Boat from the Sea of ​​Galilee

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Exhibition of the restored boat in the Yigal Allon Museum with a reconstruction picture on the wall.

The Sea of ​​Galilee Boat is a marine archaeological find near the ancient port of Magdala . After the restoration has been completed, it is exhibited in the Yigal Allon Museum in Kibbutz Ginnossar not far from the site . Since the date of the find roughly coincides with the presumed lifetime of Jesus of Nazareth , the find is often referred to as the Jesus boat .

description

Drawing of the timbers of the boat hull.

The Sea of ​​Galilee Boat is a 1st century boat that could be rowed and sailed. With a size of 8.2 × 2.3 meters, it offered space for five to ten people.

The boat building technique used here is the kraweele shell construction typical of the ancient Mediterranean region . First the keel and planks were connected with tenons and nails, then the frames were inserted into the hull and attached to the planks with nails. The planking was mostly made of Lebanon cedar , the frames mostly made of oak ; Moreover, as well as wood from are Aleppo pine , carob , Jerusalem thorn , hawthorn , Judas tree , laurel , sycamore , fig tree , pasture and pistachio installed. Many of the materials are recycled .

Shortly after the sinking, silt from a flowing river covered the wreck. The woods that protruded from the silt were not preserved; only the nails of this part of the boat remained. In the boat lay an early Roman ceramic saucepan and an oil lamp .

Discovery and recovery

In 1986 the Sea of ​​Galilee had a particularly low water level after several dry years. Members of Kibbutz Ginnossar discovered some rusty nails and pieces of wood on the bank. After it became known that this was an ancient boat wreck, which the media dubbed the “Jesus boat”, the recovery attracted strong public interest.

Representation of the stabilization of the boat hull for transport with polyurethane foam.

The recovery was difficult because the wood had a spongy consistency and was not allowed to dry out. After removing the mud, the hull was stabilized with fiberglass ribs and the boat was filled with polyurethane foam so that it was transportable. A layer of polyethylene ensured that the foam could be removed from the wood again.

Stabilized in this way, the boat reached the port of the kibbutz, where a conservation barrack had meanwhile been built. Here the wood was stabilized in a lengthy process to such an extent that it could be presented in a museum. In addition, the wreck lay in a water basin for nine years; the water in the wood was slowly exchanged for a mixture of polyethylene glycol and synthetic wax.

The controlled drying took another year. Then the supporting fiberglass ribs could be exchanged for a construction made of metal struts (photo). The museum presentation projects the “shadow of the boat” onto a wall as a reconstruction of the earlier appearance and provides information about the complex process of salvage and restoration.

Dating

Individual finds: oil lamp, saucepan, nails.

Three different methods were used to date the boat find. The age of the oil lamp and the cooking pot was based on the typical regional ceramic shapes. They were made in the early Roman period from 50 BC. Dated to AD 70. In the case of wood, the radiocarbon method was used to determine the year of fall, which was around 40 BC. Chr. ± 80 years. The construction technique confirmed that it was a boat from ancient (or Byzantine) times.

The way older parts were reused in boat building meant that the professionals consistently dated the boat to the end of the possible period.

interpretation

The importance of this boat lies not in speculating whether Jesus or one of his disciples could have ridden it, but in the information that can be obtained about everyday life at the Sea of ​​Galilee in the 1st century AD: It is artisanal Very well made, but consists partly of inferior, i.e. cheap wood and reused nails and parts from other boats. Those who had to build their boats from these materials apparently lived in poor conditions.

Here Magdala was an ancient center of the fish processing, where the Würztunke garum was produced for export. Fishing on the lake could therefore have been quite profitable, "but the numerous levies (fishing licenses, taxes, customs duties) that had to be paid to the emperor and his clientele did not allow the fishermen to get rich."

The fishing families, some of them small cooperatives, not only had to pay for their own equipment, but also had to pay expensive fishing licenses. Some of them were driven in by a kind of water police. The fishermen could not defend themselves against low purchase prices and bore the risk of poor catch results alone. On the other hand, it was the local client ruler who skimmed off the profits from both fishing licenses and business taxes (which were incurred during fish processing), which was done indirectly via customs tenants who were dependent on him.

Contemporary boat descriptions

Josephus over boats on the Sea of ​​Galilee

The Jewish War represents a historical turning point . After the Roman capture of the city of Tarichaia (Greek name of Magdala ) in AD 67, according to the Roman-Jewish historian Josephus , who was an eyewitness, residents and fighters came up with the available boats fled the lake. The Roman commander Vespasian then had numerous rafts built on which his soldiers set out in pursuit. The Jewish boats had nowhere to land as the Romans occupied the entire bank. They were also no match for the legionnaires on their rafts: “The small, lightly built pirate-style boats turned out to be far too weak.” According to Josephus, no one escaped the following slaughter by swimming .

Ship mosaic from Magdala

The mosaic from Migdal Nunia probably shows a fishing boat from the Sea of ​​Galilee.

In a city villa in Magdala (Migdal Nunia) , archaeologists uncovered a mosaic floor from the 1st century AD. It contains a representation of the ship from which important information on sails, oars and rigging could be taken for the reconstruction . The mosaic represents (according to Avner Raban) a so-called Myoparo ship, which was adapted to shallow water and frequently changing winds for use on the Sea of ​​Galilee. This type of ship can also be seen on a coin from Tiberias from the time of Emperor Caracalla .

Replicas

Replica of the Schleswig Bible Center.

A replica of the boat was made at the museum shipyard in Flensburg , which was launched in 2010 under the name " Ichthys " and is used by the Schleswig Bible Center for museum education tasks. It is the only replica that is functional as a boat.

Another replica of the boat from the Sea of ​​Galilee occupies a central position in the New Testament exhibition of the Biblical House Museum on Frankfurt's Museumsufer. Small ancient finds from the Sea of ​​Galilee are grouped around this walk-in exhibit, which the museum is presenting on permanent loan from the Israeli Antiquities Administration .

literature

  • Orna Cohen: ... a ship will come ... The recovery and restoration of a 2000 year old boat on Lake Gennesaret . In: Jürgen Zangenberg et al. (Ed.): Life on Lake Gennesaret. Cultural and historical discoveries in a biblical region. Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 2003, ISBN 3-8053-2914-8 , pp. 147–152.
  • Peter Hirschberg: Israel and the Palestinian Territories. EVA, Leipzig 2011, ISBN 978-3-374-02841-2 , pp. 78-79.
  • Annette Merz : The "Sea of ​​Galilee" and the Jesus movement . In: World and Environment of the Bible . No. 24, 2002, pp. 32-39.
  • Avner Raban: The boat from Migdal Nunia and the anchorages of the Sea of ​​Galilee from the time of Jesus ( online )
  • Shelley Wachsmann: The Sea of ​​Galilee Boat: An Extraordinary 2000 Year Old Discovery , New York 1995 (partly online )
  • Shelley Wachsmann (Ed.): The Excavations of an Ancient Boat in the Sea of ​​Galilee (Lake Kinneret). In: 'Atiqot English Series 19, Jerusalem 1990.
  • Shelley Wachsmann: Ancient Seafaring on the Sea of ​​Galilee . In: INA Newsletter 3/1991, pp. 4–9.12 ( online )

Web links

Commons : Boat from the Sea of ​​Galilee  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Orna Cohen: A ship will come . S. 149 .
  2. ↑ Orna Cohen: A ship will come . S. 147 .
  3. ↑ Orna Cohen: A ship will come . S. 148 .
  4. ↑ Orna Cohen: A ship will come . S. 150 .
  5. ↑ Orna Cohen: A ship will come . S. 151 .
  6. ↑ a b Annette Merz: The Sea of ​​Galilee . S. 36 .
  7. ^ A b Peter Hirschberg: Israel . S. 79 .
  8. ↑ a b Annette Merz: The Sea of ​​Galilee . S. 35 .
  9. ↑ Flavius ​​Josephus: Bellum Judaicum . tape 3 , no. 523 : "τά τε γὰρ σκάφη μικρὰ ὄντα καὶ λῃστρικὰ πρὸς τὰς σχεδίας ἦν ἀσθενῆ"
  10. ↑ Ιουδαϊκός Πόλεμος. Retrieved January 22, 2018 .