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SHIPS AND BOATS OF EGYPT

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Bianca
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« Reply #45 on: November 23, 2008, 02:21:23 pm »








Khufu’s wooden boat



The best-known actual example of a large papyriform wooden boat was discovered in the 1950’s in a
sealed pit adjacent to the Great Pyramid of Khufu, Pharaoh of the Fourth Dynasty (2589 - 2566 B.C.)
at Giza.

Several empty boat pits had been found at Giza, but when the sealed pit was opened it was found to
contain a huge, well-preserved, dismantled boat. The timbers lay in thirteen clear layers, along with
huge quantities of rope. The contents of the pit had been placed there in some order and gradually some
idea of the nature of construction was revealed. The excavators were faced with an enormous three-dimen-
sional jigsaw, whose unique pieces, whilst in good condition, were fragile because of their age.




The restored boat of Khufu is large by any standards, with a length of 43.63 metres and a width
of 5.66 metres. As a comparison, the keel length of H.M.S. Victory, Nelson’s flagship at the battle
of Trafalgar in 1805 A.D., is 45.7 metres. The boat is built of cedar planks, some fourteen centime-
tres in thickness. Cedar, which could provide planks up to 20 metres in length, was imported from
the Lebanon.

The hull, with the planks lashed together by rope, not pegged or nailed, is elegantly papyriform.
The boat has no mast or sail and was provided with twelve oars and steered by two larger oars
at the stern, one on either side of the vessel.

On the deck, near the bows, is a small wooden baldachin’ or canopy. This would have provided
shelter from the sun for any lookouts at the bow of the ship. The windowless wooden cabin has
two chambers inside, and would have offered some privacy for its occupant. It has a curved roof,
and a wooden framework, which was probably covered with a linen canopy, making it well insulated
against the heat. The high bow and sternposts are carved to imitate tied bundles of papyrus. Both
are purely ornamental and are made to fit over the end timbers of the bow and stern.

The boat could be used without these decorative features, which may have been reserved for
special occasions.

Wear on parts of the boat indicate that it was actually used on the river. It may have been the boat the
king used in life, buried for use in his afterlife to sail the heavens as a God, or it may have been used only
at his funeral. A second sealed pit has been found at the site that, it is known, contains a second dismant-
led boat. Plans are currently awaited for its excavation.
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« Reply #46 on: November 23, 2008, 02:26:55 pm »



         

          One of the Dahshur boats

          (photograph R. Partridge)

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« Reply #47 on: November 23, 2008, 02:30:56 pm »








Working vessels



For evidence of other Old Kingdom vessels, we have to refer to the many reliefs that have
survived.

Most of the boats shown in connection with the kings or in religious scenes appear to be similar
in appearance to the boat of Khufu. Working sailing boats, which carried the produce and people
on the river are smaller and stronger, with forked supports at either end of the central cabin, used
to support the mast when it was lowered. The mast was not fixed permanently into place and could
be raised when the use of the sail was required and lowered when the boat was propelled by oars.
Steering of these vessels was by means of oars and some are shown with multiple steering oars, in-
stead of the usual pair.

By the Sixth Dynasty, the working boats appear to be built with flat bottoms, which gave them far
more space below decks for cargo and also made them easier to construct. Many tomb scenes sur-
vive which show small loaded cargo boats propelled by oars and larger vessels under sail.

Six actual Middle Kingdom boats were discovered in the 1890’s at Dahshur, plus a sledge that had
been used to drag the boats from the water. These boats have been associated with King Senuse-
ret III because of their discovery in part of his funerary complex and they were probably royal barges,
used either in his lifetime or for his funeral. The hulls of the boats are all about ten metres in length,
with a broad cross-section, shallow body and narrow tapered ends.

The bows and sterns of the boats have slots that were for the attachment of decorative stem and
sternposts, now missing from all the boats.

Unlike the boat of Khufu, the planks of the hull of the Dahshur boats are not held together by rope,
but by wooden butterfly shaped pieces of wood. With the surviving examples of the boat of Khufu
and the Dahshur boats, we have evidence of how the larger and smaller vessels were made.

The skills of the boat builders in constructing a hull from large or small pieces of timber can be seen
and these techniques were probably used for the remainder of Egyptian boat building history.
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« Reply #48 on: November 23, 2008, 02:33:50 pm »




             

              MODEL BOAT FROM TUTANKHAMEN'S TOMB
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« Reply #49 on: November 23, 2008, 02:36:24 pm »








Sea cargoes?



It would have been the wooden boats that undertook the long sea journeys and which carried
the heaviest cargos on the river Nile, including stone for building from Aswan.

To give additional strength, the hulls of larger vessels from the end of the Old Kingdom onwards
were equipped with thick ropes running around the hull, just below deck level. These rope streng-
theners are known as ‘truss-girdles’. Yet more rigidity was provided by a ‘hogging-truss’, a thick
rope that ran above the deck, from the bow to the stern. The hogging-trusses could be tightened
as necessary and helped to prevent the bows and sterns of the ships from sagging.

We know that the ancient boats were capable of carrying large cargoes. Queen Hatshepsut of the
Eighteenth Dynasty organised a large trading expedition to the land of Punt (which is presumed to
be on the Red Sea coast). Detailed scenes from her funerary temple at Deir el Bahri show the boats
and their cargoes. Probably built of cedar, her boats were around twenty-five metres long, with room
on either side for fifteen oarsmen. The shape of the hull is semi-papyriform and the sternpost of the
boats ends in a large, decorative papyrus flower. A small platform is provided at the bow and the stern,
but there is no central cabin. A large, thick hogging-truss runs the length of the hull to both strengthen
it and keep its shape. The ends of the large deck beams can be seen projecting through the hull above
the water level. We know that Egyptian wooden boats must have also sailed on the open sea, trading
with the countries around the eastern Mediterranean.

It is also from the reign of Hatshepsut that we have records of the building of some of the largest wooden
vessels in Ancient Egypt, or indeed in the Ancient or Modern world. Huge barges were built to transport her
obelisks from Aswan, where they were quarried, to Thebes, where they were set up in the Temple of Amun
at Karnak.

The surviving standing obelisk of Hatshepsut at Karnak is 29.6 metres high and, with an estimated weight of
323 tons, is amongst the largest obelisk ever erected.

It is estimated that the obelisk barge may have been over ninety-five metres in length and thirty-two metres
wide. Too large to be equipped with a sail and not very manoeuvrable, the barge would have been towed down stream by smaller vessels, also using the current, from Aswan to Thebes.

Hatshepsut’s relief showing the barge is very detailed, but it is still unclear if it was built to carry
one or two obelisks. A new discovery of a docking area in the granite quarries at Aswan may, when
fully studied, give some indication as to the size of the barge it could hold.
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« Reply #50 on: November 23, 2008, 02:40:39 pm »









Naval battles



In the reign of Ramesses III (1182 - 1151 B.C.), boats were used in a naval battle as is known
from scenes recorded on the walls of the King’s funerary temple at Medinet Habu. Constructed
along traditional lines, these boats nevertheless show several new developments, specifically for
their use in battle. A small platform was built at the top of the mast for the use of lookouts and
also for archers. This is the first recorded example of a ‘crow’s-nest’ in the history of boats.

The boats were fitted with high sides or gunwales, to protect the rowers from enemy attack, in
particular from enemy arrows and spears. In the contemporary illustrations, the rowers are hardly
visible.

A raised gangway appears to run the length of the vessel to provide a fighting platform for the soldiers,
whose main weapon was the bow and arrow. The sails of boats from this period onwards are smaller and
a lower yard is no longer used. To furl the sail, it was pulled upwards to be tied to the upper yard. This
has the effect of leaving the deck area clear for fighting. It is considered that this innovation may have
been introduced from a neighbouring country, such as Greece.

Boats for the remainder of Egypt’s history appear to have continued to be built along the traditional times,
certainly up to the time of the Ptolemaic Period (332 - 30 B.C) although, with trading links around the East-
ern Mediterranean, it is likely that any new developments in ship building techniques
in one country were soon adopted by others.

The boats constructed by the Ancient Egyptians were both functional and elegant.

The boat builders never lost their sense of style and proportion and even the most practical of vessels, such
as the obelisk barges, have fine lines and decorated bow and sternposts. This decoration serves no practical purpose and the ships would have functioned just as well without them, but their builders added just that
little bit extra, turning the boats, on which the prosperity of Egypt depended, into things of beauty.

The author is chairman of the Manchester Ancient Egypt Society and lectures on various aspects
of Egyptology all around the country. He is a regular contributor to Ancient Egypt Magazine and
has written several books, including

'Transport in Ancient Egypt and Fighting Pharaohs:

Weapons and Warfare in Ancient Egypt.'


 
Ancient Egypt Magazine - Volume Four Issue Five
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« Reply #51 on: November 24, 2008, 05:22:34 pm »










                              After 5,000 Year Voyage, World's Oldest Built Boats Deliver --


                  Archeologists' First Look Confirms Existence Of Earliest Royal Boats At Abydos






ScienceDaily
(Nov. 2, 2000) —

A fleet of the oldest built wooden boats in the world, located in the desert sands of Abydos, Egypt-more than eight miles from the river Nile-are painstakingly being excavated by archeologists. The work
is revealing remarkable new evidence about the wealth, power and technological prowess of the earliest days of Egyptian civilization. The work is being conducted under the authority of Egypt's Minister of Culture, Dr. Farouk Hosni, and the Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Dr. Gaballa Ali Gaballa.



To date, 14 of the large vessels, dating from 3000 B.C. and estimated to be between 60 and 80 feet long, have been identified, and a large section of one boat has been exposed, conserved and studied by a team of archeologists from the University of Pennsylvania Museum, Yale University and the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University working under permit from Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities. The conservation component of the Abydos Boats project is financed by the Egyptian Antiquities Project of the American Research Center in Egypt, under its grant from the United States Agency for International Development.

Dr. David O'Connor, the Lila Acheson Wallace Professor of Egyptian Art and Archaeology, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and Curator Emeritus and Research Associate, Egyptian Section, University of Pennsylvania Museum, has been working at Abydos since 1967 and is Project Director for the Abydos Boats project and co-director, with Dr. William Kelly Simpson of Yale University, of the long-running multi-faceted Abydos Expedition.

"Ancient Egypt is a riverine civilization, yet before these boats were discovered, we knew very little-beyond representations on ancient pots-about ancient Egyptian boats earlier than the reign of Khufu, one of the greatest fourth dynasty pharaohs," noted Dr. O'Connor. "These boats provide us with a window into better understanding Egypt at the dawn of its extraordinary, long- lived civilization. Moreover, recent excavations have confirmed our original guess. These boat graves contain actual
and viable boats intended for a king's use in the afterlife. They are in meaning and function the direct ancestors of the famous boat recovered at Khufu's Great Pyramid at Giza and predate Khufu's boat by perhaps as much as 300 years."

The Abydos archaeologists knew as early as 1991 that at least a dozen boat graves existed adjacent
to a massive funerary enclosure for the late Dynasty II (ca. 2675 B.C.) Pharaoh Khasekhemwy. During the May/June 2000 excavation season, a team that included expert conservators and an ancient boat specialist was able to establish that the boats were placed in their graves many years before Khasekhemwy's funerary enclosure was built-so that they were intended for the afterlife of a much earlier dynastic ruler, perhaps even Aha, the first Dynasty I (ca. 2920-2770) ruler of Egypt.
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« Reply #52 on: November 24, 2008, 05:25:30 pm »










And while precise dating, through carbon 14 testing (only accurate to about 200 years), remains to
be determined, early excavation of a ten-foot portion of one of the wooden hulls has already yielded surprising results: the archaeologists now believe the boats were not models, as many mortuary-associated objects could be, but viable vessels which could accommodate as many as 30 rowers. According to boat expert Cheryl Ward, the mode of construction is unique among surviving ancient Egyptian boats. About 75 feet in length and seven to ten feet in width at the widest point, these boats are only about two feet deep, with narrowing prows and sterns. The portion of the boat hull excavated revealed thick wooden planks, lashed together by rope fed through mortises. The seams between the planks were filled with bundles of reeds, while additional reeds carpeted the floor of the boat. Internal framing-a universal aspect of later shipbuilding-is not in evidence, and some of the boats in their graves appear twisted or lopsided, symptomatic of vessels without an internal structure to support them out of the water. Moreover, residue of yellow pigment indicates that these boats were probably painted.

The Associate Director for the Abydos Boats project is Matthew Adams, Research Associate, Egyptian Section, University of Pennsylvania Museum, and the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. "Discovering such a fleet of wooden vessels this early in Egypt's history offers extraordinary insights into the wealth and power of Egypt 5000 years ago and the promise of new information as the boat excavations and conservation efforts continue," said Mr. Adams. "The wood alone tells us so much. Wood was a precious commodity in Egypt, and when we determine the type of wood we'll be able to pinpoint just where it came from-which opens a whole new avenue of understanding about trade, political relationships, and power."

Boats figured largely in ancient Egyptian life, where few people lived far from the life-giving Nile River. The Abydos boats appear to be the prototype of the pharaonic boats that appear, both real and in symbolic form, in funerary contexts much later in Egyptian history. Egyptians believed that the king,
or pharaoh, at his death joined the sun god Ra, sailing in his boat down the heavenly Nile. The most famous and elaborate of these boats-featuring carved prow and stern and a deck cabin-was found in
a boat grave at the Great Pyramid of Giza, attributed to the Pharaoh Khufu (ca. 2500 B.C.). No intact boats had been found of earlier construction-until now.

The preliminary conservation study on the first boat hull is helping to shape future seasons. The archaeologists plan to return to boat excavation work this winter in order to minimize the damage
from the sunlight and heat, which cause quick deterioration of the fragile wood. Although conser-
vators Deborah Schorsch and Lawrence Becker expected and found significant insect damage from wood-eating ants or termites, the wood was still sufficiently intact to be treated and removed, with fragments of rope and much reed material, for storage and study. In future seasons, boat expert
Cheryl Ward will be examining the wooden planks microscopically to glean evidence about the manufacture, transport, and use of the boats prior to their placement in the mud-brick "graves" of Abydos.

Archaeologists hope that material evidence found in and around the boats may eventually help with dating and better understanding the royal fleet-and Egypt in the first dynasty. More than 30 pointed-bottom pottery jars, about a foot tall and of a shape that typically was used to transport beer, were found near one of the boat graves. Excavators found seal impressions, too deteriorated to be legible, from the jars' stoppers; more impressions of this sort are anticipated, and may even yield the name of the king for whom the boats were interred. The team will also be looking for evidence or remains of any boat gear-oars, rudders, dismantled seats, intact prow and stern (the test boat's prow was too disintegrated to provide clear information), as well as evidence for the boats' decoration.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Adapted from materials provided by New York University.
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http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2000/11/001101065713.htm
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« Reply #53 on: November 24, 2008, 05:29:02 pm »



New York University Photo 

Excavations at the Abydos site
south of Cairo began at the turn
of the 20th century.

In 1988, archaeologists discovered
traces of the grave boats.

These conservators work to preserve
the exposed wooden planking. 








                                                        Early Pharaohs' Ghostly Fleet






By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
The NewYork Times
 
Archaeologists have excavated the hull of a boat fit for an ancient Egyptian king's eternal journey in the afterlife.

The 5,000-year-old wooden hull, they say, is the earliest surviving example of a "built" boat, one constructed out
of planks fitted together and representing a major advance in boat-building technology over the dugout logs and reed vessels of more ancient vintage.

The boat — about 75 feet long and 7 to 10 feet wide at the widest part, with narrowing prow and stern and a shallow draft — was examined in detail this summer by American archaeologists at Abydos, 300 miles south of
Cairo. Here the earliest pharaohs known to history were buried, long before the pyramids at Giza, outside Cairo,
or the tombs in the Valley of the Kings, across the Nile from Thebes.

A study of the Abydos boat and at least 13 others buried in parallel, like a fleet riding at anchor near mortuary monuments, is expected to provide scholars with new evidence about the wealth, power and technological
prowess of the earliest royal dynasties of the Egyptian civilization. The boats have not been precisely dated,
but other remains indicate they were associated with pharaohs of the first dynasty, beginning around 3000 B.C.
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« Reply #54 on: November 24, 2008, 05:36:11 pm »



Egyptologists hope to learn more about the significance of boats in ancient Egyptian religion and royal funerary practices, related to the belief that the sun-god Ra traveled by boat through the sky by day and the netherworld by night in cycles of regeneration
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« Reply #55 on: November 24, 2008, 05:38:53 pm »










"I'm thrilled to see an example of early technology like this," said Dr. Cheryl Ward, a nautical archaeologist at Florida State University in Tallahassee who examined a 10-foot-long section of the hull. "In the ancient world, boats were the most complex machines produced. They were one of the premier symbols of the leadership of the pharaoh."

Egyptologists hope to learn from these findings more about the significance of boats in the ancient religion and royal funerary practices, related to the belief that the sun-god Ra traveled by boat through the sky by day and the netherworld by night in cycles of regeneration. Boats were buried near a king's tomb so that in death he, too, could achieve endless renewal.

The Abydos boat, archaeologists said, predated by as much as 400 years the famous boat recovered at Pharaoh Khufu's pyramid at Giza, but in meaning and function it appeared to be a direct ancestor. The boat's design and construction also should provide insights into the craft plying the Nile on more mundane missions in early Egypt.

"Our boat experts say this is an actual and viable boat, not a symbolic one," Dr. David O'Connor of New York University, director of the expedition, said in an interview. "But there's no evidence that any of these boats were ever actually used in water. Would you give a king a used boat?"

An official announcement of the excavations was made in Cairo last week by Farouk Hosni, Egypt's minister of culture, and Dr. G. A. Gaballa, head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities. The council licensed the work at Abydos by archaeologists from the University of Pennsylvania Museum, Yale University and New York University's Institute of Fine Arts.

"It's tremendous news," said Dr. Rita E. Freed, an Egyptologist at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, who was not involved in the project. "This is clearly a boat technology the Egyptians would have used in daily life. It also shows their abilities for organization and technology."

Until now, the only evidence of such ancient Egyptian boats came from illustrations on pottery and tomb walls, and archaeologists could not be sure how realistic these were. Of the few actual boats to survive, the oldest had been two found in boat- shaped pits next to Khufu's pyramid at Giza; each was 142 feet long.

"The rarity of royal boat burials suggests that kings' burials might have more often included boat models, magically empowered substitutes for the real thing," Dr. O'Connor said. The tomb of Tutankhamen, who lived much later, in the 18th dynasty, more than 3,300 years ago, contained 35 boat models.

Boats of one sort or another have a much deeper history. Dugout boats from about 6000 B.C. have been uncovered in Denmark, and rafts and reed vessels were probably in use for thousands of years earlier than that. People were presumably floating some kind of boats as early as 50,000 years ago, or how else could humans have first settled Australia.

"We don't see built planked boats until we get to Egypt, not until the start of urban civilizations," Dr. Ward said in an interview. "It takes a lot of skill to build a boat like the ones at Abydos, something we don't think about in our day of power tools. There had to be trained workers shaping the wood, usually with stone tools. It took planning and discipline and a higher level of organization in a society, which the Egyptians must have had 5,000 years ago."

Archaeologists have been digging the ruins of Abydos since the turn of the 20th century. In 1988, while exploring a northern sector of the site, more than a mile away from the royal tombs, the American team, including Dr. O'Connor, found lines of mud brick peeking from the wind- deposited sand. At first, they took these to be buried walls. After closer examination three years later, Dr. O'Connor reported what he then called a "startling and significant discovery." Each "wall" turned out to be part of an enormous boat "grave."

Preliminary excavations in 1991 revealed 12 such graves, each lined and topped with brick and each enclosing a wooden boat. The outline of each grave was the shape of a boat. Each grave surface was originally coated with mud plaster and whitewash, giving the impression of a great white fleet, and a small boulder had been placed near the prow or stern of several graves, the suggestion of anchors. Dr. O'Connor said the placement of the boulders "seems deliberate, not random."

Except for a few scattered probes to determine the presence of actual boats, archaeologists made no attempt then to excavate any of the graves. They needed to make arrangements for the conservation and perhaps reconstruction of any excavated boats, and to obtain permission from the Egyptian authorities. All this came together in time for last summer's digging season.

The excavators started by clearing a three-foot-deep covering of sand off the No. 10 boat. Dr. Matthew Adams, a Penn archaeologist and the associate project director, said this particular grave was chosen because part of its buried hull had already been exposed in 1991 and appeared to be revealing, even though it was in a poor state of preservation. All the better, the team figured, for investigating what it will take to preserve the remains from more promising graves.
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« Reply #56 on: November 24, 2008, 05:39:59 pm »










For about five days, Dr. Adams recalled, excavators carefully probed the midsection of the buried boat beneath its mud brick topping. They uncovered wooden planks, the remains of rope and reed matting and bundles. Wood-eating ants had been busy, and in many places all that was left of the hull was frass, the ants' excrement.

"The frass retained the shape of the original wood," Dr. Adams said. "So we could see from the frass as well as the remaining wood the profile of the original wooden hull."

Noting that the type of wood has yet to be identified, Dr. Adams said: "Wood was a precious commodity in Egypt, and when we determine the type of wood, we'll be able to pinpoint just where it came from, which opens a whole new avenue of understanding about trade, political relationships and power."

After examining the hull section, Dr. Ward said the flat-bottomed boat reflected "a previously undocumented style of construction" for that period. The boat appeared to be built from the outside in, in contrast to the later shipbuilding technique of starting with an internal frame. The thick planks were lashed together by rope fed through mortises. The seams between planks were filled with bundles of reeds to make the boat watertight. Additional reeds carpeted the floor.

Judging by the length of these boats, from 60 to 80 feet, she said, they probably would have been propelled by as many as 30 rowers. Two additional boat graves were found during the most recent excavations.

Dr. O'Connor said that other artifacts found in and around the boat graves might eventually help with dating and understanding this royal fleet. Archaeologists have already uncovered more than 30 pottery jars, each about a foot tall and of a shape that typically was used for beer, and some seal impressions. So far, none of the remains bear the name or other identifying clues of the king for whom the boats were interred.

The current assumption is that all the Abydos boats were buried at about the same time and were intended for the use of one king in the afterlife. But which king?

Archaeologists have ruled out what once appeared to be the most likely candidate, Pharaoh Khasekhemwy from the late second dynasty, about 2675 B.C. The ruins of a huge enclosure of thick mud-brick walls, standing near the row of boat graves, has been associated with the performance of sacred rituals for this particular pharaoh after his burial at Abydos. But further research has established that the graves lie in a lower stratum of sediment, and thus probably were dug sometime during the first dynasty, which extended from about 3000 B.C. to 2800.

Dr. O'Connor said that the boat graves might have been associated with Pharaoh Djer of the first dynasty, whose probable cult center has been uncovered in the vicinity, or even to Aha, the first of the first dynasty rulers of Egypt, whose reign began shortly after 3000 B.C.

Whomever they were intended to venerate, the Abydos boats were an impressive expression of religion and power by the ancestors of Egyptians who would later outdo themselves in temples and pyramids throughout the land.

"This is the oldest, largest and most amazing waste of labor we know of up to this time," Dr. Ward said. "This is an incredible investment by the government in validating itself by burying all these boats."

But the mode of expression was based on the Egyptian concept of life after death. "Virtually everything the Egyptians did on this scale was religious," said Dr. Freed of the Boston museum.

The American team plans to return to the site this winter to make a more detailed inspection of the wood and other material and also to continue treating the fragile wood to prevent its deterioration. Dr. Deborah Schorsch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is in charge of the conservation work, which is supported by a grant from the United States International Development Agency in Egypt.

In two years, archaeologists expect to dig up another of the Abydos boats, one they have reason to think is better preserved. Egyptologists may then have an even better idea of what it was like to cruise the Nile 5,000 years ago and how people prepared their kings for the ultimate voyage.
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« Reply #57 on: November 24, 2008, 05:42:50 pm »




MODEL BOAT
NORTH CAROLINA MUSEUM OF ART








                                        Ships and Boats - The archaeological evidence
 





    The slow flowing Nile was ideal for transportation and from earliest times Egyptians built boats for transportation, fishing and enjoyment.  Their importance in every day life is reflected in the role they played in mythology and religion.

    Little is left of actual boats. Remains of Old Kingdom boats were found at Tarkhan and Abydos, and
King Khufu's ship is well known and demonstrates best how ships were built during that period.

    The first dynasty boats found at Abydos were about 25 metres long, two to three metres wide and about sixty centimetres deep, seating 30 rowers. They had narrowing sterns and prows and there is evidence that they were painted. They do not seem to have been models but actual boats built of wood too much decayed to analyse, some suspect that it was cedar, others deny this. Thick planks were lashed together by rope fed through mortises. The seams between them were caulked with reeds. The boats did not have any internal framing and were twisted when they were uncovered.

    Egypt abounds with pictures and models of boats and ships. The walls of temples and tombs at Deir el Bahri and Medinet Habu are covered with them, but very little is known, about how New Kingdom ships were actually put together.
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« Reply #58 on: November 24, 2008, 05:47:33 pm »



List of offerings of boats

Source:
W.S.Smith, The Coffin of Prince Min-khaf,
Journal of Egyptian Archaeology,
Volume XIX, 1933
 








    Sometimes we know what the boats looked like without knowing what they were called, at others we have their names but do not really have much of a clue what they looked like. On the coffin of the 4th dynasty prince Minkhaf, which was found in a mastaba in the eastern Giza cemetery, there are inscriptions of offerings and among them a list of boats:

1000 SAbt-boats, 1000 wAHt(?)-boats, 1000 sTr-boats, 1000 nHbt-boats

W.S.Smith, The Coffin of Prince Min-khaf, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Volume XIX, 1933


    W.S.Smith surmised that the nHbt with its determinatives of 'lotus-flower' and 'boat' was probably a light reed boat.

    Models of logboats from a Giza tomb and from a site in the Delta have survived, but dugouts were probably very unusual, as trees of suitable size and timber quality were rare in Egypt.
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« Reply #59 on: November 24, 2008, 05:51:58 pm »



Model of ship, with crew hoisting or trimming the sail.
 
(Source: Pierre Montet,
La vie quotidienne en Egypte)








                                                        The state involvement






    A number of pharaohs saw the need for a strong navy, i.e. Snefru who according to the Palermo Stone built 100-cubit ships of meru wood and 60 sixteen-barges before hacking up the land of the Negro, bringing of 7,000 prisoners, and 200,000 large and small cattle, Thutmose III, the architect of the empire in Asia, Necho II struggling with the Babylonians and Ramses III, who had to contend with the Sea Peoples. Ramses wrote a 'report' to Amen

I built you ships, freight ships, arched ships with rigging, plying the Big Green (the sea). I manned them with archers, captains and innumerable sailors, to bring the goods of the Land of Tyre and the foreign countries at the end of the world to your storage rooms at Thebes the Victorious.

    The royal fleet was supervised by the Chief of the Royal Ships, an important administrative rather than military position, which under the 26th dynasty seems to have included the responsibility for the taxation of merchandise transported on the Nile.

    Under Thutmose III the butler Nebamen and under Amenhotep II another butler, Suemniut, were given the office; and in a later era of economical and political growth, the Saite Period, the Overseer of the Scribes of the Magistrates Tjaenhebu, and, under Ahmose II, Hekaemsaf and Psammetik-mery-Ptah filled the post. A like title, Chief of the Ships of the Lord of the two Lands, was bestowed upon one Paakhraef.

    Temple fleets were similarly organized: The priests of Amen appointed a Chief of the ships of Amen, the servants of Ptah a Chief of the Ships of the House of Ptah.

    Egyptian seagoing ships were inferior to those used by other peoples, despite remarkable feats achieved, among them the expeditions along the eastern coast of Africa during the reign of Hatshepsut at the beginning of the 15th century BCE and the crossing of the Indian Ocean with seventy metre long ships in the times of Ramses III 300 years later. From the 20th dynasty onwards the Egyptians began to copy ships used by their rivals.

    Many trade and exploration ventures were initiated by the administration, such as the voyages to Punt under Hatshepsut and the circumnavigation of Africa by Phoenician sailors under Necho.

    Private ownership of ships existed at least during the First Intermediate Period, documented by biographical inscriptions. The weakness of the state and its consequent inability to build ships needed for the transportation of people and goods stimulated private enterprise.

    During the Late Period Greeks and Phoenicians spread along the Mediterranean coast, building colonies. The Ionians and Carians settled in the Delta and their centre of Naukratis became an important port and was encouraged by a number of pharaohs.
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