CHAPTER TWO ANTIKYTHERA It was the year 1900, and the world was in the midst of enormous change. In New York City, the first-ever display of the latest automobile models was about to open. In Germany, the first zeppelin had just taken flight. And for the first time in history, enormous steamships regularly crossing the world''s oceans outnumbered vessels propelled by sail. Some old ways of doing things, however, still endured. Divers harvesting sponges on the ocean floor using only a hollow reed to breathe through remained a prime industry on the Greek islands. In the fall of 1900, Captain Dimitrios Kontos and his two small sailing boats, crewed by six divers and twenty oarsmen, were making their way home to Symi after having had a highly successful summer sponging season off the coast of Tunisia. So successful, in fact, that after six months of grueling and dangerous work, the decks of two vessels were so filled with drying sponges that there was little room left to move about.

More sponges hung down from each boat''s rigging. The two ships and their crews had left the sponging waters in mid-April and were now sailing in a channel between the Greek islands of Antikythera and Crete. This was one of the main shipping routes between the eastern and western Mediterranean, and it was also an extremely dangerous body of water, filled with shoals, sandbars, and suddenly shifting currents. Frequent storms also struck the region. Kontos had barely entered the channel when enormous winds and towering waves began battering his ships. Driven off course, the captain sought shelter next to a rocky, barren, almost totally uninhabited small island that in ancient times had been called both Aeigilia and Cerigotto, but which now was called Antikythera. Despite the storm and the treacherous waters, Kontos, a skilled mariner, managed to guide his two boats to shelter in Antikythera''s only harbor, a small cove on its northern coast called Potamos. There, the captain and the crew waited out the storm.

When the weather finally cleared and it was time to resume the journey home, one of the crew members made a suggestion. Even though the boats were fully loaded, why not dive down and see what kind of sponges grew beneath these unfamiliar waters? Immediately, one of the divers named Elias Stadiatis volunteered to be the first. Five minutes after Stadiatis descended, he reemerged, pulling on his line, pleading to be taken back aboard. When his diving mask was removed, his face contained a look of sheer terror. He could hardly speak, but somehow he conveyed he had found not sponges but the remains of a large ship. But what he saw lying on the seabed next to the wreck plunged him into his present state. "A heap of [bodies]," he managed to blurt out. "Rotting .

horses, green corpses." Captain Kontos was fascinated and knew that he had to dive down himself. Dropping over the side of the vessel, he plunged himself to the ocean bottom, where he saw both the wreck and a huge mass of figures. But they weren''t corpses as Stadiatis had thought: they were marble and bronze sculptures. As he glanced briefly at the magnificently crafted statues of gods, kings, and warriors and colored-glass bowls and cups, Kontos had no way of knowing he was gazing upon the largest hoard of Greek treasure that had ever been found. He could never have imagined that buried somewhere within that treasure was the most extraordinary ancient artifact ever discovered. What he knew for certain was that he had to get back to the surface before his air ran out. Still, he had the presence of mind to do two things: First, he grabbed a bronze arm lying near one of the statues so that he would have proof of the discovery.

Then, he made the best mental note he could of where the wreck and the treasure lay so that he could record it once he got back on his boat. It was now time for the party to return to Symi. It was customary for those who completed a profitable sponge-diving expedition to spend weeks, even months, celebrating their success. And Kontos and his crew did just that. But they also had a serious decision to make: What should they do about the treasure they had discovered? The crew decided to recover as many of the artifacts that lay beneath the waters off Antikythera as they could. They were willing to turn them all over to the Greek government if, in return, the government agreed to pay them sufficiently for each of the items and provided them with a suitable ship and necessary equipment to carry out the recovery. Kontos enlisted the aid of Antonius Oikonomou, a professor of archaeology at the University of Athens. A fellow Symiote, Oikonomou took Kontos and Stadiatis, along with the bronze arm that had been salvaged, to meet the Greek Minister of Education, Spyridon Stais.

It could not have been a more favorable time for the meeting. The Greek government had made a public announcement calling for a concerted effort to locate and retrieve the artifacts of the ancient world so that they could be put on display. Up to this point, almost all the ancient treasures had been found on land. When Kontos and Stadiatis showed Minister Stais the bronze arm, providing evidence that the sunken ship and its treasure were at least two thousand years old, the official was convinced that an arrangement between the sponge divers and the government needed to be reached. Together they planned to make the first-ever organized excavation of a shipwreck. According to the quickly made agreement, Kontos and his men were promised full payment for the treasures they would bring up and hand over to the government. The government placed a Greek Navy ship at their disposal along with all the equipment needed to haul heavy objects such as statues from the seabed. In addition, Professor Oikonomou was named the official archaeologist of the project and assigned the task of overseeing the operation.

News of the recovery expedition made the front pages of newspapers around the world. However, because of high winds and extremely choppy seas, it wasn''t until November 24, 1900, that Kontos and his men in their two small sponge boats accompanied by a Greek naval ship named the Mykali arrived at the shipwreck site. Anxious to get started, Kontos put his eight divers to work almost immediately. Because the wreck was located so far down on the ocean floor and because the diving equipment of the day was still so primitive, they could dive down only twice a day and remain on the bottom for no more than five minutes. Added to their difficulties was the fact that it became immediately obvious that the Mykali was far too large for their purpose. As powerful as the cumbersome vessel was, it was not the easiest ship to steer, which made it dangerous to operate in such a windy site so close to shore. On November 27, the Mykali returned to its homeport near Athens and was replaced by the smaller, more maneuverable steam schooner Syros , which hurried to the wreck site in time for the divers to resume work on December 4, 1900. Despite the fact that the winds never stopped blowing and the seas kept continuously churning, the earliest dives yielded rich rewards, including two small marble statues, an exquisite bronze head (thought at first to be that of a boxer but later determined to be that of a philosopher), and fragment after fragment of bronze marble statues.

They also uncovered a bronze sword and scores of bronze bowls, clay dishes, and other pottery. It was only the beginning. The Symi sponge divers spent the next ten months rescuing some of Greece''s most beautiful artifacts, one of the greatest hoards of Greek treasure ever found. For a full three-quarters of that time, the weather was so stormy that the divers were prevented from entering the sea. And aside from the weather, there was what many regarded as an even greater challenge: the Antikythera wreck was about 197 feet down. Probably no divers other than the Mediterranean sponge divers who grew up on the water and earned their living by diving could have achieved it. By the end of 1900, the divers had recovered a large number of marble statues of men and horses, an ancient stringed musical instrument called a lyre, an enormous marble bull, another bronze sword, various pieces of bronze furniture including a throne, and a type of roof tile that had not been seen since ancient times. Now newspapers were printing daily summaries of what was being brought to the surface.

Of all the items described, none captured the public''s attention as much as the huge, full bronze statue of a handsome Greek young man that immediately became known as "The Antikythera Youth." Curators at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, where all the recovered items were taken, were also captivated by the many delicate objects that Kontos and his men were able to salvage intact. No wonder that Aggeliki Simosi, the director of the Hellenic Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities, exclaimed, "The ship that sank at Antikythera was not merely a cargo ship. It was essentially a floating museum." Then, just as the public, the curators, and the archaeologists waited anxiously to see what would be discovered next, the divers announced they had run into a serious problem. A large portion of the wreck was covered with enormous boulders, which had broken away from the cliffs that lined Antikythera''s shore sometime during the two thousand years the wreck had lain on the seabed. In order to carry out further excavations, the boulders had to be removed somehow. By this time, several archaeologists had joined the expedition and immediately ordered that the powerful naval vessel Myka.