Uluburun Shipwreck

According to archaeologist Mehmed Cakir, the Uluburun shipwreck was one of the oldest ships ever found, dating back to 1310 B.C. When the ship was found, it was nearly 3,300 years of age. They knew this because of the dating of a branch, which was a piece of fresh cut firewood aboard the boat. It took ten years to complete the excavation, an entire decade! Mehmed Cakir found the boat in 1982 and the excavation happened two years later. It was a hard job, and required eleven consecutive campaigns of three to four months.
But all that work paid off, as the archaeologists found many spectacular treasures. They found over 18,000 artifacts that may have been ordered by royalty, including a golden seal of the Egyptian
Queen Nefertiti. One of the many artifacts was the "Metal Biscuit
This event took place ten kilometers from the coast and fifty meters below current sea level. Also the way that the artifacts were scattered it seemed that the ship was about

fifteen to sixteen meters long. Due to the steep and rocky slope the divers were only able to do two twenty minute dives every day. The total number of dives was 22,413.
Mehmed Cakir found the boat by accident. He was out looking for sponges –as he was a sponge diver - and then he saw a boat and some vases. How many artifacts could he see before doing any excavation? There were many more artifacts buried deep down in the sand. Then after two years of lots of research, he and some other people stared the excavation. The excavating was a very long haul and that's when he found out there were around 18,000 artifacts. In the end the crew found about twenty tons of artifacts.
Why did Mehmed Cakir do all of this hard work? Because he knew there were some artifacts. And he wanted to find more – he was curious! He also wanted to learn more about what happened and what caused the ship sink. He wanted to find when this happened and what was all on the boat. And that is exactly what he