{"id":29636,"date":"2015-01-11T03:00:12","date_gmt":"2015-01-11T08:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=29636"},"modified":"2020-01-19T14:47:23","modified_gmt":"2020-01-19T19:47:23","slug":"6th-century-sicilian-shipwreck-yields-39-ingots-of-orichalcum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/01\/11\/6th-century-sicilian-shipwreck-yields-39-ingots-of-orichalcum\/","title":{"rendered":"6th century Sicilian shipwreck yields 39 ingots of orichalcum"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;d only ever encountered mentions of orichalcum as a rare metal in <em>Guild Wars 2<\/em>, but it was a real thing, and an underwater archaeology team found <a href=\"http:\/\/news.discovery.com\/history\/archaeology\/atlantis-legendary-metal-found-in-shipwreck-150106.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">39 ingots of orichalcum<\/a> just off the coast of Sicily near Gela:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Gleaming cast metal called orichalcum, which was said by Ancient Greeks to be found in Atlantis, has been recovered from a ship that sunk 2,600 years ago off the coast of Sicily.<\/p>\n<p>The lumps of metal were arriving to Gela in southern Sicily, possibly coming from Greece or Asia Minor. The ship that was carrying them was likely caught in a storm and sunk just when it was about to enter the port.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The wreck dates to the first half of the sixth century,&#8221; Sebastiano Tusa, Sicily&#8217;s superintendent of the Sea Office, told <em>Discovery News<\/em>. &#8220;It was found about 1,000 feet from Gela&#8217;s coast at a depth of 10 feet.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He noted that the 39 ingots found on the sandy sea floor represent a unique finding.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Nothing similar has ever been found,&#8221; Tusa said. &#8220;We knew orichalcum from ancient texts and a few ornamental objects.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Indeed orichalcum has long been considered a mysterious metal, its composition and origin widely debated.<\/p>\n<p>According to the ancient Greeks, it was invented by Cadmus, a Greek-Phoenician mythological character. The fourth century B.C. Greek philosopher Plato made orichalcum a legendary metal when he mentioned it in the Critias dialogue.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;d only ever encountered mentions of orichalcum as a rare metal in Guild Wars 2, but it was a real thing, and an underwater archaeology team found 39 ingots of orichalcum just off the coast of Sicily near Gela: Gleaming cast metal called orichalcum, which was said by Ancient Greeks to be found in Atlantis, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,1526,7,339],"tags":[288,1347,1216,365],"class_list":["post-29636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-greece","category-history","category-italy","tag-archaeology","tag-plato","tag-sicily","tag-wreck"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-7I0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29636"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29636\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54392,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29636\/revisions\/54392"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}