Ancient Galleys

The generic Roman term for an oar-driven galley warship was "long ship" (Latin: navis longa,
Greek: naus makra), as opposed to the sail-driven navis oneraria (from onus, oneris:
burden), a merchant vessel, or the minor craft (navigia minora) like the scapha.
https://www.ancientportsantiques.com/ancient-ships/ancient-galleys/
Ancient Galleys
From 1500 BC to 1200 BC, the Mycenaeans ruled the Aegean Sea and eastern
Mediterranean as illustrated by Homer’s later epic on Achaeans[0] fighting the
Trojan War.
The oldest representation of a Helladic oared galley is the Gurob model found by
Flinders Petrie in 1920 (Tomb 611 at Gurob, Egypt), and dated 1250-1050 BC[1].
It was re-discovered and analysed by S. Wachsmann[2] in 2012.
Port-side view of the 1920 Gurob ship model (Petrie Museum of Egyptian
Archaeology; p.5 negatives, no. 904). The nearly 40 cm long ship is placed on a
cart, probably for transportation over land. NB: the stern rudder was misplaced on
this picture.
(Source : http://www.vizin.org/Gurob/Gurob_final_4PC/Gurob_VRML_html-
pgs/Gurob_photo-catalogue_home.html )
Port-side view of 2007 3D digital Gurob ship model.

(Source : http://www.vizin.org/projects/gurob/solution.html )
This ship may have been a model of the Homeric eikosoros with two files of 10
rowers. It is believed that Odysseus was possibly sailing on this kind of ship and
that he and his bunch of Mycenaean sailors were raiding the eastern Mediterranean
coasts as far as Egypt where they may have been defeated by Ramsses II around
1278 BC, a few years before the Trojan War[3].
This oared ship is the ancestor of what would later be called a ‘triaconter’
(triakontoros) with two files of 15 rowers, and a ‘penteconter’ (pentekontoros) with
two files of 25 rowers. These ships were respectively around 20 m and 30 m long,
with a beam around 3 m and a draught around 0.5 m. The black hull (pitch/asphalt
covered) induced the Homeric word “black ship”[4].
The Phoenicians would later on include two levels of oarsmen (see Sennacherib
relief below) and the Greeks would include a third level in the famous “trireme”.
While older galleys were meant for transport of ‘rowing warriors’, the trireme was
a true battle-ship with ramming capacity.
Triremes first appear in Ionia and soon become the main type of battle ship in the
Mediterranean area from the end of the 6th until the 4th century BC, then again
with the Romans until the 4th century AD because of their efficiency. The trireme
is considered as a major Greek ancient invention because of its speed,
manoeuvrability, strength and its ease of construction. It is most certainly Athens’
main instrument of conquest at sea in the 5th century BC. The length of the ship is
35 to 40 m, the width is less than 6 m and the draught is around 1 m, for a total
water displacement of 48 tons. 170 oarsmen sit on three levels (or ‘rows’) with 85
oars per ship side. The ship is light and agile and enables the ramming manoeuvre
by means of a bronze ram which is placed on the bow; this leads to the first really
‘naval’ battles. Its cruising speed under oar is around 5 to 7 knots (one knot = one
nautical mile/hour = 1.8 km/h) and its top speed is 8 to 10 knots.
Oars are around 4.2 m long. Oarsmen sit with their back to the bow, like modern
oarsmen. The upper oar rests on an outrigger located in the oarbox, the middle oar
rests on the topwale and the lower oar passes through an oarport.
Each oar rests against a pin (called ‘rowlock’ or ‘thole’) and is attached to it with a
strap (called ‘thong’). Each oarsman owns his oar, his thong and his cushion.
An open ship without an upper deck is called an ‘aphractos’ and a decked ship is
called a ‘kataphractos’.
Trireme OLYMPIAS, in the Naval Tradition Park, Palaio Faliro
See further details in the excellent works of Morrisson, 2000 and of Rankov,
2012[5].
Trireme showing 85 oars copied by Capt. Carlini from the graffito of the House of
Dionysos on Delos Island in 1930-33. The graffito was over 1 m long and surely is
one of the finest pictures of a trireme (Musée de la Marine, Paris).
Galley showing 28 oars copied by Capt. Carlini from the graffito of the House of
Dionysos on Delos Island in 1930-33. If each sketched oar represents 3 levels of
one oarsman, then this ship is a trireme (Musée de la Marine, Paris).
This is all what remains from the graffito copied by Capt. Carlini in the House of
Dionysos on Delos Island in 1930-33. (photo: A. de Graauw at Delos Mus. 2015)
Later on, the Romans built “quinqueremes” of 40 to 45 m length and around 100
ton displacement, with ca 300 oars, each activated by one or two oarsmen.
The number 5 is related to the number of oarsmen per cell (interscalmium)

on one side of the galley:
Trireme: 1+1+1 oarsmen on 3 levels
Quadrireme: 2+2 oarsmen on 2 levels
Quinquereme: 3+2 oarsmen on 2 levels, or 2+2+1 oarsmen on 3 levels
These descriptions are mainly based on an interpretation of reliefs called
“Lenormant” (above, dated 410 BC) and “Pozzuoli” (below, dated 1st c. BC to 1st C.
AD) where three levels of oarsmen can be distinguished:
red on top (thranites),

yellow in the middle (zygites),
green below (thalamites).
The relief of the tomb

of Caius Cartilius Poplicola, 25-20 BC (Ostia Antica)
also explicitly shows three levels of oars.
This approach is most widely accepted at the end of the 20th century.
However, Alec Tilley suggests another approach that is also of interest.

This approach is mainly based on an interpretation of the so-called “Siren vase”
(above, dated ca 480 BC) where only one level of oarsmen is seen.
Note that the port hole of the central oarsman must be somewhat below the port
hole of the lateral oarsman in order not to hinder him (e.g. 10 cm?). This might be
seen on the “Samothrace Victory” (below).
The question may then be asked if this ship may be called trireme as it has groups
of three oarsmen per cell (or room, Latin ‘interscalmium’, is the distance between
two successive thole-pins, 0.88 to 1.05 m acc. to Rankov). Those supporting the
‘Lenormant approach’ (Morrisson, Casson, Murray, etc.) reply that the ship of the
Siren vase is not a trireme but just a ship with three oarsmen on one single level.
Representations of ships with two levels are known also, without excluding the
possibility of having three oarsmen (two on top and one below, which makes it a
trireme) or even four (two on top and two below, which makes it a quadrireme):
Pedestal of Samothrace Victory, starboard side (photo: A. de Graauw at Louvre

Mus. 2016)
The pedestal of the statue ‘Samothrace Victory’, probably a trihemiolia dated 190
BC, (above) shows two levels of port holes. The thole-pin in each port hole seems
to be shown also.
On this relief of ‘Praeneste’ of the second half of 1st c. BC (above) two levels of
oars can be seen with their leather sealing sleeves. Can we ascertain that oarsmen
are on different levels (Casson does it) or on the same level with slightly shifted
port holes like in Tiley’s interpretation of the Siren vase?
The Assyrian so-called ‘Sennacherib’ relief of the 7th century BC (above) shows a
Phoenician ship with two levels of oarsmen (according to Casson).
Punic bireme terracotta model (photo: A. de Graauw at Alicante Mus. 2015).

A model of a terracotta Punic bireme (above, dated ca 300 BC) to be seen in
Alicante’s Museo Arqueologico also shows two levels of oarsmen (length 208
mm).
This somewhat confusing situation is also due to an evolution of definitions in

ancient texts. The older texts mention the Greek word ‘pentecontore’ to designate a
ship with 50 oarsmen on two longitudinal files, that is 25 oarsmen on each side of
the ship. Later texts mention the Latin word ‘trireme’ to designate a ship with 3
oarsmen per cell on each side. In the old definition, one would have said ‘170’ to
designate a trireme, according to the total number of oarsmen on board.
Conversely, a pentecontore with one line of oarsmen per side would be called a
‘monoreme’ or a ‘one’ in the later definition. This change of definition was
probably made necessary by the increasing complexity of the oar systems.
Subsequent larger galleys are therefore designated by their number of oarsmen per
cell on each side of the ship: the ‘six’, ‘seven’, ‘eight’, ‘ten’, etc. until ‘eighteen’,
considering that the ‘twenty’, ‘thirty’ and ‘forty’ may have been double hull ships
(see tables).
Large galleys with up to 9 men per oar will be built, but these monsters will not
survive the battle of Actium (31 BC).
Galley showing 50 oars copied by Capt. Carlini from the graffito of the House of
Dionysos on Delos Island in 1930-33. If each sketched oar represents 2 levels of 9
oarsmen, then this ship would be called an ’18’ and could be Antigonos’ flagship.
(Musée de la Marine, Paris).
This is all what remains from the graffito copied by Capt. Carlini in the House of
Dionysos on Delos Island in 1930-33. (photo: A. de Graauw at Delos Mus. 2015)
Some believe that Caligula made a replica of this ship (ca. 40 AD) which is known
as the ‘Nemi II’ because it was used for naval games on Lake Nemi, north of
Rome. This ship, and a second one, were found burried in the mud on the bottom of
the lake, they were recovered and studied in 1927-32, but unfortunately
disappeared during a fire in 1944[6].
Nemi I ship after Ucelli (1950).
Nemi II ship after Ucelli (1950).

Ca
ligula’s Nemi II ship on Lake Nemi (picture 1930).
Ship size 73 x 24 m, note the size of the persons standing in front of the ship.
The following ships are presented in the 3 tables hereafter:
 known ancient maxi-ships

 other ancient ships
 pm: other galleys
Complete pictures of the details shown above are given hereafter.

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galley, large seagoing vessel propelled primarily by oars. The Egyptians, Cretans,
and other ancient peoples used sail-equipped galleys for both war and commerce. The
Phoenicians were apparently the first to introduce the bireme (about 700 BC), which
had two banks of oars staggered on either side of the vessel, with the upper bank
situated above the lower so as to permit the oars of the upper bank to clear the oars
below. The addition of an outrigger permitted the employment of a third bank of
oars, the rowers of which sat above and outside the other two; such a ship, which was
called a trireme, was probably first constructed about 500 BC by the Greeks.
References to even more banks (for example, the quinquireme) are believed to
indicate a ship of very large size but with no more than two or three banks of oars.
A distinctive body of naval tactics based on the use of war galleys developed in
the Mediterranean Sea from the 5th century BC on. In imitation of contemporary land
warfare, the galleys cruised in columns, generally several abreast. Upon engaging the
enemy they assumed a phalanxlike formation in lines abreast. In this manner each
galley could give protection to its neighbours’ exposed sides. At the same time it could
confront the enemy with its bow, which was equipped with a ram, grappling irons,
and missile-hurling devices.
naval warfare: The age of galley warfare
By late Roman times, war galleys had become sharply differentiated from
merchantmen by their longer, narrower hulls and prow rams. The wider, deeper
hulled merchantmen relied increasingly on the sail, and ultimately all-sail vessels
came into use. Galleys, however, were not entirely replaced for commerce even in
late medieval times. More expensive (because of the larger crews) but more
maneuverable, the galley remained the principal ship for peace and war into the High
Middle Ages. The Vikings’ longships were small galleys with up to 10 oars on a side
and a square sail and were capable of carrying 50 or 60
men. Byzantium, Venice, Genoa, and other medieval sea powers built much more
elaborate galleys; by the 13th century Italian galleys were trading in Flanders and
England and on the northwest coast of Africa. In 1291 two Genoese galleys were lost
seeking a sea route to the Indies via the West African coast.
Though the advent of the lateen (fore-and-aft) sail and the stern rudder rendered the
galley obsolete for commerce, it retained its military importance into the 16th
century. It played the leading role at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571.
The galley’s last historic role was as a convict ship, to which felons were sentenced in
France and elsewhere into the 18th century. Earlier, prisoners of war had sometimes
been used to man galleys, even though free citizens, who could be relied on in battle,
were understandably preferred.
https://factsanddetails.com/world/cat56/sub404/entry-6147.html
ANCIENT EGYPTIAN SHIPS
The ancient Egyptians used vessels powered by sails, oars and both. Their
boats lacked rudders and instead were steered with a pair of stern mounted
oars. Egypt was crisscrossed by canals and boats of various sizes were use
on the Nile, the canals and the sea. The oldest crafts were built from
papyrus. Later wooden boats became the norm. Large yachts were used to
move people up and down the river. Cargo ships plied the Nile and the sea.
The most elaborate vessels were buried with pharaohs for their journey to
the afterlife and were perhaps never used as real boats.
In ancient times, boats were expressions of technology in its most
advanced form. A vase painting of a reed boat with a pole mast and a
square sail indicated that the Egyptians had been using sailing vessels as
early as 3500 B.C. Most early Egyptian boats were built for going up and
down the Nile. They were not strong enough to handle traveling in the open
sea. The oldest known boat is a dugout found in Denmark dated to 6000
B.C. Scientists believe some kind of boat was used by ancient people to
reach Australia at least 50,000 years ago.
Images from the tomb of To, a 5th dynasty official buried in Saqqara offers
insight into how Egyptian wooden boats were built. In the early stages tree
trunks were trimmed and smoothed with an adz. The logs are sawed into
planks and holes were cut into the planks with chisels and mallets. Similar
method are still used today.
The sun god, ancient Egyptian believed, used two boats to travel through
the heavens: one for day and one for night. Pharaohs were buried with two
boats to assist them in their journey to the afterlife. The pharaohs, when
they were living , enjoyed hunting waterbirds and hippopotamus from boats
and no doubt hoped to continue the hobby in the afterlife. Hunting scene
with boats are featured in many Egyptian tombs.
Ancient Egyptian Ships Used to Carry the Dead, See Funerals
Categories with related articles in this website: Ancient Egyptian History

(32 articles) factsanddetails.com; Ancient Egyptian Religion (24
articles) factsanddetails.com; Ancient Egyptian Life and Culture (36
articles) factsanddetails.com; Ancient Egyptian Government, Infrastructure
and Economics (24 articles) factsanddetails.com
Websites on Ancient Egypt: UCLA Encyclopedia of

Egyptology, escholarship.org ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook:
Egypt sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Discovering
Egypt discoveringegypt.com; BBC History:
Egyptians bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians ; Ancient History
Encyclopedia on Egypt ancient.eu/egypt; Digital Egypt for Universities.
Scholarly treatment with broad coverage and cross references (internal and
external). Artifacts used extensively to illustrate
topics. ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/digitalegypt ; British Museum: Ancient
Egypt ancientegypt.co.uk; Egypt’s Golden Empire pbs.org/empires/egypt;
Metropolitan Museum of Art www.metmuseum.org ; Oriental Institute
Ancient Egypt (Egypt and Sudan) Projects ; Egyptian Antiquities at the
Louvre in Paris louvre.fr/en/departments/egyptian-antiquities; KMT: A
Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt kmtjournal.com; Ancient Egypt
Magazine ancientegyptmagazine.co.uk; Egypt Exploration
Society ees.ac.uk ; Amarna Project amarnaproject.com; Egyptian Study
Society, Denver egyptianstudysociety.com; The Ancient Egypt
Site ancient-egypt.org; Abzu: Guide to Resources for the Study of the
Ancient Near East etana.org; Egyptology Resources fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk
Ancient Egyptian Papyrus Boats

Early boats were made of papyrus reeds which grow in abundance in the
Nile and were also used to make paper-like materials and a host of other
things. Papyrus river crafts had a narrow beam and a high, elegantly
tapered stem and stern posts featured ends made from raised and bound
papyrus. The slender shape was well suited from navigating swift river
currents. Wooden boats that came later had a similar design.
Egyptian barque One of the earliest representations of a papyrus boat is a
clay vessel from the Naqada culture dated to 3500 B.C.. The vessel had two
cabins and 40 oars. A similar vessel was depicted on a small ivory plaque
from 3100 B.C. Small papyrus crafts were widely used to ferry two or three
people at a time across canals. They were also use on the marshes for
hunting and fishing.
The hulls of papyrus boats were much more fragile than the hulls of wooden
boats. Bipedal and A-frame masts are thought to have been used; they
distributed weight over the hull.
The papyrus reed boats are similar to the reed boats used on Lake Titicaca
in Peru and Bolivia. Thor Heyerdahl, of Kon Tiki fame, believed that the
Incas in Peru were descendants of ancient Egyptians. Thor Heyerdahl’s Ra
II expedition attempted to show that the ancient Egyptians may have
arrived in the America’s thousands of years before Columbus. The reed
boats he used were similar to boats depicted on wall paintings from ancient
Egypt and are used today on Lake Titicaca in Peru and Bolivia.
Ancient-Egyptian-Built Boats
The world’s oldest remains of a “built boat,” one constructed with planks
tied together, comes from Egypt and dates to 3000 B.C. The boat were
made from planks fitted together by ropes "sewn" through holes, which in
turn were filled with bundles of reeds to prevent leaks. The early boats had
no keels and were mostly paddled. [Source: John Noble Wilford, New York
Times, October 31, 2000]
The boat was 75 feet long and 7 to 10 feet wide, with a shallow draft and a
narrowing prow and stern. Estimated to have been rowed by 30 men, it was
found in Abydos (300 miles south of Cairo), the first capital of the pharaohs,
and was used in the burial ritual of the of the pharaoh. The ship was found
buried along with 13 other boats.
Dr. Cheryl Ward, an archaeologist at Florida State University, told the New
York Times, “It takes a lot of skill to build a boat like the one 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.”
Ancient Egyptian Mortise and Tenon Boats
A 142-foot-long boat was found buried next to the Great Pyramid of Cheops
of Giza. Known as the royal bark of Khufu, and dated to around 2500 B.C.
around the same time the pyramid was built, it was made with mortise-and-
tenon joints and a frame lashed to the hull that kept the sides from sagging
outward.
Hulls were held together with mortises and tenons (slots and wooden
pieces) that were fit together with great skill. The mortises (slots) were
drilled into the planks. Adjoining planks had mortise in the same places.
Tenons (wooden pieces) were placed in the slots to hold the planks
together. Wooden pegs or copper nails were then hammered into the tenons
to hold them in place. The fit often was so tight that caulking wasn’t
needed.
The Egyptians mass produced linen for sails.
boat from 1900 BC
Advanced Ships in Ancient Egypt

The first known vessels that could handle the waves of the Mediterranean
were boats that had stiffer hulls that appeared around 2400 B.C. These
vessels didn't have a keel but were kept from tipping over by suspension-
bridge-like rope trusses that were attached to upright supports that ran
from the bow to stern. The ships were propelled forward by oars and a tall
sail mounted on a bipedal mast.
Records dating to the time the Pyramids were built describe vessels
traveling to Lebanon to pick up cedar and other valuable woods. An entry
on the Palermo Stone, an early record of ancient events, describes an
expedition of 40 vessels picking up enough logs to construct 170-foot-long
ships. Egyptian ships plied the Red Sea and traveled as far as Punt (near
modern-day Somalia) there is an account of one expedition returning with
80,000 measures of myrrh, 6,000 units of electrum (an alloy of gold and
silver), 2,600 units of wood, and 23,020 measures of unguent.”
Around 1500 B.C. Egyptians learned how to make keels and internally
reinforced hulls. Sails were rigged differently and steering oars were
relocated. Around this time two new kinds of ships emerged: sailing ships
with wider hulls and smaller crews used for transporting goods and long,
narrow oar-driven galleys that were developed for warfare.
Sailing ships transported cargo like wine and olive oil in five- to ten-gallon
amphorae (ceramic jugs). Several vessels of this type and their cargos have
found by archaeologists. A boat used by Queen Hatshepsut to carry
obelisks to Karnak was larger and broader than Admiral Nelson’s “Victory”.
The ancient Egyptian vessel was 200 feet long and 70 feet in beam.
Boats and River Travel in Ancient Egypt

Steve Vinson of the University of Indiana wrote: “Ancient Egyptian boats
are defined as river-going vessels (in contrast with sea-going ships). Their
use from late Prehistory through the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods included
general transportation and travel, military use, religious/ceremonial use,
and fishing. Depending on size and function, boats were built from papyrus
or wood. The oldest form of propulsion was paddling, although there is
some evidence for towing as well. Sailing was probably introduced towards
the end of the late-Predynastic Period. [Source:Steve Vinson, University of
Indiana, Bloomington, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology
2013, escholarship.org ]
“Boats in ancient Egypt were ubiquitous and crucially important to many

aspects of Egyptian economic, political, and religious/ideological life. Four
main categories of uses can be discussed: basic travel/transportation,
military, religious/ceremonial, and fishing. Examples of each can be traced
from the formative period of Egyptian history down to the close of Egypt’s
traditional culture in the fourth century CE. One terminological problem is
to identify a dividing line between “boats” and “ships.” For the purpose of
this article, the term “ship” is arbitrarily taken to mean craft working
entirely or primarily at sea (i.e., on the Red Sea or Mediterranean).
Therefore, we confine ourselves here as far as possible to water craft of
any size that were intended primarily for service on the Nile.”
Herodotus wrote in Book 2 of “Histories”: “The boats in which they carry

cargo are made of the acacia, which is most like the lotus of Cyrene in
form, and its sap is gum. Of this tree they cut logs of four feet long and lay
them like courses of bricks,42 and build the boat by fastening these four
foot logs to long and close-set stakes; and having done so, they set
crossbeams athwart and on the logs. They use no ribs. They caulk the
seams within with byblus. There is one rudder, passing through a hole in
the boat's keel. The mast is of acacia-wood and the sails of byblus. These
boats cannot move upstream unless a brisk breeze continues; they are
towed from the bank; but downstream they are managed thus: they have a
raft made of tamarisk wood, fastened together with matting of reeds, and a
pierced stone of about two talents' weight; the raft is let go to float down
ahead of the boat, connected to it by a rope, and the stone is connected by
a rope to the after part of the boat. So, driven by the current, the raft floats
swiftly and tows the “baris” (which is the name of these boats,) and the
stone dragging behind on the river bottom keeps the boat's course straight.
There are many of these boats; some are of many thousand talents' burden.
97. [Source: Herodotus, “The Histories”, Egypt after the Persian Invasion,
Book 2, English translation by A. D. Godley. Cambridge. Harvard University
Press. 1920, Tufts]
Boat from the Middle Kingdom
Types of Ancient Egyptian Boats

Steve Vinson of the University of Indiana wrote: “A large variety of boat
types can be identified in ancient Egypt, ranging from small papyrus rafts
that might be capable of carrying only a single person, up to extremely
large vessels used for transporting exceptionally large cargoes like
obelisks (see especially the obelisk barge of Hatshepsut pictured at Deir el-
Bahri, which was 120 cubits, or about 60 meters, long). Vessels can also be
divided into ceremonial/official vessels and working vessels.
Ceremonial/official vessels often had the “wjA” profile of a divine bark: that
is, a long, narrow hull with a bent stern decoration and an upright bow post,
best exemplified by the 4th Dynasty Khufu vessel. These decorative posts
were intended to evoke the tied-off ends of papyrus rafts, evoking Egyptian
mythology in which the vessels of the gods appear as papyrus. Actual
working vessels, on the other hand, while adopting a great many sizes and
proportions, were typically broader than ceremonial vessels, generally
lacked purely decorative posts, and typically had greater free-board (that is,
the distance from the surface of the water to the deck).[Source: Steve
Vinson, University of Indiana, Bloomington, UCLA Encyclopedia of
Egyptology 2013, escholarship.org ]
“Prior to the introduction of the sail, probably in the very late Predynastic
Period, pictorial evidence suggests that paddling (i.e., with the paddle held
in the paddler’s hand, not mounted on, or attached to, the vessel in any way
as an oar would be) was the principal method of vessel locomotion,
although there is evidence for towing as well. With the introduction of the
sail, nearly any vessel of any size would appear to have been equipped with
mast and sail. However, ceremonial vessels or military vessels, or vessels
like the personal “yachts” of dignitaries, for which demonstration of wealth
and power, as well as speed and reliability of service were critical,
continued to employ large crews of paddlers or rowers. Vessels primarily
intended for cargo transportation, on the other hand, appear to have had
comparatively smaller crews and to have relied as far as possible on wind
power or towing.
“As one might expect, the Egyptians had a large variety of terms for various
types of river or ocean-going craft, which can rarely be directly identified
with a specific type known to us from the iconographic record. Possibly the
most common word was dpt, an old term that occurs in both the Pyramid
Texts and the Palermo Stone and seems to have been a common word for
almost any type of boat or even ship; the term designates large, sixteen-
framed vessels constructed by Sneferu in the 4th Dynasty and the large Red
Sea ship in the Middle Kingdom Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor (e.g.,
Shipwrecked Sailor 25). One interesting and also very old term is the dwA-
tAwy, or “Praise of the Two Lands” vessel, a term that may have been used
to designate large, ceremonial vessels similar to the Khufu funerary vessel
from the Early Dynastic Period onward.
“Other descriptive terms include terms based on the numbers eight, ten,
and sixteen, which may have been intended to convey a general notion of
the size of a craft, based on the number of internal frames (ribs) the vessel
had. The term aHa, or “that which stands up,” was common from the Middle
Kingdom forward and may be a metonym—i.e., a term designating a mast
that comes to represent the vessel itself. In the New Kingdom, a common
term for a cargo vessel was the wsx, or “broad” vessel. Some New Kingdom
vessel designation may be of foreign origin, particularly the very common
br, which seems to have originally designated vessels used on the
Mediterranean and Red Sea. This name continued to be common into the
Ptolemaic and Roman Periods and was rendered by Greek authors
beginning with Herodotus as “baris.” For Greek authors, a baris appears to
have been a common working Nile boat, and the Demotic word byr, which
underlies the Greek form, also appears most often in this sense. However,
the word appears to designate sea-going ships in the Demotic text of the
Rosetta Stone inscription and also appears once in a Demotic docket to a
Persian Period Aramaic document, there designating what appears to be a
ceremonial vessel.
“Pictorial evidence shows that fishing boats were generally small, able to
be operated by one to five persons. Vessels might be rafts made of papyrus
bundles (e.g., as seen in the papyrus models Y from the Middle Kingdom
tomb of Mekhet-Ra) or made of wood (excellent illustration in the
Ramesside tomb of Ipy). Many illustrations of fishing from boats show
fishermen using various types of nets, sometimes (as in the two Mekhet-Ra
papyrus boat models) with two craft working together. Other methods used
from boats or rafts were spearing and line-fishing. Depictions of fishing are
especially common in the Old Kingdom, but can be found in the Middle and
New Kingdoms as well; documentary evidence for commercial fishing
continues on into the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods, when there is at least
some evidence for women involved in the occupation.”
funerary paddling boat
Boats as a Means of Transportation in Ancient Egypt

Steve Vinson of the University of Indiana wrote: The earliest evidence for
the use of boats in Egypt usually comes in religious contexts— either
funeral (like the common images of boats on Naqada II/Gerzean pots
encountered in Predynastic graves) or in rock art that was, presumably,
executed for ceremonial/magical purposes. That said, the ubiquity of the
images would appear to confirm that boats must have been an increasingly
important part of the daily life of Egyptians in the late Predynastic Period.
[Source: Steve Vinson, University of Indiana, Bloomington, UCLA
Encyclopedia of Egyptology 2013, escholarship.org ]
“The spread of Egypt’s Naqada II/Gerzean throughout the Nile Valley would
have been greatly facilitated by improved river travel; it is probably no
coincidence that images of boats with sails first occur at the very end of
the Predynastic Period, or just at the cusp of the period in which a single
group of rulers was able to extend political power, economic control, and
cultural uniformity throughout the Nile Valley.
“By the Old Kingdom, images of boats carrying every-day cargo, especially
food- stuffs, is common in Egyptian tomb art, and Egyptian texts of many
types—literary as well as documentary—record the use of boats for basic
transportation. Especially common in the written record are mentions of
grain transport and the transportation of stone, both as raw material for
construction or in more-or-less worked forms like columns or obelisks. Both
grain and stone were of prime interest to large governmental and/or temple
bureaucracies, so their prominence in the written and iconographic record
is to be expected. Nevertheless, many other types of cargo can be
documented, including bread, cattle, vegetables, fish, and wood. The
evidence for this sort of basic transportation of every-day commodities is
extremely rich, particularly in the New Kingdom, from when two transport
vessel’s logs are preserved, along with numerous papyri and ostraca that
document shipping of all kinds. Transport shipping on the Nile is even more
copiously documented in the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods, in both Greek
and in Demotic sources.”
Military Use of Boats in Ancient Egypt

Steve Vinson of the University of Indiana wrote: “The connection of boats
with warfare can be traced back to the Predynastic Period. Possibly the
earliest image of boats connected to combat in Egyptian art is the Gebel el-
Arak knife handle, an ivory knife handle apparently of Naqada II/Gerzean
date, which shows two rows of boats of contrasting designs underneath
two registers of men fighting. Because the boats in the upper of the two
rows shows hulls that strongly resemble craft depicted on
contemporaneous representations from Mesopotamia, the Gebel el-Arak
knife handle was once thought to provide strong evidence for the theory of
the infiltration into Egypt around 3100 B.C. of a “Dynastic Race,” perhaps
from in or near the region of Sumer. Supposedly, the maritime invaders of
this “Dynastic Race” will have sailed southeast (!) down the Persian Gulf,
circumnavigated Arabia, entered Egypt on the western Red Sea coast,
portaged their boats through the Eastern Desert (where numerous allegedly
“foreign” boat petroglyphs were found), and then, over time, come to
dominate the indigenous, Predynastic Egyptians and imposed on them a
centralized, literate state. [Source: Steve Vinson, University of Indiana,
Bloomington, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology 2013, escholarship.org ]
“However, the “Dynastic Race” model, first proposed in the late nineteenth
century (in the hey-day of the highly-racially-conscious British imperial
project in Egypt, see Vinson 2004), has long been abandoned on multiple
grounds. It is therefore hard to know exactly what to make of the
Mesopotamian-looking vessels on the knife handle, which are quite
unparalleled in other known examples of Predynastic Egyptian nautical art.
It seems likely that the Mesopotamian imagery seen here is the result of a
range of Mesopotamian cultural importations into late Predynastic Egypt,
probably via Syria, reached by Sumerians during the Uruk Expansion of the
late fourth millennium B.C.. Military conflict between fleets commanded by
Predynastic Egyptians and invading Uruk-era Mesopotamians is probably
not the explanation. On the other hand, whoever executed the Gebel el-
Arak image was certainly familiar with the notion that boats could be used
in warfare.
“In the 1st Dynasty, a petroglyph connected to king Djer at the site Gebel
Sheikh Suliman appears to show Nubian captives or slain surrounding a
boat, which perhaps indicates a water-borne expedition into Nubia. The 6th
Dynasty autobiography of Weni reports the use of boats to launch a sea-
borne attack somewhere off the coast of Syria-Palestine at a place he calls
“Antelope Nose”. Boats must have been used frequently for military
operations, but depictions of such are surprisingly scarce. One excellent,
but rare, example is a group of three rowed river boats shown in a wall
painting from the 11th Dynasty Theban tomb of an official of Mentuhotep I
named Intef. Aside from the rowers, the boats also carry archers and
soldiers armed with shields and battle-axes. Who the enemy is, however, is
unfortunately unclear.
ship with Nubian captives
“At the end of the First Intermediate Period, the Kamose Stela describes
Egyptian troops under the Theban king Kamose moving northward in a
battle fleet from Thebes to attack the Hyksos at Avaris. From the very early
18th Dynasty, the autobiography of Ahmose, son of Ebana, who had made
his career in the military serving aboard combat vessels, describes fighting
from Nile boats both at Avaris (under the command of Kamose’s younger
brother Ahmose, who finally defeated the Hyksos and reestablished
centralized rule in Egypt as first king of the 18th Dynasty) and two
invasions of Nubia in which Nile boats were used to convey Egyptian armies
(under the commands of Amenhotep I and Thutmose I).
“The only naval engagement actually portrayed in Egyptian art is the great
battle against the People of the Sea in the funerary temple of Ramesses III
at Medinet Habu, which appears to have taken place in the Nile Delta, not
in the open sea. It is not, however, clear that any of the vessels involved
are actually “Egyptian,” if by that we mean a vessel built, crewed, and
commanded by Egyptians. It is notable that the ships on both sides of the
battle are rigged with a new, non-Egyptian technology called “brails”
(Venetian-blind-like cords that permitted rapid shortening and easy
reshaping of sails), and the attire of the great majority of “Egyptian”
marines suggests that they could be ethnically or culturally connected to
the invading Sea Peoples. If so, it could be that the “Egyptian” fleet is
actually a mercenary fleet.
“With the demise of the New Kingdom, boats certainly continued to be used
for military purposes on the Nile. The great stela of the Nubian king Piankhy
describes the fleet used to move his troops against his Libyan enemies in
the Egyptian Delta, and the Libyan fleet that tried to stop Piankhy. In the
Saite Period, Egyptians along with Greek and Carian mercenary soldiers
sailed south for a campaign against the Nubians; one expedition is
commemorated by Greek and Carian graffiti on the colossal statues of
Ramesses II at the rock-cut temple of Abu Simbel.”
Religious and Ceremonial Uses of Boats in Ancient

Egypt
Steve Vinson of the University of Indiana wrote: “The use of boats or
images of boats for religious purposes is found throughout Egyptian history,
from the Predynastic Period down to the end of Egypt’s traditional culture in
the fifth century CE. One of the Egyptians’ central religious images was that
of the continuous voyage of the sun god Ra through the sky in his two
barks, the day bark and the night bark. The continual motion of the solar
barks betokened the continued functioning of maat, the basic moral
foundation of the entire universe, including the celestial realm. [Source:
Steve Vinson, University of Indiana, Bloomington, UCLA Encyclopedia of
“One image of a blessed afterlife included joining Ra in his bark. Those

traveling with Ra were assured of rebirth, as the Sun in his bark emerged
every morning from the sky goddess Nut. As a result, images of boats are
ubiquitous in tomb art, especially in the vignettes accompanying the
underworld books in many royal tombs of the Egyptian New Kingdom, which
show the many stages of the night voyage of the Sun.. In fact, the very first
painted Egyptian tomb, Hierakonpolis Tomb 100 from the Gerzean/Naqada II
Period, has a boat procession for its principle theme.
“There is no direct proof that the boats depicted in the Hierakonpolis

tableau represent the bark of Ra or any associated barks, and many other
interpretations have been offered, including the idea that the boat
procession might be part of a Predynastic heb-sed ritual. However, the
funerary context of the tableau makes the possibility of an association with
the bark of Ra an appealing one. And in fact, one of the boats in the scene
includes the image of a figure seated under a baldachin of the type that, in
later Dynastic boat art, often encloses either a dead figure (e.g., the
funerary boat models of Mekhet-Ra), or else Ra in one of his manifestations.
Further, recent discoveries by John Darnell of Yale University of
petroglyphs, presumably of late Predynastic date, that show boats traveling
upside down suggest possible connections to the notion of metaphysical
boats traveling in an inverted, night-time world even at this remote period.”
Funeral procession
Burying Boats with the Dead in Ancient Egypt

Steve Vinson of the University of Indiana wrote: “In the 1st Dynasty, the
practice of burying boats with deceased kings and dignitaries began—a
practice archaeologically documented from the 1st, 4th, and 12th Dynasties
(the discovery in the summer of 2012 of a new 1st Dynasty boat at Abu
Rawash, dated to the reign of King Den, see now also Ahram Online for 25
July 2012). Whether the boats buried in the 1st Dynasty were actually
working vessels is unclear, since none of them has been completely
excavated. However, the 4th Dynasty boats connected with the pyramid of
Khufu were magnificent specimens of shipbuilding, and could certainly
have sailed on the Nile. The first of the two surviving Khufu vessels was
excavated and reassembled in the 1950s. The second, far less-well
preserved, has been the subject of a project to excavate and restore it
undertaken by Sakuji Yoshimura of Waseda University since 2011. [Source:
Steve Vinson, University of Indiana, Bloomington, UCLA Encyclopedia of
“Both Khufu vessels were built of Lebanese cedar in the typical wjA-shape
associated with divine boats and typical of ceremonial vessels built for
gods and pharaohs. This design, especially with its decorative posts, seems
intended to evoke the papyrus boats connected with the gods in Egyptian
mythology. In the Pyramid Texts, either the green color or the actual
papyrus construction of divine boats is mentioned with some frequency(the
boat-types wAD and wAD-an, which Miosi takes as “green” and “beautiful in
green” respectively, might as easily be taken to refer literally to papyrus).
And at the far end of Egyptian history, a Demotic magical spell from the late
Roman Period (prob. c. third century CE) refers to Osiris “upon his boat
(rms) of papyrus (Dwf) and faience”.
“As noted above, it may be possible to link the Khufu vessels specifically to
the category of dwA-tAwy, or “Praise of the Two Lands” vessels, known
from textual sources as early as the 2nd Dynasty. According to the Palermo
Stone, a number of such vessels had been built by Khufu’s father Sneferu,
and the vessels’ descriptions are consistent with the actual characteristics
of the Khufu vessels on a number of points, including shape, construction
material, and general size.
“Aside from the ceremonial use of boats by kings, non-royal individuals

used boats for religious purposes, particularly in pilgrimages. Among the
best-documented of these was the so-called “Abydos voyage,” a
ceremonial, posthumous boat voyage to worship Osiris at Abydos that is
documented from the Middle Kingdom into the New Kingdom, most
especially in tomb reliefs . It is not clear whether this was often or even
ideally a real voyage, or whether the images of the “Abydos voyage” that
appear in Middle and New Kingdom tombs were thought of as a sufficient
substitute for an actual pilgrimage. On the other hand, use of boats is
certainly documented for many other pilgrimages, including a Greco-Roman
festival of the goddess Bastet described in Herodotus, 2.60. This famous
description describes pilgrims raucously sailing down the Nile to Bubastis,
singing, clapping, playing musical instruments and— most notoriously—
sexually exposing themselves to on-shore spectators.
“Boat models were often buried with dead aristocrats and kings. Some of
these models were similar to other so-called “daily life” models that appear
intended to assist the deceased in maintaining his accustomed lifestyle in
the next world. But many such models were specifically “solar” or
“funerary” in their design and must have been intended to evoke myths of
the gods traveling in their barks, and the hope that the deceased would join
them. The exceptionally fine fleet of Mekhet-Ra, today shared between the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and the Egyptian Museum of
Cairo, illustrates the height of what Middle Kingdom Egyptian boat
modelers could achieve. The vessels are notable for their painted and
constructed detail, especially their rigging, although, like the vast majority
of Egyptian boat models, the hulls of the Mekhet-Ra fleet were carved out of
solid blocks of wood, not built of individual planks in such a way as to fully
imitate working boats.”
Ceremonial Barks
Steve Vinson of the University of Indiana wrote: “It has been long argued
whether the Khufu vessels were “solar” barks—that is, intended to identify
the king with the sun god Ra in the next world—or whether they were his
own ceremonial vessels, buried with him as a ritual offering. In fact, these
possibilities need not have been mutually exclusive, and we have no reason
to suppose that the vessels could not have been understood to serve
multiple functions in varying contexts. [Source: Steve Vinson, University of
Indiana, Bloomington, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology
2013, escholarship.org ] “Even more important than the ceremonial barks
of kings were those of gods. Portable boat models were central to many
cultic practices, and the holy-of-holies of Egyptian temples were often bark-
shrines, places where these cultic models would be placed between
symbolic voyages within or outside of the divinity’s home temple. However,
some gods, notably the state god Amun in the New Kingdom, possessed
full-scale river boats. The bark Amun-User-Hat, or “Amun-Mighty-of- Prow,”
is known from multiple New Kingdom sources, both textual and
iconographic. Perhaps most famously, the bark figures in the terminal New
Kingdom/early Third Intermediate Period Tale of Wenamun, which recounts
the experiences of a (fictional) priest dispatched to Lebanon to purchase
cedar for a renovation of the bark. A second important sacred vessel was
the Neshmet bark of Osiris, which appears to have been involved in a
water-borne ritual drama at Abydos, in which boats manned by
“confederates of Seth” attempted—always unsuccessfully—to attack and
murder Osiris.
Funeral of a Mummy by Arthur Bridgeman
“Large-scale ceremonial barks continued in use in major Egyptian temples

well into the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods. Herodotus described boats
used in the Persian Period during rites connected with Osiris. From the
Ptolemaic Period, the Apis Embalming Ritual describes a procession of the
deceased Apis to the “Lake of Kings” near the Memphite Sarapeion.
Following this procession, the cadaver of the Apis was laid out on the lake’s
shore, while priests standing on a papyrus bark recited the appropriate
ritual texts. These procedures were intended to suggest both the Osirian
and solar aspects of the Apis bull and his impending metempsychosis and
rebirth. A fascinating late Roman Demotic graffito from the Temple of
Philae records the graffitist’s donation of a large amount of pitch for the
purpose of water-proofing the sacred bark of Isis.
Transporting Stone by Boat in Ancient Egypt

Steve Vinson of Indiana University wrote: “Over large distances, stone
cargoes could only be hauled by river. Famous images of stone columns
being conveyed for the construction of the Valley Temple of Unas (Fifth
Dynasty) or the colossal obelisks of Hatshepsut show the transport of large
stone cargoes on board ships, but precisely how such cargoes were loaded
and unloaded has always been something of a mystery. In a discussion
dating to the early Roman Imperial Period, Pliny the Elder describes his
understanding of methods that had been used by Ptolemy II to load an
obelisk some three centuries earlier. [Source: Steve Vinson, Indiana
University, Bloomington, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology
“According to Pliny, the obelisk was said to have been laid across a canal,
and two barges, loaded down with smaller stones so that they were heavy
enough to pass below the obelisk, were maneuvered into position
underneath it. The smaller stones were then removed from the transport
ships until they were light enough to float the obelisks. The mention of two
ships in this context has suggested to some that a sort of catamaran or
double-hulled vessel was routinely used to move large stone cargoes. It
seems likely that double-hulled ships were known in the Ptolemaic and
Roman Periods, but Pliny’s image as it stands seems improbable; Pharaonic
images of the hauling of stone columns or obelisks show a single ship with
the cargo parallel to the axis of the transport vessel. For the moment, the
method or methods used by the Egyptians at any period to load barges with
heavy columns, obelisks, or large sculptures remain unknown.
“One early method for moving stones by water, however, is suggested by

the archaeological excavation of “Chephren’s Quarry,” a site some 65
kilometers northwest of Abu Simbel in the Western Desert. Featured here
was a special, purpose-built loading ramp that may have been designed to
receive an amphibious raft that could be drawn up out of the river and
pulled on runners. According to the excavators of this site, it seems
possible that stone would then be loaded from the loading ramp onto the
amphibious raft, which could then be dragged back to the river and floated
directly downstream to construction sites in lower Egypt, without the
necessity to load the stone onto boats.
“For the very largest cargoes, like the Hatshepsut obelisks, purpose-built
ships were necessary. However, smaller quantities of building stone or
brick might have been hauled by ships intended for general cargo. An entry
in a Ramesside account ostracon is instructive: “The crew what was done
by them, consisting of the emptying of the vessels that were under the
authority of Penamun: seven vessels make 15 stones and 150 small bricks”.
“In the Roman Period, when both ancient obelisks and exotic stone such as
porphyry from Mons Porphyrites were exported to Italy, the logistical
problems were of course even greater. Unlike the Pharaonic Egyptians, the
Roman-era stone-haulers made use of wheeled vehicles, which might have
been loaded from specially built loading docks. In one case, we hear of a
12-wheeled stone- hauling wagon, which was perhaps configured with four
axels with three wheels each. Such a wagon may have had an axel-width of
2.8 meters; comparable-sized wagons are suggested by Roman-era wagon
tracks discovered in the Eastern Desert.”
According to PBS: “The Nile was used to transport supplies and building
materials to the pyramids. During the annual flooding of the Nile, a natural
harbor was created by the high waters that came conveniently close to the
plateau. These harbors may have stayed water-filled year round. Some of
the limestone came from Tura, across the river, granite from Aswan, copper
from Sinai, and cedar for the boats from Lebanon.”
No animals or machines were used to transport the blocks. Whenever

possible the stones were transported on the Nile. Canals may have been
used to get the stones as close to the site as possible. On the banks of the
Nile, teams of perhaps 20 to 50 men hauled the stones on wooden sledges
to the building sites where master carvers shaped each block and levered it
into place. A hoisting machine was used to lift stones ("none of them were
thirty feet in length") into place.
Transporting Wood by Sea in Ancient Egypt

Steve Vinson of Indiana University wrote: “The transport of large quantities
of wood, especially from western Asia, is documented from an early period
in Egypt; much, if not all, of this cargo must have been transported by sea.
Imported wood was used in a number of First Dynasty royal tombs, and a
First Dynasty label from the tomb of Aha associates an image of a ship with
the word mr, although it is not clear whether the reference here is to the
vessel’s construction or its cargo. From the Fourth Dynasty (reign of
Seneferu), the Palermo Stone records a shipment of some 40 ships loaded
with coniferous wood. [Source: Steve Vinson, Indiana University,
“More details of the procedures by which the long, straight timbers

available from the area of Lebanon and Syria were transported to Egypt
come from the New Kingdom, when battle reliefs of Sety I at Karnak show
foreign princes cutting down trees for transport back to Egypt, while
others, possibly lower-status individuals, lower the trees with cables
attached to the upper branches. From the Third Intermediate Period, the
Report of Wenamun describes large tree-trunks being dragged down to the
shore.
“Wenamun reports that a limited number of wooden ship components were
placed aboard a transport ship bound for Egypt as a preliminary, good-faith
shipment, but aside from this, no Egyptian text or image describes the
specific modalities of the actual sea- transport of large timber. One might
compare a first-millennium B.C. Assyrian relief from the palace of Sargon at
Khorsabad, which shows tree-trunks being towed behind Phoenician
transport ships off the Syrian coast. Such towing may have been the (or a)
method by which the Egyptians, or Western Asians in the service of Egypt,
also moved cargoes of the largest trunks of wood back to Egypt.”
Transporting Grain by Boat in Ancient Egypt

Grain is believed to have been hauled by donkey from farmsteads to
embarkation points, where it was loaded onto ships by local workers. Steve
Vinson of Indiana University wrote:“Middle-Kingdom granary models, such
as the famous model from the tomb of Meket-Ra at Thebes, show individual
porters with sacks of grain on their backs, emptying them out one at a time
into silos. From there, grain would have eventually been unloaded and
placed aboard transport vessels.” [Source: Steve Vinson, Indiana
University, Bloomington, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology
The Twentieth Dynasty Papyrus Amiens describes “a flotilla of some 21

vessels that appear to have been engaged in a major tax collection voyage,
perhaps in the region of Assiut, where the papyrus itself was found. Each
ship made multiple stops, embarking large quantities of grain, which were
often accounted for in detail, according to the specific agricultural domain
from which the grain came and according to the individual or group who
were to be credited with supplying the grain. Occasionally, as in P. Amiens
r. 4.1, we see grain transferred between ships, perhaps (but not certainly)
due to vessels being disabled. Another important Ramesside papyrus, the
“Turin Indictment Papyrus”, is notable for illustrating the opportunities for
embezzlement that might present themselves to the operators of transport
vessels hauling large amounts of grain.
“The transport of grain in the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods in Egypt is
extensively documented in Greek papyrological sources. An instructive
example is the Ptolemaic-era account papyrus Oxy 3, 522, which describes
how boat captains recruited local labor through village elders to load 5,400
artabas (about 170 metric tons). Cargoes were often accompanied by
persons known as naukleroi, whose function appears to have been to
safeguard the cargo and organize transportation, not actually operate the
ships in question. While the owner- operation of transport vessels is
attested in the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods, transport vessels might also
owned by wealthy investors, particularly members of the Ptolemaic royal
family , or by governmental institutions such as the office of the dioiketes,
or finance minister.”
Seafaring in Ancient Egypt

Steve Vinson of the University of Indiana wrote: “Seafaring either to or from
Egypt cannot be specifically documented before the Old Kingdom, but
evidence points to the possibility of sea contact between Egypt and the
Syro-Palestinian coast in the Early Dynastic Period, and it is not implausible
to suggest that such contacts could have been established in the
Predynastic Period or earlier. Egypt’s wooden boat-building industry
appears to extend back that far, and while all currently available evidence
is oriented towards Nile River shipping, there is no obvious reason why
Predynastic Egyptian vessels could not have navigated coastal waters, as
Mesolithic and Neolithic Aegean watercraft certainly did. Old Kingdom
texts and images confirm seafaring on both the Mediterranean and Red
Seas, and this activity continued throughout documented Egyptian history.
By the Roman Period, Egypt was the nexus of a far-flung international
maritime system that tied the Mediterranean to distant ports in East Africa,
Arabia, and India.[Source: Steve Vinson, Indiana University, Bloomington,
UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology 2009, escholarship.org ]
“The sources for the history of ancient Egyptian seafaring—that is to say,
use of water-craft on the Mediterranean and Red Seas—are, unfortunately,
somewhat uneven and less informative than one would like. Far more
information (textual, iconographic, and archaeological) is available for the
study of riverine ships and shipping. In general, evidence is biased towards
the New Kingdom and later periods, but at least some important and
interesting material comes from almost every period in Egyptian history.
“Royal inscriptions, including both texts and images, are highly useful but
not attested in all periods, and their limitations must be kept in mind.
Egyptian nautical images are often highly detailed, but the details they
provide are limited to exterior structures, most especially rigging. In the
New Kingdom, a few tombs include images of ships from Canaan/Syria-
Palestine, along with images of foreign traders bringing exotic materials
from Western Asia, the Aegean, and Nubia. Numerous boat models come
from Egypt, but none can be identified as models of specifically ocean-
going craft.
“The texts that accompany nautical images can be informative, but their
roots in religious/propagandistic discourses praising royal power must be
kept in mind. So too must the interpreter be alert to these texts’ allusions
to Egyptian perceptions of the world beyond Egypt—i.e., in part as a place
where maat does not necessarily obtain, but also as a place where distant,
unknown gods may dwell and where wonderful things may be found.
“Documentary texts dealing with seafaring (as opposed to river

transportation) are rare before the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods; one
exceptional document is a papyrus from the dockyard annals of Thutmose
III, which includes mentions of ships of Keftyw (probably Crete). Likewise,
archaeological remains directly connected with seafaring are relatively
sparse, so far found only on the Red Sea coast. For all periods, an important
source of indirect information is the archaeological and textual attestation
of foreign trade.”
Ancient Egyptian seafaring ship

Seafaring in the Prehistoric, Predynastic and Early
Dynasty Egypt
Steve Vinson of the University of Indiana wrote: “Seafaring, either by
Egyptians or by others traveling to Egypt, cannot be documented before the
Old Kingdom, but it might well have begun in the Predynastic Period, or
even earlier. It is very probably the case that Egypt’s wooden boat/ship-
building technology was well developed by the late Gerzean/Naqada II
Period, when boat imagery (especially images of so-called “sickle- shaped”
boats, characterized by crescentic hulls with multiple paddles, deck
structures, standards, and palm-frond-like bow decorations) is common in
both rock art and in pottery decoration. Such representations offer us no
direct evidence for the material used to construct Egypt’s “sickle-shaped”
boats, but archaeological evidence suggests a high general level of
technical skill in working wood in the Predynastic Period. Construction of
wooden boats is certain by the 1st Dynasty. While all extant evidence for
such early craft points towards their use on the Nile, it is not difficult to
imagine that Egyptian vessels could have sailed on the Mediterranean or
Red Sea before the Old Kingdom; there is no reason to doubt that Egypt’s
Predynastic and Early Dynastic vessels were at least as well constructed
as the Mesolithic water-craft that brought obsidian traders to the Greek
island of Melos, or the Neolithic water-craft that brought the earliest
settlers to Crete and Cyprus. Moreover, there is considerable evidence for
the importation of exotic materials into Egypt in the Gerzean/Naqada II
Period. To what extent this can be attributed to either land transportation
or seafaring cannot be definitely determined. [Source: Steve Vinson,
Indiana University, Bloomington, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology
“We can, however, certainly discount earlier Egyptologists’ theories of

circum-Arabian voyages from lower Mesopotamia to Egypt’s Red Sea coast
by Uruk-era Sumerians who (allegedly) conquered Predynastic Egypt and
founded the 1st Dynasty. A carved ivory knife-handle said to be from Gebel
el-Arak in Upper Egypt (now in the Louvre) shows boats resembling vessels
portrayed on Uruk- era cylinder seals, as well as sickle-shaped boats that
somewhat resemble vessels on Gerzean/Naqada II painted pottery, amid a
battle in progress. This scene, as well as other images of “foreign” ships,
was once generally interpreted as showing such an invasion , but since the
1970s, this interpretation has lost considerable favor. In all likelihood, the
undoubted Mesopotamian flavor of the Gebel el-Arak imagery—along with
other examples of Mesopotamian cultural influences that reached Egypt in
the Predynastic Period—can be explained by diffusion via Syria, which was
reached by Sumerians during the Uruk Expansion in the late fourth
millennium B.C., rather than by a sea-route connecting Mesopotamia and
Egypt in this period.
“By the 1st Dynasty, contacts between Egypt and western Asia had
accelerated and sea contact seems certain. An Egyptian cup, datable to the
Early Dynastic Period, was found by an Israeli fishing trawler off the coast
of Gaza in the 1980s. We know that, in the Early Dynastic Period, Lebanese
cedar was imported into Egypt for the construction of royal tombs, and a
Dynasty 1 label from the tomb of Aha (second king of the dynasty) includes
images of ships labeled with the word mr “cedar”, which suggests a
connection between Egyptian cargo ships and the importation of Lebanese
or Syrian wood. It is unclear whether the word “cedar” here refers to the
vessel’s construction or its cargo. Both are possible, since cedar was a
well- attested ship-construction material in Egypt (most notably the 4th
Dynasty funerary vessel of Khufu), and other evidence makes it all but
certain that, not later than the 4th Dynasty, imported wood came to Egypt
at least sometimes by sea (see Old Kingdom below). That said, it is
impossible from the evidence at hand to say anything specific about how
any Pre- or Early Dynastic seafaring would have been organized, beyond the
probability that much, if not all, of this activity would have been in the
hands of the ruling elite. Nor is it possible to estimate how important it was
to Egypt’s overall economy.”
Seafaring in the Old and Middle Kingdoms (2649–

1640 B.C.)
Steve Vinson of the University of Indiana wrote: “The Palermo Stone reports
for the 4th Dynasty: “bringing 40 ships filled [mH] with coniferous wood
[aS]” in the reign of Sneferu. This would appear to confirm sea-going
transportation of wood between Egypt and the Syro-Palestinian coast from
at least the 4th Dynasty, if not earlier, though whether the ships involved
were “Egyptian” or “Canaanite/Syro-Palestinian” cannot be determined. The
first Old Kingdom representation of what appears to be a sea- going craft
appears in the 5th Dynasty sun temple of Sahura. This much- discussed
relief shows vessels that appear to be rigged like standard Egyptian river-
boats of the Old Kingdom (i.e., with bi-pod, rather than mono-pod, masts),
but that also show stoutly-lashed bulwarks (uppermost hull planking) and a
hogging truss (heavy cable running bow-to-stern, capable of being tightened
to prevent the ends of the ship from sagging), which would suggest a ship
designed to withstand the rigors of sea travel. [Source: Steve Vinson,
Indiana University, Bloomington, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology
trade ship carrying frankincense, trees and other goods
“The presence aboard of bearded persons who appear to be western Asian,

along with an inscription presented as the arriving seafarers’ praise to
Sahura, has led to the conclusion that this vessel probably represents a
foreign craft arriving in Egypt. Although the word does not actually appear
here, it may well be that this is a “Byblos” ship (kbnt). This ship name does
not appear until the 6th Dynasty, in the inscription of the courtier
Pepynakht. Pepynakht reports that he had been assigned to bring back to
Egypt the body of a murdered Egyptian who had been sent to Western Asia
to oversee the construction of a “Byblos” boat, which had actually been
intended for an expedition to Punt (probably southern Sudan and/or
Somalia, perhaps also including southern Arabia). This suggests that in the
Old Kingdom, Egyptians may have depended at least in part on Western
Asian ship-builders for their ocean-going craft.
“In the Middle Kingdom, we encounter “Byblos” boats (kbnjwt) once again
in a Wadi Hammamat inscription commemorating an expedition to Punt.
This time, the ships are actually constructed on the Red Sea coast— thus,
most probably by Egyptians (Couyat and Montet 1912: 82 - 83; see 1.9 for
reference to "Byblos" boats and 1.14 for their construction on the coast). In
general, the best evidence for Middle Kingdom seafaring reflects Red Sea
shipping. One of the best-known Middle Kingdom Egyptian literary
compositions, the Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor, is centered on a voyage
to Punt. The details given for the size of the sailor’s ship (120 cubits by 40
cubits, or about 60 meters by 20 meters) and its crew (120 men) should not
be taken seriously (cf. Vinson 1997a; 1998: 15ff. for the much smaller crews
known from actual documentary texts for working Nile vessels), but the
tale does include a plausible list of products from Punt (e.g., myrrh, various
oils, giraffe tails, elephant ivory) and reflects the genuine hazards of
shipping on the Red Sea. One archaeologically documented Red Sea
embarkation point during the Middle Kingdom was Marsa Gawasis, where
shrines constructed of stone anchors have been discovered. However,
Egyptian contacts with the Levantine coast, especially Byblos, and the
island of Crete are also documented or suggested in the Middle Kingdom.”
4,500-Year-Old Ancient Egyptians Red Sea Port

Wadi al-Jarf is an ancient Egyptian port dated to 2600 B.C and linked with
the Giza pyramid builders. Excavated bt French archaeologists Pierre Tallet
and Gregory Marouard, it is 120 kilometers south of Suez , which in turn is
125 kilometers west of Cairo, meaning than Wadi al-Jarf was a considerable
distance form the Pyramids of Giza. Caves in area had served as a kind of
boat storage depot during the fourth dynasty of the Old Kingdom. In 2013, in
some of these caves Tallet and his team found entire rolls of papyrus, some
a few feet long and still relatively intact,written in hieroglyphics as well as
hieratic, the cursive script the ancient Egyptians used for everyday
communication. These rolls turned out to be the oldest known papyri in the
world. The port is also regarded as the world’s oldest. [Source: Alexander
Stille, Smithsonian Magazine, October 2015 |=|]
Alexander Stille wrote in Smithsonian Magazine: “Wadi al-Jarf lies where

the Sinai is a mere 35 miles away, so close you can see the mountains in
the Sinai that were the entry to a mining district. The Egyptian site has
yielded many revelations along with the trove of papyri. In the harbor, Tallet
and his team found an ancient L-shaped stone jetty more than 600 feet long
that was built to create a safe harbor for boats. They found some 130
anchors—nearly quadrupling the number of ancient Egyptian anchors
located. The 30 gallery-caves carefully dug into the mountainside—ranging
from 50 to more than 100 feet in length—were triple the number of boat
galleries at Ayn Soukhna. For a harbor constructed 4,600 years ago, this
was an enterprise on a truly grand scale. |=|
“Yet it was used for a very short time. All the evidence that Tallet and his
colleagues have gathered indicates that the harbor was active in the fourth
dynasty, concentrated during the reign of one pharaoh, Khufu. What
emerges clearly from Tallet’s excavation is that the port was crucial to the
pyramid-building project. The Egyptians needed massive amounts of copper
—the hardest metal then available—with which to cut the pyramid stones.
The principal source of copper was the mines in the Sinai just opposite
Wadi al-Jarf. The reason that the ancients abandoned the harbor in favor of
Ayn Soukhna would appear to be logistical: Ayn Soukhna is only about 75
miles from the capital of ancient Egypt. Reaching Wadi al-Jarf involved a
considerably longer overland trip, even though it was closer to the Sinai
mining district. |=|
“After visiting Wadi al-Jarf, Mark Lehner, an American Egyptologist, was

bowled over by the connections between Giza and this distant harbor. “The
power and purity of the site is so Khufu,” he said. “The scale and ambition
and sophistication of it—the size of these galleries cut out of rock like the
Amtrak train garages, these huge hammers made out of hard black diorite
they found, the scale of the harbor, the clear and orderly writing of the
hieroglyphs of the papyri, which are like Excel spreadsheets of the ancient
world—all of it has the clarity, power and sophistication of the pyramids, all
the characteristics of Khufu and the early fourth dynasty.” |=|
“Tallet is convinced that harbors such as Wadi al-Jarf and Ayn Soukhna
served mainly as supply hubs. Since there were few sources of food in the
Sinai, Merer and other managers were responsible for getting food from
Egypt’s rich agricultural lands along the Nile to the thousands of men
working in the Sinai mine fields, as well as retrieving the copper and
turquoise from the Sinai. In all likelihood, they operated the harbor only
during the spring and summer when the Red Sea was relatively calm. They
then dragged the boats up to the rock face and stored them in the galleries
for safekeeping until the next spring. |=|
“Ancient Egypt’s maritime activities also served political and symbolic

purposes, Tallet argues. It was important for the Egyptian kings to
demonstrate their presence and control over the whole national territory,
especially its more remote parts, in order to assert the essential unity of
Egypt. “Sinai had great symbolic importance for them as it was one of the
farthest points they could reach,” Tallet says. “In the Sinai the inscriptions
are explaining the mightiness of the king, the wealth of the king, how the
king is governing its country. On the outer limits of the Egyptian universe
you have a need to show the power of the king.” |=|
“In fact, their control of the periphery was rather fragile. Distant and
inhospitable Sinai, with its barren landscape and hostile Bedouin
inhabitants, represented a challenge for the pharaohs; one inscription
records an Egyptian expedition massacred by Bedouin warriors, Tallet says.
Nor were the Egyptians always able to hold on to their camps along the Red
Sea. “We have evidence from Ayn Soukhna that the site was destroyed
several times. There was a big fire in one of the galleries....It was probably
difficult for them to control the area.” “Working on the royal boats, it seems,
was a source of prestige. According to the papyri found at Wadi al-Jarf, the
laborers ate well, and were provisioned with meat, poultry, fish and beer.
And among the inscriptions that Tallet and his team have found at the Wadi
al-Jarf gallery complex is one, on a large jar fashioned there, hinting at ties
to the pharaoh; it mentions “Those Who Are Known of Two Falcons of Gold,”
a reference to Khufu. “You have all sorts of private inscriptions, of officials
who were involved in these mining expeditions to the Sinai,” Tallet says. “I
think it was a way to associate themselves to something that was very
important to the king and this was a reason to be preserved for eternity for
the individuals.” Clearly these workers were valued servants of the state.” |
=|
Trade routes
Seafaring in the New Kingdom (1550–1070 B.C.)

Steve Vinson of the University of Indiana wrote: “Punt continued to be a
focal point of Egyptian seafaring in the New Kingdom, with Hatshepsut’s
Punt reliefs at Deir el-Bahri constituting perhaps the finest preserved
examples of Egyptian nautical art. The vessels portrayed here show classic
Egyptian lines and rigging, and suggest the very highest achievements of
Egypt’s traditional boat- and shipbuilding craft. Further evidence for Red
Sea sailing in the 18th Dynasty has more recently been brought to light by
Boston University archaeologist Kathryn Bard, who in 2004 discovered a
cave at Marsa Gawasis containing fragments of rope, steering-oar, and hull-
planking that may date to or near the reign of Hatshepsut. The Ramesside
Papyrus Harris I reports a voyage to Punt in the reign of Ramses III.
[Source: Steve Vinson, Indiana University, Bloomington, UCLA Encyclopedia
of Egyptology 2009, escholarship.org ]
“As in the Old and Middle Kingdoms, Egypt in the New Kingdom was also in
maritime contact with the Late Bronze Age civilizations of the Eastern
Mediterranean and Aegean. A number of 18th Dynasty tomb reliefs portray
Minoan traders, and an important relief from the tomb of Ken-Amun shows a
Canaanite ship in port. This ship resembles contemporaneous Egyptian
ships like the Hatshepsut Punt-expedition ships in some respects, notably
the rigging; but the overall hull shape is characteristically Near Eastern.
New Kingdom texts also reflect these connections. The dockyard annals of
Thutmose III refer to ships of Keftyw, likely Crete or the Aegean more
generally, and ships from Canaan are described in the Kamose Stela from
the terminal Second Intermediate Period.
“The Kamose-stela ships are said to carry luxurious cargo including gold,
silver, lapis lazuli, various sorts of wood, and other raw materials; curiously,
the only finished products are “countless copper axes.” The summary
writing used here for “copper” (Hmt) could also bear the reading Hsmn
(“bronze”) per Habachi. Although the common Egyptian word for “axe” used
here (mjnb) is admittedly attested nowhere else in this sense, it may be
that the reference in the Kamose Stela is actually to copper ingots of the
“ox- hide” type. The shape of such ingots has been compared to that of
Aegean double axes of the Late Bronze Age. The rest of the cargos
described on these ships comprise raw, unfinished products; copper ingots
would be a more plausible bulk cargo than literal finished axes (cf. the large
cargo of ox-hide ingots in the late fourteenth- century B.C. Uluburun
shipwreck [Pulak 2001]; also the even larger cargo of copper ingots
described in Amarna Letter 35 [Moran 1992: 107ff.]).
“Archaeologically, the late-18th-Dynasty-era Uluburun shipwreck shows the

extent towhich Egypt was embedded in maritime and overland routes that
extended throughout Africa, Western Asia, and southern and eastern
Europe. Perhaps the most important Egyptian artifact from the Uluburun
wreck is the golden scarab of Nefertiti. However, other important objects
that suggest Egypt’s central location on many of the important trade routes
of the Late Bronze Age world include raw ebony and ivory and ostrich
eggshells, which may have been transshipped through Egypt from tropical
Africa, and perhaps the wreck’s glass ingots, which some have argued to be
of Egyptian origin.”
More Advanced Ships Appear in New Kingdom Egypt

Steve Vinson of the University of Indiana wrote: “By the end of the 18th
Dynasty, new principles in ship design, likely derived from the Aegean, are
visible in Egypt. A relief from Saqqara, probably to be dated to the reign of
Horemheb, is the first known example of a ship rigged with brails—
Venetian-blind-like lines that could be used to shorten or shape loose-
footed sails, and that were to characterize the standard sea-going rig of
classical Mediterranean antiquity. Up until this point, Egyptian ships—as
well as sea-going ships that appear in the art of Mycenaean Greece, Minoan
Crete, and the island of Thera—were almost always shown with the feet of
their sails secured with booms. It could be that ships with these
characteristics were brought to Egypt by raiders or traders from the
Aegean, who are attested as early as the Amarna Period and who seem to
have become increasingly irritating to the Egyptians in the Ramesside
Period. [Source: Steve Vinson, Indiana University, Bloomington, UCLA
Encyclopedia of Egyptology 2009, escholarship.org ]
“The best illustration of Egyptian seagoing ships in the late New Kingdom
occurs in the 20th Dynasty sea-battle relief at Medinet Habu, showing
Egypt’s fleet under Ramses III in a pitched battle against the invading Sea
Peoples. In the relief, both sides’ ships are shown with the new brailed rig.
Since the sailors shown fighting on the Egyptian side are almost all wearing
attire closely similar to that of the invading Sea Peoples, it seems likely
that the Egyptian navy was made up, at least in this instance, of ships
actually owned by Egypt’s own Sea-People allies or mercenaries—the
Sherden or others.
Sea People Battle
“Were other innovations in ship design adopted by the Egyptians? The late
fourteenth-century B.C. Uluburun shipwreck features a sea-going vessel
with a construction similar to that of later Greek and Roman ships on the
Mediterranean—that is, with pegged mortise-and-tenon joints—but unlike
that of earlier Egyptian ships with lashed construction. A fascinating letter,
in Akkadian, from the court of Ramses II speaks of an Egyptian ship that
had been sent to the Hittites, evidently for the purpose of allowing Hittite
shipwrights to copy it. The only constructional details we get are that the
ship apparently had internal framing (ribs), and that it was caulked with
pitch, a practice now paralleled archaeologically by a water-proofing agent
observed on some planks salvaged from New Kingdom sea-going ships
found at Marsa Gawasis (Ward and Zazzaro fc.; cf. Vinson 1996: 200 for the
practice in Greco-Roman antiquity and one occurrence in Roman Egypt).
Whether this was a traditionally constructed Egyptian hull, or a new-style
hull based on Eastern Mediterranean/Aegean principles, is unknown.
“Egyptian dependence on foreign commercial ships at the end of the New
Kingdom is suggested in the Report of Wenamun, a terminal New
Kingdom/early Third Intermediate Period literary composition that
describes the experiences of a priest of Amun who is dispatched to
Phoenicia to secure wood for the renovation of the sacred bark of Amun. In
this tale, Wenamun has to endure the sneers of his Phoenician interlocutors
who point out that he has come to Lebanon on a foreign ship. Wenamun’s
protest that any ship chartered by an Egyptian is, ipso facto, an Egyptian
ship, is shown by the story itself to be empty bluster.”
Seafaring in the Late, Ptolemaic and Roman Periods

(712 B.C.–364 A.D.)
Beyond the period reflected in the Report of Wenamun, it is not easy to
trace any of Egypt’s own seafaring ventures. In the first millennium B.C.,
Egypt certainly maintained continuous, if fluctuating, contact with Syria-
Palestine; many of the Egyptian artifacts discovered in Western Asia during
this period may have been carried by sea, perhaps by Phoenician seafaring
merchants. Seafaring again becomes clearly visible in Egyptian history
largely in the context of Greeks coming to Egypt as traders or as
mercenaries. As Greece recovered from the collapse of Mycenaean
civilization, Iron- Age Greek seafarers spread throughout the
Mediterranean. The most important early Greek entrepôt in Egypt was the
east-Delta city of Naukratis, founded in the seventh century B.C.. According
to Herodotus , Naukratis was originally conceived as a controlled trading
point beyond which Greeks were not supposed to go (not unlike Nagasaki in
Japan under the Tokugawa Shogunate). Egypt fell to the Achaemenid
Persians in 525 B.C., and integration into the Persian empire appears to
have promoted Egyptian trade in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. This
eastern trade was facilitated by the construction of a canal linking the Nile
to the Red Sea through the Wadi Tumilat. A series of stelae in hieroglyphic
and Persian marks the route of this canal, which continued in use during
the Ptolemaic Period. [Source: Steve Vinson, Indiana University,
“Many Greeks were already settled throughout the land of Egypt by the time
of Alexander the Great’s conquest in 332 B.C.. The new dynasty founded
after Alexander’s death in 323 by his general Ptolemy son of Lagus turned
the new city of Alexandria into one of the most important commercial and
cultural centers of the Hellenistic Mediterranean. After Egypt was
conquered by Rome in 30 B.C., Alexandria became the port of embarkation
for the vast quantities of grain taken from Egypt to feed the Roman mob. By
the end of the Ptolemaic Period, a Greek skipper appears to have
discovered the monsoon system that blows across the Indian Ocean,
enabling the establishment of a rapid, open-water trade route between
Egypt and India; this route only grew in importance following the Roman
conquest. The most important document detailing this route is the Periplus
Maris Erythraei (“Sailing Directions for the Erythraean Sea,” a term
designating both our Red Sea and Indian Ocean). The Periplus is a first-
century CE Greek-language manual, probably written by a Greek-speaking
Egyptian skipper or at least a Greek skipper with considerable knowledge
of Egypt, that describes maritime routes for East Africa, Arabia, and India,
as well as commercial opportunities and political/cultural conditions in the
associated major ports.
“Hellenistic and Roman ships departed from Egyptian Red Sea ports like
Myos Hormos or Berenike, which were accessible via desert routes
connecting the Red Sea to the Nile Valley. These routes appear to have
ended at Coptos, near the eastern-most bend of the Nile River. In the ninth
year (89 – 90 CE) of the Roman emperor Domitian, an important inscription
was executed near Coptos, detailing tolls to be paid by various classes of
persons, animals, or items traveling or being transported along the desert
route. Tolls varied widely—a “Red Sea skipper” paid eight drachmas, while
“women for companionship” were assessed 108 drachmas! The eastern-
most end of the Red Sea-Indian Ocean route can also be traced
archaeologically through finds of Roman material, notably glass, which
occurs in numerous sites along the coast of India.”
Herodotus on Egyptian Sea Navigation

Herodotus wrote in Book 2 of “Histories”: “And I think that their account of
the country was true. For even if a man has not heard it before, he can
readily see, if he has sense, that that Egypt to which the Greeks sail is land
deposited for the Egyptians, the river's gift—not only the lower country, but
even the land as far as three days' voyage above the lake, which is of the
same nature as the other, although the priests did not say this, too. For this
is the nature of the land of Egypt: in the first place, when you approach it
from the sea and are still a day's sail from land, if you let down a sounding
line you will bring up mud from a depth of eleven fathoms. This shows that
the deposit from the land reaches this far. 6. [Source: Herodotus, “The
Histories”, Egypt after the Persian Invasion, Book 2, English translation by
A. D. Godley. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1920, Tufts]
“Further, the length of the seacoast of Egypt itself is sixty “schoeni”7 —of
Egypt, that is, as we judge it to be, reaching from the Plinthinete gulf to the
Serbonian marsh, which is under the Casian mountain—between these
there is this length of sixty schoeni. Men that have scant land measure by
feet; those that have more, by miles; those that have much land, by
parasangs; and those who have great abundance of it, by schoeni. The
parasang is three and three quarters miles, and the schoenus, which is an
Egyptian measure, is twice that. 7.
“By this reckoning, then, the seaboard of Egypt will be four hundred and
fifty miles in length. Inland from the sea as far as Heliopolis, Egypt is a wide
land, all flat and watery and marshy. From the sea up to Heliopolis is a
journey about as long as the way from the altar of the twelve gods at
Athens to the temple of Olympian Zeus at Pisa. If a reckoning is made, only
a little difference of length, not more than two miles, will be found between
these two journeys; for the journey from Athens to Pisa is two miles short of
two hundred, which is the number of miles between the sea and Heliopolis.”
states in the Middle East and Asia at the time of Ancient Egypt
Herodotus on Naucratis, Egypt’s Trading Port

Herodotus wrote in Book 2 of “Histories”: “Amasis became a philhellene,
and besides other services which he did for some of the Greeks, he gave
those who came to Egypt the city of Naucratis to live in; and to those who
travelled to the country without wanting to settle there, he gave lands
where they might set up altars and make holy places for their gods. Of
these the greatest and most famous and most visited precinct is that which
is called the Hellenion, founded jointly by the Ionian cities of Chios, Teos,
Phocaea, and Clazomenae, the Dorian cities of Rhodes, Cnidus,
Halicarnassus, and Phaselis, and one Aeolian city, Mytilene. It is to these
that the precinct belongs, and these are the cities that furnish overseers of
the trading port; if any other cities advance claims, they claim what does
not belong to them. The Aeginetans made a precinct of their own, sacred to
Zeus; and so did the Samians for Hera and the Milesians for Apollo. 179.
[Source: Herodotus, “The Histories”, Egypt after the Persian Invasion, Book
2, English translation by A. D. Godley. Cambridge. Harvard University Press.
1920, Tufts]
“Naucratis was in the past the only trading port in Egypt. Whoever came to
any other mouth of the Nile had to swear that he had not come
intentionally, and had then to take his ship and sail to the Canobic mouth;
or if he could not sail against contrary winds, he had to carry his cargo in
barges around the Delta until he came to Naucratis. In such esteem was
Naucratis held. 180.
“When the Amphictyons paid three hundred talents to have the temple that
now stands at Delphi finished (as that which was formerly there burnt down
by accident), it was the Delphians' lot to pay a fourth of the cost. They went
about from city to city collecting gifts, and got most from Egypt; for Amasis
gave them a thousand talents' weight of astringent earth,74 and the Greek
settlers in Egypt twenty minae.”
Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons
Text Sources: UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, escholarship.org ;

Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Egypt sourcebooks.fordham.edu ;
Tour Egypt, Minnesota State University, Mankato, ethanholman.com; Mark
Millmore, discoveringegypt.com discoveringegypt.com; Metropolitan
Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York
Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Discover magazine, Times of
London, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker,
BBC, Encyclopædia Britannica, Time, Newsweek, Wikipedia, Reuters,
Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, “World
Religions” edited by Geoffrey Parrinder (Facts on File Publications, New
York); “History of Warfare” by John Keegan (Vintage Books); “History of Art”
by H.W. Janson Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.), Compton’s
Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.
Last updated September 2018
https://www.thearchaeologist.org/blog/the-hellenistic-giant-galley-tessarakonteres-one-of-the-
largest-human-powered-vessels-in-history
Illustration: Paweł Moszczyński for Mówią Wieki Magazine, Feb. 2010.
THE HELLENISTIC GIANT GALLEY

'TESSARAKONTERES', ONE OF THE
LARGEST HUMAN-POWERED VESSELS
IN HISTORY!
February 14, 2022
The Early Successors of Alexander gave a boost in the use and the
development of the polyeres-type warships (multimeremes), using
them widely in their wars (321 BC – early 3rd century BC). The
Successors have built fleets comprised of numerous large warships,
reaching the building of colossal vessels such as the
‘eikoseres’ (20reme, with twenty oarsmen on each vertical group of
oars) and the enormous ‘tessarakonteres’ (40reme, with forty oarsmen
on each vertical group of oars). These warships resembled to floating
fortresses, very similar in size to the modern large battleships and
aircraft carriers. The tessarakonteres had a crew of 6.000 men
(officers, oarsmen, sailors, marines and others), as many as a modern
aircraft carrier.
Tessarakonteres (Greek: τεσσαρακοντήρης, "forty-rowed"), or simply

"forty" was a very large catamaran galley reportedly built in the
Hellenistic period by Ptolemy IV Philopator of Egypt. It was
described by a number of ancient sources, including a lost work by
Callixenus of Rhodes and surviving texts by Athenaeus and Plutarch.
According to these descriptions, supported by modern research by
Lionel Casson, the enormous size of the vessel made it impractical
and it was built only as a prestige vessel, rather than an effective
warship.
The name "forty" refers not to the number of oars, but to the number
of rowers on each column of oars that propelled it, and at the size
described it would have been the largest ship constructed in antiquity,
and probably the largest human-powered vessel ever built.
Speculative illustration of the Tessarakonteres with catamaran hulls
The maximum practical number of oar ranks a ship could have

logistically was three (Greek and Latin tri-). Beyond three, the number
in the type name did not refer to the number of ranks of oars any more
(as for biremes and triremes, respectively two and three ranks of oars
with one rower per oar), but to the number of rowers per vertical
section, with several men on each oar. Indeed, just because a ship was
designated with a larger type number did not mean it necessarily had
or operated all three possible ranks: the quadrireme may have been a
simple evolution of a standard trireme, but with two rowers on the top
oar; it may also have been a bireme with two men on each oar; or it
may just have had a single rank with four men on a each single oar.
Classes of ship could differ in their configuration between regions and
over time, but in no case did a "four" ship have four horizontal ranks
of oars.
Depiction of the position of the rowers in three different levels (from top: thranitai, zygitai and thalamitai) in a Greek
trireme.
As a catamaran of two "twentys" with 4,000 oarsmen, there would be

2,000 per hull and therefore 1,000 per side. The 130m length would
allow ample room for the 50 vertical sections of three oars each, with
each vertical section accommodating 20 rowers (hence the designation
"twenty"). Thus there would be 150 oars per side. Casson has
suggested that it was possible that the two internal sides were not
equipped with oars and that the rowers there acted as reserve crew for
those on the outer side, so the "forty" would have had either 300 or
600 oars.

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Ancient Galleys

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The generic Roman term for an oar-driven galley warship was "long ship" (Latin: navis longa,

Port-side view of 2007 3D digital Gurob ship model.

The number 5 is related to the number of oarsmen per cell (interscalmium)

red on top (thranites),

The relief of the tomb

However, Alec Tilley suggests another approach that is also of interest.

Pedestal of Samothrace Victory, starboard side (photo: A. de Graauw at Louvre

Punic bireme terracotta model (photo: A. de Graauw at Alicante Mus. 2015).

This somewhat confusing situation is also due to an evolution of definitions in

Nemi I ship after Ucelli (1950).

Nemi II ship after Ucelli (1950).

 known ancient maxi-ships

Complete pictures of the details shown above are given hereafter.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

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trireme Bucentaur bireme unireme liburnian

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naval warfare: The age of galley warfare

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN SHIPS

Categories with related articles in this website: Ancient Egyptian History

Websites on Ancient Egypt: UCLA Encyclopedia of

Ancient Egyptian Papyrus Boats

The Egyptians mass produced linen for sails.

boat from 1900 BC

Advanced Ships in Ancient Egypt

Boats and River Travel in Ancient Egypt

“Boats in ancient Egypt were ubiquitous and crucially important to many

Herodotus wrote in Book 2 of “Histories”: “The boats in which they carry

Boat from the Middle Kingdom

Types of Ancient Egyptian Boats

funerary paddling boat

Boats as a Means of Transportation in Ancient Egypt

Military Use of Boats in Ancient Egypt

ship with Nubian captives

Religious and Ceremonial Uses of Boats in Ancient

“One image of a blessed afterlife included joining Ra in his bark. Those

“There is no direct proof that the boats depicted in the Hierakonpolis

Burying Boats with the Dead in Ancient Egypt

“Aside from the ceremonial use of boats by kings, non-royal individuals

Funeral of a Mummy by Arthur Bridgeman

“Large-scale ceremonial barks continued in use in major Egyptian temples

Transporting Stone by Boat in Ancient Egypt

“One early method for moving stones by water, however, is suggested by

No animals or machines were used to transport the blocks. Whenever

Transporting Wood by Sea in Ancient Egypt

“More details of the procedures by which the long, straight timbers

Transporting Grain by Boat in Ancient Egypt

The Twentieth Dynasty Papyrus Amiens describes “a flotilla of some 21

Seafaring in Ancient Egypt

“Documentary texts dealing with seafaring (as opposed to river

Ancient Egyptian seafaring ship

“We can, however, certainly discount earlier Egyptologists’ theories of

Seafaring in the Old and Middle Kingdoms (2649–

“The presence aboard of bearded persons who appear to be western Asian,

4,500-Year-Old Ancient Egyptians Red Sea Port

Alexander Stille wrote in Smithsonian Magazine: “Wadi al-Jarf lies where

“After visiting Wadi al-Jarf, Mark Lehner, an American Egyptologist, was

“Ancient Egypt’s maritime activities also served political and symbolic

Seafaring in the New Kingdom (1550–1070 B.C.)

“Archaeologically, the late-18th-Dynasty-era Uluburun shipwreck shows the

More Advanced Ships Appear in New Kingdom Egypt

Sea People Battle

Seafaring in the Late, Ptolemaic and Roman Periods