16th International Symposium on Boat & Ship Archaeology

91 Zadar, Croatia | 26 September – 1 October 2021 Manuel Berenguel 1 & Emmanuel Nantet 2 1 University of Haifa, Department of Maritime Civilizations, Israel; University of Le Mans, Department of History, CReAAH, France 2 Laboratory for Nautical Archaeology and History, Leon Recanati Institute for Maritime Studies, Department of Maritime Civilizations, University of Haifa, Israel; associated member of CReAAH A Hellenistic Shipyard on the Telephos Frieze: A Representation of the Shipwright’s Toolkit The Telephos frieze of the Great Altar of Pergamon (panels 5 & 6) on display in the Pergamon Museum, Berlin, contains important information on boat construction, tools, and working practices within a Hellenistic shipyard. The scene depicts the building of a small boat for Auge, the mother of the hero Telephos. It has been primarily discussed by Hellenistic sculpture experts and classical historians but not by scholars of ship archaeology in any detail. The small boat or skiff on the Pergamon Altar differs from the majority of textual sources on the myth of Tel- ephos recounting that King Aleus sent his daughter Auge in a chest away to sea. This boat is shown in the process of being built and at an important moment of its construction, just before the final completion of the set-up of the frames. The scene thus affords a rare representation of shell-first construction, confirming observations from earlier work on shipwrecks. However, the panel on the frieze is damaged so that some parts of the tools and the craftsmen’s arms are missing. An understanding of the technical aspects displayed on this scene is only possible with a comparative examination of tools from shipwrecks found in the past few decades and a rigorous study of other visual representations. A comparison with these different sources offers exceptional insight into Hellenistic shipbuilding. Our focus will be on the specialized tools employed by trained workmen in their con- struction of a small boat: the bow saw, bow-drill, two-handled adze, mallet, and chisel. In addition to identifying each implement of this boatbuilding toolkit, we explore their precise function in ship construction, providing valuable documen- tation that will allow for further experimentation in nautical archaeology.