9/29/09 Marble column pieces journey from the deep to Bodrum museum

The unmistakable smell of objects long lost at sea wafted from the truck standing in front of Bodrum Castle on Wednesday morning. The truck had arrived in the early hours of the morning after its long journey down from Ceşme Harbor, where it had been loaded with 30 tons of enormous marble pieces excavated from an ancient shipwreck off the remote rocky cape at Kızılburun.

Emre Savaş, an archaeologist from the Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology who accompanied the transport, said the six pieces from the excavation include two column drums weighing seven tons each and a column capital that had been excavated at a depth of 46 meters. They were first pulled from the seabed by a boat-mounted crane before beginning the 4-hour trip back to Ceşme Harbor and then onto the truck.

On their journey south, the column pieces actually passed near the ancient site of Claros, thought to have been their original destination 2,000 years ago.

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