Drought reveals lost artefacts

WARSAW: A huge cargo of elaborate marble stonework that sank to the bottom of Poland’s Vistula River four centuries ago has reappeared because a drought and record-low water levels have revealed the masonry lying in the mud on the river bed.

Archaeologists believe the stonework was part of a trove which 17thcentury Swedish invaders looted from Poland’s rulers.

Researchers knew about the artefacts, but before the drought retrieving them was a painstaking task because they were under several metres of water. Low rainfall over the past few months has brought the Vistula to its lowest level since regular records began 200 years ago, and the masonry – large blocks of carved marble which were used in the columns, fountains and staircases of Polish palaces – is lying exposed apart from a coating of foul-smelling yellow mud.

“The drought helped us a lot because what had been lying underneath is now at the surface,” said Hubert Kowalski, deputy director of the University of Warsaw Museum, leading the effort to retrieve the marble stonework.

The receding water has also revealed relics of Warsaw’s bloody history during World War II.

Kowalski said on the stretch of river bed he had been studying, a few pieces of Jewish matzevah, or gravestones, had been found. They would be handed over to the city’s Jewish Historical Institute. – Reuters