The Titanic & the Sunken Sarcophagus
More news on the search for Menkaure’s missing sarcophagus.
Spain and Egypt have made some advancements on the arrangement of a joint mission to search for the sarcophagus of Menkaure, lost on the sea floor somewhere between Malta and Gibralta. With financial help from the National Geographic Society, the Egyptian Government wants to use underwater robots to recover the sarcophagus.
“To locate the Beatrice he has lined up the services of Robert Ballard, who found the Titanic using high-tech submersibles. The Egyptians have also privately suggested Franck Goddio, the French marine archaeologist who has discovered hundreds of artefacts from submerged parts of Alexandria.
“I will seek a formula for co-operation with the Spanish Government and we will agree to return the sarcophagus to Egypt,” Dr Hawass said. Experts say that finding the ship will not be easy. In his account of the expedition Colonel Vyse noted that the Beatrice “was supposed to have been lost off Carthagena . . . as some parts of the wreck were picked up near the former port”. Other accounts say that the crew swam safely to shore, suggesting that the Beatrice lies in shallow water. Still others merely state that it went missing somewhere between Malta and Gibraltar — an impossibly large area to search.
“It’s going to be very challenging to find something of that sort,” said John Baines, Professor of Egyptology at Oxford University. “Looking for something in the open Atlantic, which is nearly what this amounts to, strikes me as being a hopeless case.”
Dr Hawass is undeterred. “We have all the information from the time the ship sank, from Spanish newspapers and other sources,” he said. The Egyptian Ambassador in Madrid met Spanish officials this month to seek their co-operation in the project.”
Source: Titanic discoverer Robert Ballard called to find lost sarcophagus
Visit the Frank Goddio Society website.
Tags: discovery, menkaure, News
