Spanish archaeologists have successfully removed a 2,600-year-old shipwreck from the waters off the country’s southeast coast, two decades after the relic was originally found, officials said.

The ancient Phoenician shipwreck dates back to the 7th century BC. It was discovered in 1994 along the coast of Murcia in southeastern Spain, near the city of Mazarrón. according to Ministry of Culture of Spain.

Now named Mazarrón II, this shipwreck was one of two located in the same general area. The first, called Mazarrón I, was originally located in 1993, raised from the water in June 1995 and put on display at Spain’s National Museum of Underwater Archeology in 2005 after undergoing years of conservation treatment, said the museum.

Mazarrón II is of particular interest to archaeologists and researchers because it is one of only a few Phoenician-era shipwrecks to be discovered largely intact, said Carlos de Juan, director of the excavation project, in the video shared by the University of Valencia. The university teamed up with the regional ministry of culture in Murcia to carry out the excavation.

A team of 14 experts worked with de Juan to raise the wreck from the sea in less than two months, starting the project on September 13 and finishing on November 7. The video shows divers carrying wooden parts of the wreck to the surface in pieces.

Phenicia was an ancient civilization along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, in the area of ​​present-day Lebanon, Syria and Israel, which existed from about 1500 to 300 BC. Kr. Although historians say The Phoenicians prospered for a while to trade and developed an alphabet that was the basis for those later produced by ancient Greece and Rome, many traces of civilization were considered lost until the 20th century.

Artifacts like Mazarrón II can help shed light on Phoenician culture, de Juan said. He noted in his comments for the University of Valencia that little is known about Phoenician naval construction, even now, despite the wealth of information about the ships the ancient Greeks built near the Mediterranean Sea.

“Therefore, this wreck is a very important contribution to this field of study,” said de Juan. He noted that elements of Mazarrón II were similar to building designs seen in cultures throughout the surrounding region, but some were peculiar and mysterious, at least for now.

Every part of the shipwreck was transferred to a laboratory at the Museum of Underwater Archeology in southern Spain. The laboratory will work carefully to preserve his remains, a process that will likely take several more years.