The ancient Galilee boat from Ginosar

What you see

What the object is

A wooden boat "some 8 meters in length", according to the centre's page, found in January 1986 when a drought lowered the Sea of Galilee and exposed large areas of its bed. Yuval and Moshe Lopen of Kibbutz Ginosar found it (the centre's spelling of the name, also transliterated Lufan), and archaeologists of the Israel Antiquities Authority excavated it in ten days with the help of many volunteers, according to the page. The photograph on this page is a visitor's photograph published on Wikimedia Commons under CC0 (public domain dedication); it shows the boat as displayed at the Yigal Allon Centre. The centre's page states no licence for its images, so they are not reproduced here. Source 1.

How it was dated

The centre writes: "Scientists dated the boat to some 2,000 years ago". That is a popular wording of an age, with no range and no period name. The Commons file name of the photograph shown here says "1st Century AD"; that is the uploader's wording, not a dating source. The research card on the boat's wood, linked here, is the way to the scientific study.

Why the boat is not placed on the timeline

"Some 2,000 years ago" could be the late Hellenistic period, the early Roman period or their boundary. Assigning the boat to one period would add an assumption the source did not make. It therefore appears as "not yet placed on the timeline", with its dating as worded, and remains reachable through the museum, the trail and search.

What was done to the wood

According to the page, the boat was kept in a water pool in a building next to the centre and treated with conservation techniques for 14 years, until 2000, when it was moved to the gallery. The figures are the centre's.

Where it is now

The boat is displayed in the visitor gallery at the far end of the Yigal Allon Centre in Ginosar, per the page read on 22 October 2026. Visiting details are on the centre's site only.