harbour front, he even blessed us with heavy rain showers, rinsing the project car from all the salty sea spray it had received on Tuesday. But unfortunately it also meant an early end to the diving as Zeus’ lightning bolts were hitting all around us, thus endangering the divers safety and good health.

Dr. Rune Frederiksen the new director of the Danish Institute at Athens spent the whole Friday with the project. Dr. Frederiksen visited our main sites in Mounichia Harbour and saw to the diving operations at first hand (Fig. 1).

Authors: Sanne Hoffmann, Bjørn Lovén and Casper Toftgaard