Ancient Egyptian Boats (First Dynasty) – Abydos

The Abydos boats were discovered in 2000. At first glance they appear to be a great white, ‘ghostly’ fleet of 14 boat images in the desert sand. They are not the oldest boat remains to be discovered in Egypt as is sometimes proclaimed, but they are extremely important to the history of Egyptian boat design and nautical architecture.

Contents

Discovery

On Halloween, 2000, the University of Pennsylvania Museum, Yale University Expedition to Abydos, Egypt issued a press release in which they described the discovery of the royal solar boats at Abydos.[1] At a site a mile distant from the royal tombs, lines of mud brick uncovered by blowing sand were first noticed in 1988. Although, the Abydos boats are not the oldest boat remains to be discovered in Egypt, nor are they the world's first boats as is sometimes proclaimed, they are extremely important to the history of boat design and nautical architecture. Understandably, these brick remains at Abydos were first thought to be walls. In 1991, an important clarification was made. A research consensus decided that these bricks were remnants of ancient walls after all, but not in the usual sense. They were the boundaries for more than a dozen ship burials from an early dynasty. Each ship grave had its own brick boundary walls. The outline of each grave was in the shape of a boat, and the surface of each was covered with mud plaster and white wash. Small boulders at the prow or stern of each grave represented anchors. A great white, ‘ghostly’ fleet of 14 boats had been found in the desert. Because of the fragility of the boat remains, almost no excavation was done initially as the situation had to be carefully studied for future conservation.[2]

Design and construction

The one exception to look but don't touch' was boat no.10 which the desert wind was slowly uncovering. For five days, archeologists carefully examined the midsection. They uncovered wooden planks, disintegrated rope and reed bundles. Wood eating ants had reduced much of the hull to frass (ant excrement) but the frass had retained the shape of the original hull. The midsection of this boat revealed the construction methods used and confirmed the oldest ‘planked’ constructed boat yet discovered. No.10’s construction revealed that the boat was built from the outside in, there was no internal frame. Averaging 75’ long and 7’-10’ wide at their greatest width, these boats were only about two feet deep with narrow prow and stern. Several boats were white plastered as were the Abydos tombs, and no.10 was painted yellow.[3] “One of the most important indigenous woodworking techniques was the fixed Mortise and tenon joint. A fixed tenon is made by shaping the end of one timber to fit into a mortise (hole) that is cut into a second timber. A variation of this joint using a free tenon eventually became one of the most important features in Mediterranean and Egyptian shipbuilding. It creates a union between two planks or other components by inserting a separate tenon into a cavity (mortise) of the corresponding size cut into each component." [4]

Seams between planks were filled with reed bundles, reeds also covered the floor of each Abydos boat. Without internal framing, some of these boats became twisted, as was unavoidable without an internal skeleton for support when out of the water. The wood of the Abydos boats was local Tamarix - tamarisk, salt cedar - not cedar from Lebanon which was used for Khufu’s Solar Barque and favored for shipbuilding in Egypt in later dynasties.[5]

Lebanon cedar was used for the poles and beams of the Umm el-Qa'ab tombs and had already been imported earlier. Pigment residues hinted at bright colors. The wood planks were painted yellow on their outside and traces of white pigment have also been found.[6] “A part of the mud brick casing suggests that there could have been a support for poles/pennants on top of the boats, as in the boats depicted on pottery or atop the archaic shrines onto some mace heads/palettes and in the HK loc. 29A cultural center.” .[7]

This technology for ship construction persisted in Egypt for more than one thousand years and the standardization of this earliest phase of plank boat construction in Egypt is striking.[8]

The use of unpegged joints seems odd, if not eccentric, and is not found in well established, ancient Mediterranean shipbuilding traditions. This approach allowed Egyptian boats used in trade to be easily disassembled, the planks transported at least 115 km through the desert and then re-assembled to be used on important trading routes such as those in the Red Sea.[9] There are pictographs of boats dating from Predynastic Egypt and the First Dynasty along the first half of the route in the desert known to be used to reach the Red Sea from Upper Egypt. A sketch on an Ostracon found at depicts priests carrying the Solar Bark of Amun across the desert.[10] This rock art is not only evidence for take apart, portable boats, but has magical significance as well.

Ritual significance

The Abydos boats were found in boat graves with their prows pointed towards the Nile.[11] They are the royal boats intended for the Pharaoh in the afterlife, they are his ships for travel in this realm.[12] Umm el-Qa'ab, is a royal necropolis that is about one mile from the Abydos boat graves where early pharaohs were entombed. October 27, 2008, retrieved October 28, 2008.

The Abydos boats are the predecessors of the great solar boats of later dynasties upon which the Pharaoh joined the Sun God Ra and together they journeyed down the sacred Nile during the day.[13] They would have had many of the important attributes and metaphors that accrued to the Solar Barks of later dynasties, indeed perhaps should be called Solar Boats of an earlier design.[14] The magnificent Khufu ship, that was built for the Pharaoh Khufu - Cheops - about c.2500 BC., is usually identified as the earliest Solar Ship. It was buried in a pit at the foot of the Great Pyramid at Giza.[15]

The Abydos boat graves were adjacent to a massive funerary enclosure for the late Dynasty II (ca. 2675 B.C.) Pharaoh Khasekhemwy at Abydos which is 8 miles from the Nile. Umm el-Qa'ab, is a royal necropolis at Abydos, Egypt where early pharaohs were entombed. However, these boat graves were established earlier than late in Dynyasty II, perhaps for the afterlife journeys of Hor-Aha, the first king (ca. 2920-2770) of the First Dynasty of Egypt, or Pharaoh Djer also of Dynasty I. Two more recently located mortuary discoveries have been identified as those of King Aha, who may been the son of the famous King Narmer to whom the first unification of Upper and Lower Egypt is often attributed.

First Dynasty ships

The Abydos boats are not the only find of First Dynasty ships. 19 boat burials were found at Helwan by Z. Saad, but only four out of these were poorly published. Six boat graves were found at Saqqara by Walter Bryan Emery of which again only four were published. Finally two full-sized model boats made out of clay are known from Abu Roash Hill.[16] Helwan is a huge cemetery field 20 km south of Cairo adjoining Saqqara in which at least 10,000 tombs have been cataloged. The size of Helwan indicates a very large population for Early Dynastic Memphis. Almost all the tombs date from Dynasty 0 through the Third Dynasty. There are 19 elite tombs where 1st Dynasty funeral boat burials have been discovered that resemble those at Abydos, but little published information is available.[17]

Footnotes

  1. ^ After 5,0000 Years, The World’s Oldest Boats Deliver. October 31, 2000, retrieved from Internet Archive October 29, 2008.
  2. ^ Early Pharaohs' Ghostly Fleet. by Tim Stoddard, October 31, 2000, retrieved April 18, 2007..
  3. ^ Boat-building and its social context in early Egypt- interpretations from the First Dynasty boat-grave cemetery at Abydos. By Cheryl Ward. Antiquity 80: 118–129, 2006; p.121, 123, retrieved March 17, 2008.
  4. ^ Early ship construction - Khufu's solar boat, January, 2001, retrieved October 29, 2008.
  5. ^ Boat-building and its social context in early Egypt: interpretations from the First Dynasty boat-grave cemetery at Abydos, by Cheryl Ward. Antiquity 80: 118–129, 2006, p.125; retrieved March 17, 2008
  6. ^ Early Dynastic Funerary boats at Abydos North, by Francesco Raffaele, n.d, retrieved October 29, 2008.
  7. ^ Early Dynastic Funerary boats at Abydos North, by Francesco Raffaele, n.d, retrieved October 29, 2008.
  8. ^ Boat-building and its social context in early Egypt: interpretations from the First Dynasty boat-grave cemetery at Abydos, by Cheryl Ward. Antiquity 80: 118–129, 2006, p.124; retrieved March 17, 2008. “No mortise-and-tenon joints or pegs were used to join the edges of planks that made up the angular bottom and sides of Boat 10. Instead, the planks relied completely on lashing threaded through angled and L-shaped channels in transverse lines to create the hull. The planks are of even thickness (6cm), and the regular size of the channels and their positions relative to plank edges was remarkable. Lashing channels have an average length of one Egyptian palm (about 7.5cm) and a thickness of one digit (about 1.9cm), the same dimensions as lashing channels cut into timbers from the site at Lisht. Most of the lashing had decayed, but a broad, woven strap filled several channels. It was startling to realize that the strap shows the same weave and approximately the same dimensions as similar remains from Lisht planks created more than a thousand years later.”
  9. ^ Boat-building and its social context in early Egypt: interpretations from the First Dynasty boat-grave cemetery at Abydos, by Cheryl Ward. Antiquity 80: 118–129, 2006, p.124; retrieved March 17, 2008. “Rather than locking joints, the Egyptian boat-builders fastened planks with symmetrically placed ligatures, single ‘stitches’ connecting adjacent planks, and used joggles, small notches cut along plank edges to fit precisely into a recess on an adjacent plank, to effectively stop slippage. Egyptian boats were intended to be taken apart...”
  10. ^ Iconography and the Interpretation of Ancient Egyptian Watercraft, by Noreen Doyle, 1998. Digitized by Texas A & M University, 2004, p. 83, retrieved February 25, 2008.
  11. ^ Early Dynastic Funerary boats at Abydos North, by Francesco Raffaele, n.d, retrieved October 29, 2008.
  12. ^ After 5,000 Years, The World’s Oldest Boats Deliver. October 31, 2000, retrieved from Internet Archive October 29, 2008.
  13. ^ Solar Ships and Solar Boats. March, 2004, retrieved from Internet Archive October 29, 2008.
  14. ^ Early Pharaohs' Ghostly Fleet. by Tim Stoddard, October 31, 2000, retrieved April 18, 2007. Ra traveled through the night in endless cycles of regeneration..
  15. ^ Solar Ships and Solar Boats. March, 2004, retrieved from Internet Archive October 29, 2008.
  16. ^ A good overview and bibliography for boat graves of the early dynastic period is provided by Vinson, Steve, 1987. Boats of Egypt Before the Old Kingdom, M.A. thesis, Texas A&M University: 193-210.
  17. ^ Helwan, n. d. retrieved February 9, 2009. Although excavation at Helwan began with Zaki Youssef Saad (1901-1982), who was funded by King Faruk, much of the material discovered after the first five years of excavation remains poorly published. There is some late Predynastic material but the vast majority of tombs and finds are Early Dynastic. Work continues, some of it by teams from Macquarie University, Sydney.

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