Ancient Merchant Ships

[BjörnF]

From what I understand, the Greeks used amphoras to store cargo, such as silver coins, while travelling on ships. How many amphoras could a "normal" merchant ship hold in its cargo? I found a Roman merchant ship on Google that carried about 6000 amphoras, which was an unusually large quantity.

[Mark G]

Is the amphora sized fixed though?

[BjörnF]

I don't know, but it sounds like they were. When I did a quick google search it looks like that: Link to google search with a lot of nice pictures
When I looked up "Attic talent" on wikipedia it says: "A talent was originally intended to be the mass of water required to fill an amphora, about one cubic foot (28 L)" so it sounds it was standardised. But I have no idea.
But why am I interested in this? Because I want to try to calculate how many ships Harpalus needed to ship of his stolen money to Athens and later Crete. Is it important? No, but fun trivia.

[Orc65]

"Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World", Lionel Casson, 1986. might be useful. I also found a link on the Internet Archive

[Erpingham]

There is an old but detailed paper on the literary evidence here available for free reading on Jstor.  This mentions ships of 2,000 and 3,000 amphorae. It also picks up Mark's point that amphorae varied in size depending on their area of origin and use.  It has an appendix on amphora stacking. Talking of which, there is a nice watercolour illustration of this online

[Jim Webster]

I don't know, but it sounds like they were. When I did a quick google search it looks like that: Link to google search with a lot of nice pictures
When I looked up "Attic talent" on wikipedia it says: "A talent was originally intended to be the mass of water required to fill an amphora, about one cubic foot (28 L)" so it sounds it was standardised. But I have no idea.
But why am I interested in this? Because I want to try to calculate how many ships Harpalus needed to ship of his stolen money to Athens and later Crete. Is it important? No, but fun trivia.

fun trivia but fascinating. When you have the answer please share it

[BjörnF]

Thank you everyone!
(and sorry for posting in the wrong sub).