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So what we're going to do this morning is just to have a conversation about the foundation of the Oxford Centre for Maritime Archaeology.

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So I'm its current director, I'm Damian Robinson,

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and this is my colleague Franck Goddio from the European Institute of Underwater Archaeology, for which you're the president of.

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So, Franck, could you tell us a bit about the collaboration?

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How did it begin? It's now 20 years, which is a long time for this sort of thing.

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You're right. 20 years already. The idea was that we were performing underwater excavation, survey, topographical work.

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And what is important

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is the study of the material and scientific publication and also teaching and training new archaeologists,

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You know, to have a flow of newcomers, you know, in that field.

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And we thought that, ideally, we could

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have a cooperation with Oxford University and the School of Archaeology in order to perform all those tasks.

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And so how did that happen then? Did you just get in touch with the university or...

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Yes, with a friend of mine,

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she's now working in Germany, she had studied in Oxford University.

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And she told me, ideally, Oxford could, I would say, fill all the gaps

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we had and we got in touch with the Oxford University and it all started like that.

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So I know that you talked to my colleagues, Sir Barry Cunliffe, and Bert Smith and Andrew Wilson about this,

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and then the collaboration came together, I think quite quickly after that, with the help of the Hilti Foundation.

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Yes, with Barry, Bert, Andrew

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collaboration really started at once.

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As a matter of fact, we had a short discussion, 1 or 2 days, and then we defined the line of what could be a perfect cooperation and we,

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managed to finalise all paperwork within a month and we established the Oxford Centre for Maritime Archaeology.

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And now it's over 20 years later since those initial meetings.

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So your aim for this collaboration then,

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was to help to train the next generation of maritime archaeologists or at least introduce people to the subject,

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and then also to think about publications, conferences, fieldwork, those sorts of things.

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How do you think that has gone?

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I have to say that it went better that even I thought at the beginning,

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because my idea was also to have a kind of a reservoir of expertise in order to study all artefact, and all data that we were gathering on site.

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But I thought most probably we will not fill all the gaps.

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But it so happened that, yes! Everything, from weaponry from the 4th century B.C. to Hellenistic architecture.

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There is everything there. You know, which is a kind of dream, and also the cooperation,

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teaching and training new student students and performing symposia, conferences, went very, very well.

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And it's very active. And I love that.

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I certainly think that's one of the great things that we've done is

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to kind of broaden out what the research is about and to bring in lots of Oxford scholars into it.

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So last night we were talking to one of our colleagues who studies the coins from your excavations,

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which is giving us really interesting new insights into the kind of the use of coinage in Egypt at that time.

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Yes. Each subject can be studied in depth.

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And, what is very important also is our scientific publications.

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And this the key thing in archaeology and on that field, we have performed quite well.

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I think during the past 20 years with monography, symposia, renderings.

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Yes, absolutely. I think we're up to our 10th monograph.

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And there's at least another ten in the works, which is a testament to the huge excavation that,

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we're part of. And a lot of art and scientific articles, here and there,

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in scientific magazines. Yes.

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And also, what is important is, bringing this to the grand public, through books,

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exhibitions, even movies, you know, and that's it's a very broad cooperation that we have developed together since then.

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I think. So, certainly as an academic, the opportunity to take part in these large excavations is one thing,

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but then being challenged to think about how we tell the story of that

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to a larger public audience, for me has been one of the highlights of this cooperation.

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Yeah. This point is very important because it attracts also new students and new

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Expertise, I would say, which will come towards you and feed the cooperation.

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Well, it's definitely one of the things, I've had students that have come up to me at the end of lectures that say,

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I chose to come here specifically because I went to an exhibition in the British Museum or when they were in America,

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and that inspired me to think about underwater archaeology.

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So I think that's an absolutely fantastic testament to how we reach out to people.

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Then, the thing is, the Hilti Foundation then provides funding for our students

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to work on bodies of material, which then feed into your publications,

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and the publications all come out of the School of Archaeology as well.

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So this excavation through post excavation to publication cycle, I think is really important.

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It's one of the great features of the collaboration that we've got.

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I think is a key issue because, of course, is bringing knowledge,

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as a result of the excavations to historians and to the grand public, but is also preparing the future

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for excavations on those sites or elsewhere in the world,

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thanks to new underwater archaeologists, young archaeologist coming into the field.

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I think that's one of the great things for us and for our students is that the

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scale of the excavations in Thonis-Heracleion and Canopus and Alexandria are so huge,

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and the number of artefacts that are coming from it also pristine and important because of the catastrophic destruction

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of some of the aspects of it, that we get a chance to look at material that we would never otherwise see.

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So things that are unique, things that are wonderful,

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So for us, it's a privilege and a challenge, which is what you go into academia for, I think.

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Yeah. It's a true challenge, I have to say, because we are talking about whole cities.

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You know, Thonis-Heracleion was a port of entry to Egypt was a Greek port,

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a large port, and had also very important sanctuaries.

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Military garrison in order to control the entrance to Egypt and all that are different aspects of ancient life, military, religious,

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daily life, Navigation. In the port basins we discovered more than a hundred ancient shipwrecks that each of them could be excavated,

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and studied. We have two centuries of work ahead of us and our cooperation.

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So 20 years is only just the beginning, then? Yes, it's just a start.

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Franck, when the collaboration between OCMA and the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology and the Hilti Foundation started 20 years ago now,

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you'd already found the lost city of Thonis-Heracleion, you'd already found Canopus and the royal quarters in Alexandria.

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One of the things that has amazed me is, how you keep the research going on, and how you continually come up with new questions.

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How would you do that? The more we work on those sites, the more we understand that we can go much deeper in the knowledge of the site.

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At the beginning, you are performing topographical surveys as you have to discover the site.

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Then after you have to draw the layout of those sites.

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The map, I would say, of those cities with their port basin, temples, main monuments, etcetera.

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Then after, you have to excavate, you know, in order to try to identify the main monuments, to identify shipwrecks and excavating it,

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of course, you go deeper into the knowledge of those sites.

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And to take an example, as for a temple, once you have discovered,

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you have drawn the layout of that temple, you will start excavation in order to identify it.

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And then when you have identified that sanctuary, you have to go even deeper

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and the excavation will reveal how those sanctuary were, I would say, living,

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what were the ceremonies performed in there, for example, in the temple of

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Amun-Gereb, we went very deep into the knowledge of the celebration of the Mysteries of Osiris,

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which was something very, very, very little known before.

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And if we can go in depth into that. Thus, the questions are raised year after year, a new problematics come to you.

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So that's really a testament to the long term foundation that the Hilti Foundation have enabled with continual support over this time.

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So, lots of continual funding enables you to approach the site in a way that is almost unique, I think,

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in archaeology with that long term view, let's start with the detailed topography, and then let's get into the more interesting questions.

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because I think where we are now is, is at a stage where we're saying, okay,

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we know perhaps where the main temples are, but now let's think about life in the city.

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And that's one of the... it's becoming more fascinating as time goes on.

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I think it's of a prime importance

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this cooperation with the Hilti Foundation because it enables you to draw

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historical issues to define long term work on some historical issues.

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And you are not to put forward a discovery by chance or something, you know, that

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you have to discover that, and then you have to go in-depth, how those temples were functioning,

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what about the people praying there?

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So you go very much into detail, and you even enter to the soul of the people.

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You know, how they were thinking, how they were praying, what were they believing.

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And certainly so if we think about, say, one of the temples that that you've worked on.

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So there's the temple of Khonsu-Thot, which was a very early foundation in Thonis-Heracleion, but only has a very short lifespan.

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Can you tell us a bit more about that?

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Yes, it's a very strange temple, Thonis-Heracleion was a gate of Egypt, so there was a garrison controlling the entrance to Egypt,

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but Military garrison was something, but not enough. For the people of that time

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it was very important to have the sanctuary of the god, which is watching the gate of Egypt and protecting Egypt from invasion.

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And this is why we knew most probably there would be somewhere a temple to Khonsu-Thot.

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And we found it, dating back from the 7th, end of 8th to 7th and ending its

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activity by the 6th century BC and most probably, that activity stopped because of change in the Nile direction.

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branch direction, and most probably, that sanctuary was no longer well orientated compared to the Nile flood.

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And it had to be rebuilt somewhere else.

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Yeah. So one of the things that amazes me about that temple is the very careful way that it was taken apart,

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piece by piece, presumably so that the temple could be recycled somewhere else in its rebuilding again.

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But how then the rising sea level forced the complete abandonment of that site.

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Yes. And the sealing, I would say, everything was sealed.

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You know, and which was good for us, you know,
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under 2 or 3 m. of sediment and the few things that they forgot to take away were very, very instructive.

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We could have, on a bronze plate, the name of the god, the identity of the temple and a few artefacts,

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few coffins of hawks or ibis, you know, which was, of course, confirming the identity of that temple.

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It was very interesting. And it's a kind of disappearance

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but we have another kind of ending

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activity of temple, in Thonis-Heracleion, by earthquake and tsunami and total destruction with landslides in a fraction of a second.

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You know, this was the case of the main temple of Thonis-Heracleion, the temple of Amun-Gereb.

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It's a kind of a dream for underwater archaeologists,

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that the temple more or less slid into a channel and filled the whole channel,

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which was flooding to the south of the temple, and we are discovering here

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the whole temple destroyed, of course, but it's a giant puzzle that you have to reconstruct.

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Absolutely. And that's one of the great things about such a long term project is that, you can have multiple year long campaigns on

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excavating and then reconstructing the destruction horizons from this point.

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So this period that you're talking about is the final phase, more or less, in Thonis-Heracleion,

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which is completely destroyed by earthquakes, by tsunamis.

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Do you feel that destruction horizon, that catastrophe is

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what archaeologists dream about finding, isn't it?

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It's a terrible event, but it has an enormous potential for us to understand the life of the city at that point.

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Of course, it was unfortunate for the people of that time.

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But like in Pompeii, you know, we have there an underwater Pompeii, you know, which has not been

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destroyed by volcano, but by Tsunamis,landslides and total submersion under the sea.

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The site of Thonis-Heracleion, you've probably looked at about 2 to 5% of it?

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There's so much more for hundreds more years.

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Yes, I think since now ten years, I say that we have not excavated more than 5% of the site of Thonis-Heracleion, but unfortunately

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every year we find out that there is even more than

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what we thought and I have to decrease that percentage every year from now.

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And so what really we're doing is laying the foundations for future archaeologists, both future archaeologists,

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through their education, but also future archaeologists to do their Fieldwork in these amazing sites in Egypt.

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You're right. We are, I think, paving the way for future archaeologists on those sites,

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and this is why when we started excavation on a particular site,

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we never fully excavated that site because, when you are performing an excavation,

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you are doing perturbation, of course, and you are doing it with the best knowledge and the best technique of your time, you know,

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but you have to understand, you have to know that within a year or century,

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maybe, the techniques will be much more sophisticated, much more elaborated.

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Thus, you have always to let to future archaeologists samples of

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what they could work on with the new techniques and future technology.

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Absolutely. I think it's very important.

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I compare archaeology, it's a bit like surgery, you know, before the X-ray and the technology we have today,

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surgeon had to open in order to see what was happening in that part of the body without prior knowledge.

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Now you have MRI, you have Doppler, you have scanner, you have X-ray, and you have pre knowledge of what you will find.

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And you will define exactly where you have to do the surgery.

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Exactly the same in underwater archaeology. The more

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you can have prior knowledge of the site without perturbing the site by the new technologies that we are developing,

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I think the better.

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And let a part of the site to future archaeologists in order that they could study with a new technique of their time.

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Oh, absolutely. Yes. And that's the way that you've looked at the shipwrecks.

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For example, over 100 shipwrecks have been discovered in Thonis-Heracleion.

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And yet you've only looked at six of them.

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So that's, that's leaving a legacy for the future.

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We have a body of knowledge that we're publishing now on some very well excavated finds.

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And then for the future, there's another 80, 90 wrecks.

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There's a huge potential for the future. And even on some shipwrecks, we are not fully excavating the shipwreck,

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and we are always leaving a small part for future studies and future technique to be applied there.

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Franck, if we can now think about

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technology, I think, is one of the great things that I've picked up from working alongside you is that as technology changes,

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you've been very quick to kind of take the next step and to use the latest technology as it comes out,

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and also to think ahead about where we can go with, with various things.

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So one of the publications that we're working on now is on J3, which is the small rowing boat

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from Alexandria, from the harbour there that we found.

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But how did you discover it? It was a little bit of a challenge.

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We have a huge quantity of sediment in Alexandria.

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And when we have performed magnetometric survey with our nuclear resonance magnetometer,

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everything was garbled with modern garbage everywhere.

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And the result of it was quite poor.

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Though we had very, extremely sophisticated nuclear resonance magnetometer.

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Thus, I thought let us use another instrument, and we went to sub bottom profiler there.

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Of course, after having performed the multi-beam bathymetry survey,

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which, okay, gives you everything on the surface, but nothing inside the sediments.

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And it so happened that the existing sub bottom profiler

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were of no use, I would say, or very little use there.

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Not enough accurate and not enough sensitive on that.

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And thus, we came up to cooperate with a company developing a new kind of sub bottom profiler,

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parametric sub bottom profiler, which gives you in 3-D what could be in the sediments.

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And we performed survey in the royal quarter of Portus Magnus of Alexandria.

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And there we gather billions of data, billions.

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And then comes the time where we have to study those data.

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And it was nearly impossible.

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So much data there was.

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Thus, I thought let us to try to use AI,

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you know, on this. And I defined an area where I knew perfectly what was in that area of a 100 by 100 metre,

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and I cut it into slices like that of 20 cm by 20 cm longitude latitude,

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and ten cm levels, you know, and I made the drawings of what I could see in the data.

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600 drawings latitude, 600 drawings longitude and 600 drawings in levels.

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And then I knew what was there because we had excavated there.

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We found a shipwreck, we found a pillar, etc. Thus, I tried to develop an algorithm which could see what I knew

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was in that area and with my drawings, you know.

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And, it's so happens that I reached a 67% of accuracy.

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The algorithm was saying, okay, at 67%

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I can see what you are telling me is there.

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And I was not satisfied. Thus, I went on and they algorithm now said 100%,

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but it did not work because it was for the algorithm to see exactly that and it could not work.

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So I stayed at 67%. And then I fed the algorithm with all the data we have.

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And you see here I can see a shipwreck and here I can see a shipwreck.

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And I looked at the tiniest one. Thinking yes,

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this one most probably is true. This one? Yes.

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I think it's very true, and there. But this very small one in the middle

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Is it true or not? And I decided

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an excavation on that very little spot, 4 or 5 m. long, under 1.8 m of sediment, something strange, and it so happened that

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yes, the algorithm was right. It was a small shipwreck there.

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J3, that we have excavated and also are planning on that shipwreck

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new technology like underwater stereo photogrammetry, 3D, etc. and we apply also, ...

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we use the new unit of Wood identifications that we have created together

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in Alexandria. And we will shortly publish that small shipwreck.

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We will. But the idea that you can use AI now, which is really

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the kind of the cutting edge of scientific research in many areas

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to kind of predict where shipwrecks are probably going to be in Alexandria from the data is fascinating.

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And then to demonstrate that by actually excavating the smallest of them

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is great, because the result that is come from that is, that we found a very small rowing boat

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that is probably a ship's boat.

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So these things have never been found before in the archaeological record.

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And traditionally, as an underwater archaeologist, you know, we would never have found it, would we?

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Because you would swim across the bottom of the of the seabed in Alexandria.

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There's nothing sticking out. It's 2 to 3m. deep into the sediment.

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So actually having a technique that enables you to look deeper into the sediments and then find these things and excavate them is perfect.

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So I'm very excited about J3 and the results that have come out of it.

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You mentioned the work that we've done on identifying the different timbers from the ship,

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which is really interesting because what it's helped to demonstrate is that this is probably,

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a little boat that's been made in Italy and has come, or has been dragged across the Mediterranean,

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behind a very large cargo ship, going to Alexandria.

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So it really starts to think about those great trade routes

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around the Mediterranean that Alexandria is that central hub of, especially in the east.

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So I think J3 is a remarkable find.

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But then it's only one of a whole number of remarkable finds from Alexandria.

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It shows also that we are going deeper into the knowledge of the Portus Magnus because we are finding a cargo ship.

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But also those small Skiff of long boat, I would say , or very small

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long boat of ship and we are going deep into the activity of the port.

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How that boat was transporting a

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damaged anchor to be repaired.

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Thus, you see okay, the boat was leaving the main Cargo boat there going to that pier.

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And it's interesting to see. And it matched,

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also the topography of the Portus Magnus, the different basins, piers.

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And you can see the life of that port,

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great port, coming up.

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And that particular ship, well, small boat, it just also gives you a very human moment of when it sinks.

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Because of your knowledge of how the port is laid out and where we found the ship,

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well the boat, you can see that it was heavily overloaded with this extremely big anchor.

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And then it kind of rode out across the mouth of one of the ports,

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and it's clearly been hit by a big wave at that point and has tipped and has just sunk.

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And so you get that snapshot of the disaster and the picture in your mind of,

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the people kind of swimming around and trying to get back to shore.

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And that's what the potential of this form of archaeology does, is it gives you that very tiny moment in from the past.

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Yes. And, how was this port was functioning?

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What was the life of the people there? I mean, we are finding

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amphorae nearby that pier and of that period.

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I also want to take you to another part not very far from J3, which is the Iseum.

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So the temple of Isis, which, we've spoken about the long term nature of this, and I know you started digging the Temple of Isis

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was it in the first year of your project in the Portus Magnus?

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It's a very good example.

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In the very first year of excavation in the Portus Magnus of Alexandria, we discovered a fabulous statue of a priest holding a Canopic vase.

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Two sphinxes close by and okay, we looked around and we saw big slabs.

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And thought, Okay, those statues have been left over and there is nothing around, and okay we went to another place to study.

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Then thanks to this bathymetric sub bottom profiler,

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after the survey, I saw that close to the site where we have found those statues,

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as a matter of fact, we were not on the island, but we were at the bottom of a port.

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And those statues were just remaining lying on some large slabs,

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which went down to the slope during the destruction of the temple.

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And it was a totally different story because I thought that in that case,

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the whole temple or part of the temple might be at the bottom of a port, and we started to excavate nearby.

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And yes, as a matter of fact, most of the temple went sliding into the port.

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And we have there architectural elements, columns, ceramics, coins, treasury of the temple and ritual instrument.

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Everything is there. And, what we thought was at the beginning

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three nice statues, become now the temple to Isis.

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And we know the story of the temple. We know where, when it has been founded,

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who were the pharaohs who consider the temple as very important for their own cults, etc. and we are going much deeper in the story of that sanctuary.

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So who was it that founded the temple?

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The Foundation of the temple, I cannot say, but what I can assert is that, Ptolemy XII, father of Cleopatra VII,

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restructured that temple at the beginning of the 1st century BC.

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And that temple became extremely important in 76 BC when Ptolemy XII decided to Institute a Cult to his own person as the new Osiris.

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And this was, as a matter of fact, his own temple, which was, of course, used after his death by

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his daughter, Cleopatra VII, who considered herself as the new Isis as it was a temple of Isis and Osiris, of course.

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And it was a personal temple of the Queen, as well as Antony, who considered himself of the new Dionysos,

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the new Osiris, as it was a temple of prime importance for those times.

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And when Augustus took over Egypt, of course, he could not destroy the temple.

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He could not abandon that temple because it was so important for the clergy of Egypt, for the priests of Egypt.

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So he converted that temple to the goddess Isis protecting the fleet, bringing the grains, the wheat from Egypt to Rome.

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And it was Isis protecting the fleet, the yearly fleet to Rome,

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and it went functioning until an earthquake destroyed it in around 52-55 AD.

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So really, it's a temple that has some of the most famous people from antiquity.

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It's a temple that's attached to a royal palace on the royal island of Antirhodos, that was graced by Antony, Cleopatra, Augustus.

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It's a fascinating spot to be excavated, especially because it's all destroyed and then slid into the harbour.

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And it's just there to be excavated. Excavated over the long term, excavated in a very careful and systematic way.

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and the results of that which have come out about the changing use of the temple,

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especially as Egypt goes from being a Ptolemaic kingdom to part of the Roman Empire and how the nature of the goddess changes over that time,

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I think is is absolutely fascinating.

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You're about to publish this. These ideas aren't you? Yes, of course,

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the excavation is not finished. But I thought it would be important, and we discussed this together with OCMA,

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to have a monography on that because it's so rich, we'd say in knowledge that it's important.

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It's a milestone, you know, and then after we go on excavation and we will find new things and we refine our knowledge of that sanctuary.

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But I think it's time to have a monograph on that subject.

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Certainly, I mean, that's one of the things that we're going to do

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in this mission that's coming up shortly is to use our RTI scanner.

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So to scan lots of the small lead tokens, that have been found on the site so that we can try and get some more detail,

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for the final publication of that. Yes, I think,

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those new technologies are helping us quite efficiently, in order to study all the materials,

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the thousands of artefacts that we are finding on those sites. And enables also

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and make easy the study of those bulk of material.

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So this use of new technology is seen in the work of one of our students, Leonie Hoff,

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who's been using 3D scanners to actually look at fingerprints that are embedded within the terracotta of the statuettes that she's looking at.

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And I find this a fascinating approach to, to it, because she's been able to show that,

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that children have put the slabs of clay into the initial mould and have pressed it in,

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whereas adults have put the two moulds together and finished off the statuette.

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And that gives you a really fascinating insight into how the production process works, how families may work together.

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and it's a real insight, I think, into into the nature of production.

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You were asking me before what surprised you?

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And this is one of the surprises I had is that, study can be made on a field

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I even did not know it existed before.

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And this is one a good example

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of that, of this, that yes,

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I had no idea that we could study the fingerprint and get some very interesting information about the manufacturing of those statuettes,

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how those objects were done in the antiquity, who was doing them?

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What was the process of doing them, etc. Thus, we go very, very deep into the knowledge even of artefacts.

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Yeah, absolutely. So we're sitting here just before the start of the next mission.

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And I was wondering, what are your plans for the future in Egypt?

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Yes. Every year I have a very well defined plan.

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But it so happens that during excavation, each time we are coming across a new element which divert sometime
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my prior planning, but, planning in Alexandria will be to resume work on the sanctuary of Isis on the island of Antirhodos,

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do further work on a new shipwreck that we have discovered in the small royal port of that island.

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And to further excavate also a very interesting site, called the Timonium,

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which was the retreat of Antony at the end of his life with Cleopatra, standing close to the peninsula of the Poseideon,

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the temple of Poseideon that we have discovered and that we have been excavating for years,

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but it's a very difficult site to excavate. And making some tests maybe to identify new shipwrecks.

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This is for Alexandria, Portus Magnus.

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And in Thonis-Heracleion we will work on underground structures that we could identify under the main temple of Amun-Gereb,

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we will start an excavation of what I suspect might be the temple of Mut.

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And we go on excavating one very interesting shipwreck of the 5th century BC.

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And, we will also try to identify new shipwrecks thanks to my algorithm which tells me you missed more than

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50 shipwrecks, so please, look there! So that's really exciting.

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And at the same time, we'll also be in the storerooms

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in Alexandria studying the material that has been excavated in previous years.

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So the people that are looking at the coins and the ceramics, Leonie looking at the statuettes and all of the other pieces of material culture.

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So at the same time as the excavations are going on, there's also, a lot of work on the post excavation.

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Yes, we have a built and organized with you a new storeroom, because storerooms,

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archaeological storerooms, are very important for keeping

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very well the artefacts and protecting them

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once they have been restored and waiting for studies or for exhibition.

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And there we have thousands of artefacts still to be studied.

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Thus, we have quite a lot of work ahead of us.

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Well, I'm looking forward to going to the storerooms and to work with our colleagues in Egypt and our colleagues in the institute.

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And it's very interesting during those studies to have very well known professors, you know,

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but students also starting from OCMA, starting doing their sometimes first study after excavation there.

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And it's a kind of very interesting team that we have set up together there.

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It's fascinating. Well, I look forward to seeing you on the boat, Franck.

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So thank you very much. Waiting on the support vessel.