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Documented object · Ships and boats
The Ma'agan Mikhael ship
A small merchant ship discovered in 1985 off the Carmel coast, conserved for years and displayed today at the Hecht Museum. The date "about 400 BCE" is the museum's; the placement in the Persian period is ours.
Date as given by the sourceabout 400 BCEAs worded by the source: Late 5th century BCE (about 400 BCE), by carbon-14 tests and the pottery
What you see
What the object is
The remains of a ship's wooden hull, discovered in August 1985 by Ami Ashal, a member of Kibbutz Ma'agan Mikhael, while diving about 70 metres from the shore at about two metres depth. According to the museum's page, the keel, the sternpost, many planks, 14 ribs and the base of the mast survived, as well as an intact anchor. The photograph on this page was taken by Oren Rozen at the Hecht Museum and is licensed CC BY-SA 3.0 (Wikimedia Commons); it shows the original archaeological ship as displayed, not the sailing replica. The museum's page states no licence for its images, so they are not reproduced here. Source 1.
How it was dated
The museum writes: "Carbon-14 tests and the pottery finds dated the ship to the late 5th century BCE (about 400 BCE)". That is the wording of an approximate date, not a numeric range. The site's guide to dating finds explains why combining carbon-14 and pottery yields a range rather than a point.
Its place on the timeline
The site's Levant scheme defines the Persian period as 539 to 331 BCE. "The late fifth century" falls within it, so the ship is assigned here to the Persian period. The placement is marked "placed here per a cited source": the museum did not name the period, and the conversion of its wording into the scheme is ours.
What was done to the wood
According to the page, the wood was dismantled and raised in sections, desalinated in water tanks and then impregnated with polyethylene glycol (PEG) over several years; the keel alone took about four and a half years. Average volumetric shrinkage was 2.8 percent, and the reassembly matches the original measurements to within about a centimetre. The conserved wood is heavy, brittle and dark, and the museum notes that cosmetic improvement is planned. All the figures are the museum's.
Where it is now
The ship is displayed at the Hecht Museum, University of Haifa. On 22 October 2026 the page stated that the museum is under renovation with some wings temporarily closed, and that the ship is among the areas open to visitors. Opening hours and visiting details are on the museum's site only. The ship is not a find from Newe Yam: it was found off the shore of Ma'agan Mikhael, a different place on the same coast.
The object's connections
The object's connections
Culture, period, place, type and holder: every connection comes from the record or a cited source.
Object
The Ma'agan Mikhael ship
Period
- The Persian period: empire and local lifePlaced here per a cited source
Region
Kind of find
Displayed at
- Hecht Museum, University of Haifa On display; the museum is under renovation with some wings temporarily closed, the ship among the open areas (per the page)
On the trail
Compare
- The ancient Galilee boat from GinosarTwo wooden hulls from the north: sea versus lake, carbon-14 and pottery versus "some 2,000 years ago" per the centre
Source
Sources and further reading
The research and references behind this page. Rights to external content remain with their owners.
- 1
הספינה ממעגן מיכאל (עמוד מוזיאון הכט, אוניברסיטת חיפה)
Hecht Museum, University of Haifa · Checked
- 2
The Eastern Mediterranean and Syria, 1000 B.C.-1 A.D.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art · 2000 · Checked
