These spectacular sculptures — which depict Greek gods, heroes and animals — are now on display at the British Museum in London.
But the small objects recovered from the wreck reveal intriguing aspects of the lives of the people onboard the ship when it sank, said marine archaeologist Dimitris Kourkoumelis, of the Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities, a department of the Greek Ministry of Culture and Sports.The Mentor was an American-built brig that belonged to the British diplomat Thomas Bruce, a Scottish nobleman titled the seventh Earl of Elgin.Elgin, as he was known, used the ship to carry antiquities to England that he'd collected while stationed in Constantinople as Britain's ambassador to the Ottoman Empire.Although the ship made it to Kythera, where its passengers and crew scrambled onto the rocks, the Mentor soon sank beneath about 65 feet (20 meters) of seawater. !
The sculptures were then shipped to England, and Elgin sold them to the British Museum in 1816. .But no evidence of the decree has ever been found, according to the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles, a nongovernmental organization.
No more items from Elgin's collection have ever been found, but the wreck has yielded numerous small objects over the years, including gold jewelry, ancient coins and Greek pottery that probably came from the private collections of some of the passengers onboard when it sank, he saidThe museum already displays about half of the Parthenon sculptures that remain, and it has space reserved for the Elgin Marbles if they are ever returned to Greece
"We are excavating the ship that is associated with one of the most painful episodes of the recent history of Greece," Kourkoumelis said