Cape Gelidonya

Bronze Age Shipwreck Excavation at Cape Gelidonya. Cape Gelidonya, sometimes known also as Khelidonya or Silidonya Burnu, is the Chelidonian promontory of Pliny (Natural History 5.27.97) in Lycia. The cape marks the western extremity of the Bay of Antalya. Running south from the cape is a string of five small islands, the Chelidoniae of antiquity, called Celidoni by Italian sailors, and later, Selidonlar by the Turks, but today known simply as Besadalar (Five Islands). Strabo (14.2.1 and 14.3.8) noted only three of them and Pliny (Natural History 5.35.1 31 ) only four. In about 1200 BC, a merchant vessel apparently ripped its bottom open on a pinnacle of rock that nears the surface of the sea just off the northeast side of Devecitasi Abasi, the largest of the islands (36° 11'40" N, 30° 24'Z7" E). Spilling artifacts in a line as she sank, the ship eventually settled with her stern resting on a large boulder 50 meters or so away to the north; her bow landed on a flat sea-floor of rock. At some point during the hull's disintegration, the stern slipped off the boulder into a natural gully formed by the boulder and the base of the island.

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