Grant received to preserve remains of 4000 year old ship

North Myrtle Beach Online

Coastal Carolina University professor Cheryl Ward has received a $25,000 grant from the Antiquities Endowment Fund (AEF) of the American Research Center in Egypt for a project to document and conserve the remains of a 4,000-year-old Egyptian ship.

Ward, director of CCU's Center for Archaeology and Anthropology, plans to travel later this year to Mersa/Wadi Gawasi, the site of an ancient Red Sea harbor on the coast of Egypt where planks and equipment from the world's oldest seagoing vessels have been uncovered.

Easton Selby, assistant professor of visual arts at Coastal Carolina University, will also visit the site in order to photograph the artifacts as part of the documentation part of the project.

The artifacts, which include wooden planks and the largest amount of ancient rope ever discovered (with the original knots intact), are in serious danger of fungal decay after being removed from the sand that has acted as a protective covering for thousands of years, according to Ward.