Aqaba  - Your heart beats faster as the shadowy object appears before you in the deep blue Red Sea - first the outlines of the bow, then the superstructures and mast pointing diagonally toward the water's surface, and finally the rail, overgrown with corals and sponges.

The Lebanese freighter Cedar Pride is lying on its port side in the Gulf of Aqaba like a beached whale, a feast for the eyes of wreck divers. It is the biggest gem in Jordan's glittering crown of reefs, which is what King Abdullah II, then Jordan's crown prince, probably imagined it would be when he had the damaged ship deliberately sunk in 1985.