Emory Kristof could not believe his eyes. Crammed into a nondescript house in suburban Los Angeles were 10,000 pieces of Chinese porcelain and pottery, some 2,000 years old, so densely packed that any movement threatened to send them crashing to the floor. Some were encrusted with coral, evidence of their hidden life for centuries under the sea.

”It blew my socks off,” Mr. Kristof, an undersea explorer and photographer, said. ”It was absolutely incredible, the mother of all treasure.”

It is now also the subject of an emerging dispute between the entrepreneur who assembled the trove, working quietly in the Philippines while employing hundreds of locals to retrieve the old riches, and archaeologists who say he is plundering the world’s artistic patrimony to line his own pockets.

The entrepreneur is Phil Greco, a former New Yorker who became interested in Asian culture while serving in the Vietnam War. He lived and worked in the Philippines for more than a decade salvaging old Chinese shipwrecks.

From his home in the Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles, Mr. Greco is shipping his discoveries back East, where they are to be put up for auction.

Some 7,000 of the artifacts have so far reached a warehouse in South Kearny, N.J., across the Hudson River from New York City. Some 3,000 are en route. They will be sold in September by Guernsey’s, an auction house on the East Side.

Art experts who have seen the collection call it impressive.

”It was mind boggling,” said Arlan Ettinger, president of Guernsey’s, who visited Mr. Greco two months ago to assess the assembled pottery.

”If anybody has been witness to massive collections, it’s probably me, because that’s become our specialty over the decades,” he said. ”Nevertheless, you never cease to be amazed and overwhelmed when you’re introduced to a fabulous collection like this.”

But Donny L. Hamilton, president of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology at Texas A&M University, a top preserver of old shipwrecks and their artifacts, said archaeologists worry when private salvors excavate potentially important undersea sites. They ”recover just what has a market value,” Dr. Hamilton said.

”The other material is ignored or left behind, so you only learn about the ceramic trade but nothing about the people on board, what they were eating, their armaments, the games they were playing,” he added.

The ceramics are insured for $20 million, Mr. Greco said, though Mr. Ettinger said the appraisals had not been finished.

Mr. Ettinger said the pieces were 500 to 2,000 years old, many from the Ming and Song Dynasties. Many, he said, are in remarkable condition, from the smallest powder jars to the largest vases. He said the collection included blue and white Ming porcelain, and other pottery and porcelain in earthen tones, browns and burnt

A team from the European Underwater Archeology Institute is carrying out a study to determine the best way to build Egypt’s first underwater antiquities museum, an official source said.

According to a press release from Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), experts are studying the best way to build the museum, which will treasure underwater relics on Alexandria’s Mediterranean coast.

SCA Secretary General Zahi Hawass explained that the research is being carried out under supervision from UNESCO authorities, who have already chosen the museum’s design, created by French architect Jacques Rougerie.

SCA sources noted that the underwater structure would consist of a network of Plexiglas tunnels to resist the water’s pressure and winds, so that visitors can observe the antiquities in their original sites.

Among the objects to be exhibited at the museum are artifacts from the Pharaonic and Greco-Roman periods (341 BC-395 AC), as well as the remains of warships, including some used by Napoleon Bonaparte.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) has given its backing to ambitious plans to create an underwater archaeological museum near the remains of Cleopatra’s palace in the port of Alexandria on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast.

Archaeologists have found a carved sandstone fragment believed to be part of a medieval church in Ross-shire.

Highland Archaeological Services said the piece provided a link between an 8th Century monastery and 17th Century church at Tarbat, Portmahomack.

The remains were uncovered during Scottish Water’s £3m project to replace mains pipes in the area.

The fragment is part of a column decorated in gothic style and could date back to the 14th Century.

Archaeologist Cait McCullagh said: “We believe it is a very important discovery.

“As far as we know, no other elements of the structure of a later medieval church on this site, dedicated to St Colman, have been found.”

Cast away on a desert island, surviving on what nature alone can provide, praying for rescue but fearing the sight of a boat on the horizon. These are the imaginative creations of Daniel Defoe in his famous novel Robinson Crusoe. Yet the story is believed to be based on the real-life experience of sailor Alexander Selkirk, marooned in 1704 on a small tropical island in the Pacific for more than four years, and now archaeological evidence has been found to support contemporary records of his existence on the island.

An article in the journal Post-Medieval Archaeology presents evidence from an archaeological dig on the island of Aguas Buenas, since renamed Robinson Crusoe Island, which reveals evidence of the campsite of an early European occupant. The most compelling evidence is the discovery of a pair of navigational dividers which could only have belonged to a ship’s master or navigator, as evidence suggests Selkirk must have been. Indeed Selkirk’s rescuer, Captain Woodes Rogers’ account of what he saw on arrival at Aguas Buenas in 1709 lists ‘some practical pieces’ and mathematical instruments amongst the few possessions that Selkirk had taken with him from the ship.

The finds also provide an insight into exactly how Selkirk might have lived on the island. Postholes suggest he built two shelters near to a freshwater stream, and had access to a viewpoint over the harbour from where he would be able to watch for approaching ships and ascertain whether they were friend or foe. Accounts written shortly after his rescue describe him shooting goats with a gun rescued from the ship, and eventually learning to outrun them, eating their meat and using their skins as clothing. He also passed time reading the Bible and singing psalms, and seems to have enjoyed a more peaceful and devout existence than at any other time in his life.

David H Caldwell, National Museums Scotland, is pleased with the results of the dig: “The evidence uncovered at Aguas Buenas corroborates the stories of Alexander Selkirk’s stay on the island and provides a fascinating insight into his existence there. We hope that Aguas Buenas, with careful management, may be a site enjoyed by the increasing number of tourists searching for the inspiration behind Defoe’s masterpiece.”

Alexander Selkirk was born in the small seaside town of Lower Largo, Fife, Scotland in 1676. A younger son of a shoemaker, he was drawn to a life at sea from an early age. In 1704, during a privateering voyage on the Cinque Ports, Selkirk fell out with the commander over the boat’s seaworthiness and he decided to remain behind on Robinson Crusoe Island where they had landed to overhaul the worm-infested vessel. He cannot have known that it would be five years before he was picked up by an English ship visiting the island.

A BRITISH amateur diplomat tried to stop World War II by offering Nazi Germany rule over Europe if the British Empire could rule the rest of the world, according to secret files declassified today.

James Lonsdale-Bryans, a well-educated fascist sympathiser, flew to Rome in the early days of the war to try to negotiate the deal with Ulrich von Hassell, the German ambassador to Italy.

The Security Service files reveal that the Foreign Office was aware of what Lonsdale-Bryans was up to and their unease about his actions.

“It would appear that Bryans may be taking part in unofficial discussions for the benefit of troops under the auspices of education officer,” the file read.

“Bryans’ idea is that the world ought to be divided into two parts.

“That Germany should be given a free hand in Europe and that the British Empire should run the rest of the world.

“I am not sure that this is a very desirable point of view to publish at the present time.”

Lonsdale-Bryans contacted the then-foreign secretary Lord Edward Halifax with his plans, triggering panic among officials.

“Bryans is a talkative and indiscreet fellow who is in possession of a story which he delights in telling and which if told publicly would be likely to cause embarrassment to the Foreign Office,” the files read.

To the further annoyance of officials, he also tried to discuss his plans with top US officials, including Dwight D. Eisenhower, who during the war was Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe.

That led Britain to reassure the Americans that Lonsdale-Bryans was “unreliable though not disloyal”.