From water to cars

After having spent so long in oblivion, the ingots were found in the 1970’s by a fisherman off the coast of Haifa. They originally formed a set of 30 tin ingots, all similar in size and shape. Probably not comprehending the importance of his find, the fisherman sold the ancient ingots to a tinsmith who used them as soldering tin to repair car radiators.See Berger et al. 2019. ‘Isotope systematics and chemical compositions of tin ingots from Mochlos (Crete) and other Late Bronze Age sites in the eastern Mediterranean Sea: an ultimate key to tin provenance?’.

The remaining ingots were eventually salvaged by the museum of Haifa. Having come all the way from ancient tin mines in Cornwall, transported over thousands of kilometers to the trade hubs of Cyprus or Ugarit, where they were indexed, engraved with Cypro-Minoan signs and shipped off to Palestine, they were lost to oblivion for three millennia.

Although car radiators may not have been what these ingots were originally intended for, they did meet their purpose as practical resources in the end. Although this history may be considered a tragedy in archaeological terms, there are at least some very special cars driving around Haifa now.