For more than three decades, the idea of establishing a museum for submerged antiquities in Alexandria has surfaced, faded, and then re-emerged again. Sometimes the proposal is to display artifacts retrieved from the sea in a dedicated museum, and at other times, the suggestion is to create underwater glass walkways through which visitors can wander amongst the remains of the sunken city. However attractive these ideas may appear in the media, they do not reflect a true scientific concept or the authentic purpose of a museum for submerged antiquities.
By their nature, the submerged antiquities are heterogeneous in type, era, and source, preventing them from telling a coherent story within a solid cultural and scientific framework. On the seabed off Alexandria’s coasts, ancient Egyptian statues, Ptolemaic and Roman statues, architectural columns and components belonging to historic buildings, the wreckage of dozens of ships, and hundreds of artifacts from various eras have been found. Is being "retrieved from the sea" justification enough to display all these together in a single museum called the "Museum of Submerged Antiquities"?
The answer is clear: no. Museums, as educational, cultural, and entertainment institutions, are meant to tell a complete story through exhibits, in a context that imbues them with meaning, rather than simply inspiring a fleeting moment of admiration. Displaying unrelated pieces with no link other than that they were submerged at one point does not add any real knowledge, nor does it constitute a genuine museum in the true sense.
### The Illusion of the “Underwater Museum”
The issue becomes even murkier with persistent talk about an “underwater museum,” where visitors would wander in glass tunnels to view the antiquities in their original location. This concept is far from reality. Most of the spectacular statues and dazzling pieces promoted in the media as being beneath Alexandria’s waters have already been retrieved and are displayed in Egyptian museums or have taken part in global exhibitions. Returning them to the seabed—a proposal raised many times—would strip them of their context and scientific value, not to mention the considerable risks to their preservation.
The truth is that what remains beneath Alexandria’s waters today is not “marvelous archaeological scenes” as some imagine, but mostly large architectural elements covering vast areas stretching for hundreds of meters, in addition to the remnants of many wooden ships buried in thick layers of sediment. These remnants, though of immense scientific importance, are not in a condition suitable for exhibition or for transforming into visually attractive tourist scenes.
Additionally, Alexandria’s waters, throughout most of the year, are filled with debris and sediments that often reduce visibility to just a few meters at best. With such pollution and deteriorating water quality, the image of the “underwater museum” promoted by the media becomes impossible to realize. The likely outcome would be deep disappointment for visitors expecting to see dazzling underwater statues, only to find reality is nothing but sunken architectural masses in murky water, making even basic viewing impossible.
### A Maritime Cultural Heritage Museum… An Institution That Tells the Story
The solution does not lie in a conventional museum that stacks unrelated pieces just because they were “retrieved from the sea,” nor in an “archaeological aquarium” that dazzles visitors temporarily and then leaves them without knowledge. What Egypt truly needs is a museum for maritime and underwater cultural heritage in the scientific and cultural sense—a museum that tells Egypt’s story with the sea, not just Alexandria’s alone.
Such a museum would offer an extended intellectual journey, leaving visitors with a profound understanding that Egyptians’ relationship with the sea and the Nile was not marginal, but rather central to shaping their history and civilization. Inside, tens of interconnected stories could be told:
- How Egypt taught the world shipbuilding and navigation and possessed the oldest maritime fleet and ports ever discovered.
- How Alexandria’s ancient harbors were constructed, why, how, and when parts collapsed and were submerged.
- Why the Ptolemies built the Lighthouse of Alexandria as tall as the Great Pyramid, and how its location today is among the most important underwater archaeological sites in the Mediterranean.
- How Egyptian maritime activity spanned the Mediterranean and Red Seas, reaching trade with both East and West, turning Egyptian coasts into global maritime crossroads since ancient times.
- What other submerged sites line Egypt’s coasts besides Alexandria—sunken ships, ports, and maritime installations, diverse and abundant.
- How underwater archaeologists today work to discover submerged heritage, and what modern tools and techniques allow them to study this unique legacy.
A museum with this vision would not be merely a place to display “silent stones,” but a vibrant institution pulsing with knowledge, transforming artifacts into stories and objects into witnesses of phases in Egyptians’ relationship with the sea. Such a museum would connect the past to the present, making maritime and underwater heritage part of visitors’ awareness and identity—not just a passing visual scene.
### Lessons from Global Experiences
There are over 150 museums worldwide dedicated to maritime and underwater cultural heritage. Some, like the Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth, UK, present visitors with a complete story of 16th-century seafarers by displaying a single retrieved ship and its artifacts.
Meanwhile, the Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology in Turkey has taken a different approach, dedicating separate halls for each sunken ship discovered in southern Turkey—telling the histories of their commerce, crew, cargoes, and historical context, spanning the Bronze Age through the Middle Ages.
In Spain, the National Museum of Underwater Archaeology in Cartagena offers an advanced model, not just displaying sunken relics but explaining ancient navigation techniques and the influence of the sea on Mediterranean civilizations, using the latest digital interactive methods.
Australia’s National Maritime Museum in Sydney animates maritime heritage as a living story, narrating Australia’s deep connection to the sea—from indigenous maritime traditions through explorations, immigration, and trade, using ship displays, interactive exhibits, and human stories. The museum proves that the success of any maritime and underwater heritage museum lies in connecting artifacts to their cultural, social, and environmental contexts.
In the Arab region, notable examples have emerged showing how maritime and underwater heritage can be transformed into vibrant cultural material. Muscat’s National Museum of Oman contains specialized halls for maritime heritage, telling the history of Omani fleets, displaying authentic models of traditional ships, and highlighting their role in trade and navigation across the Indian Ocean and East Africa.
In Sharjah, the Maritime Museum presents a comprehensive story about the role of the sea in Emirati life, from traditional shipbuilding and pearl diving to navigation tools, showing how the sea shaped economic and social identity.
Saudi Arabia has also begun developing museum projects linked to the heritage of the Red Sea, exhibiting results of marine surveys and shipwrecks discovered off its coasts.
What all these models share is that they do not merely collect “sunken artifacts,” but craft them into coherent historical narratives—a ship’s tale, a port’s story, or the saga of a whole nation and the sea. This philosophy is what makes a museum of submerged antiquities a vibrant institution of knowledge.
The proposed museum of submerged antiquities in Alexandria is a project long overdue. If Egypt wants a museum befitting its history and attracting the world, it must move away from the “retrieved artifacts” approach and focus on building a compelling scientific and cultural narrative, where the sea becomes not just the backdrop for artifacts, but the protagonist in Egypt’s story spanning thousands of years.
-The article is originally published on Al-"Ahram Gate"
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