Puteoli's Submerged Nabataean Port Sanctuary
A submerged sanctuary with marble altars and Latin dedications to the Nabataean god Dushara documents eastern merchants inside Puteoli's harbor, illuminating the cosmopolitan port of Acts 28 without supplying evidence for its Christian community.
- Artifact date
- Late first century BC–first century AD
- Findspot
- Submerged harbor at Pozzuoli, Italy
- Current location
- Baiae underwater archaeological park and regional collections
What archaeologists can actually examine
Underwater work in the ripa Puteolana has located a small Nabataean sanctuary within the Roman commercial harbor. Rooms, marble altars, inscribed slabs, architectural revetments, streets, warehouses, and imperial administrative buildings place the cult complex within the vicus Lartidianus. Repeated Latin dedications mark elements as sacred to Dusares/Dushara, the principal Nabataean deity, and connect the shrine with merchants participating in Mediterranean and Red Sea trade. The complex is the first sanctuary of its kind securely identified outside the Nabataean homeland. It demonstrates an organized Arabian presence at the port named in Acts, but it was neither a synagogue nor a Christian meeting place.
The suspected sanctuary is now mapped
Underwater survey and excavation located rooms and altars within the commercial vicus where earlier inscriptions had been recovered.
Latin dedications name Dushara
Repeated formulas on altars and architectural slabs identify a Nabataean sacred complex communicating in the port's public language.
Cult and commerce were intertwined
The shrine served an Arabian merchant community participating in routes that linked the Indian Ocean, eastern Mediterranean, and Rome.
The complex was deliberately covered
Late first-century fill and concrete construction suggest planned redevelopment rather than simple violent destruction.
Acts gains a port context
The sanctuary demonstrates Puteoli's eastern connectivity but offers no evidence that its Nabataeans were the Christians who welcomed Paul.
Follow the evidence from discovery to debate
Move through the find in a deliberate order: establish its provenance, examine the surviving object, place it in time, and then weigh the scholarly interpretation.
How the find came to light
Inscribed Nabataean cult objects had been hauled from the sea at Pozzuoli since 1754, and an Aramaic dedication found on land recorded renovation of a sanctuary. Scholars consequently suspected that bradyseism had submerged the building, but its location remained uncertain. Research beginning in 2021 combined precise underwater topography, photogrammetry, and diving; in 2023 the team partially investigated the sanctuary and documented two altars in architectural context. The Italian Ministry of Culture and a 2024 Antiquity report connected the shrine with the broader vicus Lartidianus. The new work changes the evidence from a dispersed collection of dredged inscriptions into a mapped cult-and-commercial complex.
What you are looking at
The sanctuary occupied rectangular rooms built in Roman concrete and faced with marble. Two marble altars and multiple slabs carry brief Latin formulas such as ‘sacred to Dushara.’ Mortar, clamp grooves, pivot staining, and repeated lettering show that some inscribed pieces belonged to the building rather than being isolated votives. Earlier finds include bases, an altar, revetment fragments, an ex voto, and an Aramaic dedication concerning renovation. The 2023 reconstruction remains partial, and continuing excavation may change the room plan. The buildings now lie underwater because the Phlegraean coast repeatedly rose and subsided; their present depth is a geological afterlife, not evidence that the sanctuary was originally aquatic.
Where it belongs in history
The inscriptions indicate that a sanctuary was built or renewed by Nabataeans at Puteoli from the late first century BC into the first century AD, with some evidence associated with Aretas IV's reign. Puteoli was Italy's principal commercial port before Ostia and Portus eclipsed it, handling grain and luxury goods from Alexandria and the eastern Mediterranean. The Nabataean kingdom's annexation as Arabia Petraea in AD 106 altered trading conditions. Stratified fill containing Dressel 2–4 amphorae and no material later than the end of the first century supports deliberate closure and concrete infilling near the early second century. The complex was covered respectfully rather than visibly destroyed.
Consensus, questions, and debate
Earlier scholarship assembled scattered Latin and Aramaic inscriptions and inferred an underwater sanctuary in the vicus Lartidianus. The 2023 campaign substantially confirmed that inference by locating architecture and altars together. The Antiquity authors interpret the shrine as worship space, refuge, and mercantile institution operating under Dushara's protection, and link its closure to the political-economic changes following Roman annexation. That final causal link is plausible rather than certain; redevelopment, harbor needs, or local institutional change may also have contributed. Ongoing underwater work may refine the building's chronology, plan, and phases. Agreement is strongest on cult identity, Nabataean presence, and first-century commercial context.
The biblical record beside the artifact
Acts 28:13–14 says Paul's ship reached Puteoli after Rhegium and that he found ‘brethren’ there, staying seven days before traveling toward Rome. The Nabataean sanctuary vividly demonstrates the eastern diasporic networks, languages, trade, and religious plurality of the harbor where that meeting occurred. Merchants from Arabia could maintain a dedicated sacred and commercial refuge while communicating publicly in Latin. Yet the sanctuary cannot explain the origin of Puteoli's believers, identify them as Nabataeans, or demonstrate contact with Paul. Its relevance is the port environment: eastern people and ideas were already moving through a cosmopolitan Italian gateway.
Acts 28:13–14
13And from thence we fetched a compass, and came to Rhegium: and after one day the south wind blew, and we came the next day to Puteoli:
14Where we found brethren, and were desired to tarry with them seven days: and so we went toward Rome.
A responsible historical conclusion
Puteoli's sanctuary makes mobility visible from the other end of Paul's voyage. Rome's economy drew grain, aromatics, textiles, people, and gods from far beyond Italy, and merchant communities built institutions that reduced the risks of foreign trade. The Latin dedications show accommodation to the host city's language without abandonment of Nabataean devotion. That same port could already contain Christian ‘brethren’ whom Acts treats as socially distinct but equally connected through travel. The sanctuary therefore illuminates why an arriving eastern prisoner might encounter familiar networks immediately upon reaching Italy, while warning readers not to merge every eastern community into one religion.
Authoritative sources
Institutional catalogs, excavation reports, and academic publications let you examine the evidence beyond this summary.
The Submerged Nabataean Temple in Puteoli at Pozzuoli, Italy: First Campaign of Underwater Research
Antiquity / Cambridge University PressPeer-reviewed first-campaign report with plan reconstruction, altars, inscriptions, first-century dating, merchant interpretation, and closure evidence.
New Underwater Investigations Identify the Submerged Nabataean Temple at Pozzuoli
Italian Ministry of CultureOfficial heritage report documenting the two altars, precise topographic identification, partner institutions, vicus Lartidianus, earlier finds, and broader port structures.
Tracing the Final Journey of the Apostle Paul
Brigham Young University ScholarsArchiveUniversity study of the archaeological and geographic route from Puteoli to Rome, independently supporting the harbor's Acts 28 setting and the limits of connecting surviving infrastructure with Paul's individual journey.