Bradbury. Kpn-Boats, Punt Trade, And a Lost Emporium

Kpn-boats, Punt Trade, and a Lost EmporiumAuthor(s): Louise BradburySource: Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, Vol. 33 (1996), pp. 37-60Published by: American Research Center in EgyptStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40000604Accessed: 26/06/2010 10:14

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X/m-boats, Punt Trade, and a Lost Emporium*

Louise Bradbury

One result of the study of Thutmose I's Kush campaign and his Tombos Inscription at the 3rd Cataract has been the realization that early in the 18th Dynasty the Egyptians had established a presence in the territory at the head of the 4th Cataract, the lands around Abu Hamed and Kurgus (fig. I).1 Within the Tombos text Thut- moses I claimed to have built a frontier fortress, presumably in this region, after his conquest. Over time there may have been a complex of forts situated along the North-South overland trade route on the east side of the Nile between Kurgus and Abu Hamed and on Mograt Island.2

* I would like to thank Lisa Heidorn, Stuart Smith, and Renee Bender for reading and commenting on earlier versions of this paper. A special thanks goes to Eugene Cruz-Uribe for his comments and discussions during its preparation, and to Harry Rutledge for consultation on the Greek words.

One of the chief functions of the Egyptians sta- tioned in the area would have been to oversee trading ventures with tribes to the south.

The existence of an overland Nubian avenue offers, in part, an explanation as to why modern surveyors of the Wadi Gasus, Mersa Gawasis, the Wadi Hammamat, and Wadi Gash regions have yet to discover a single 18th or 19th Dynasty text or graffito east of Bir Umm Fawakhir as far as the Red Sea.3 In fact, the meager New Kingdom inscriptional material found west of Bir Umm Fawakhir caused Simpson to conclude, "the Ham- mamat and its quarries were not in their greatest vogue under the Tuthmosides."4 The lack of evidence for commercial traffic from Coptos to the Red Sea, during the two centuries when envoys arrived from Punt to be depicted in the tombs of officials and recorded in Egyptian documents, finds resolution in Egypt's occupation of the territory along the Nile in the province of Karoy. Egypt's control of this trading access from the on- set of the New Kingdom is further demonstrated

1 L. Bradbury, "The Tombos Inscription: A New Interpre- tation," SerapisS (1985), 1-20; idem, "Following Thutmoses I on His Campaign to Kush," KMT 3, no. 3 (Fall 1992), 51ff.

2 There is confusion over the location of the large white rock, known as the Hagar-el-Merwa, inscribed with identical boundary stelae of Thutmose I and Thutmose III, and the as yet undated Kurgus fort described by A. J. Arkell, "Varia Sudanica,"/A 36 (1950), 36-39, respectively: "the conspicu- ous quartz boulder just east of the railway line," was exactly opposite the mud-brick fort "down on the river bank," and the fort's "west wall is protected from the river by a stone facing." Still several scholars on their maps cite Kurgus on the west bank of the Nile, B. Trigger, Nubia under the Pharaohs (London, 1976), map in fig. 1; and D. O'Connor, "Egypt, 1552-664 B.C.," CHA I (Cambridge, 1982), map in fig. 12:19 (1); idem, "The Location of Irem," JEA 73 (1987), fig. 1, wherein he correctly placed Kurgus but located the Hagar- el-Merwa on the opposite bank some distance north. These misidentifications probably stem from the "Kurgus" village currently on the west bank of the Nile while on the east bank where the old fort and the Hagar-el-Merwa are located, the region is known as Kurgus Omodia, F. C. S. Lorimer, "The Rubatab," Sudan Notes and Records 19 (1936), map p. 162. In this discussion Kurgus indicates the New Kingdom remains on the east bank about 23 miles south of Abu Hamed and

about 140 miles north of the Atbara River. Crawford reported that the Hagar-el-Merwa lay about 150 yards east of the railroad line, and that the pure white rock, with the inscriptions of Thutmose I and Thutmose III, was a pinnacle of a long quartz dyke which, with occasional breaks, ran nearly to Abu Hamed, O. G. S. Crawford, "Field Archaeol- ogy of the Middle Nile Region," KUSH 1 (1953), 2ff. esp. 6-7 (see herein fig. 1). For the extent of Karoy's territory and its southern frontier, probably marked by the boundary text, see Bradbury, Serapis 8, 1-3 with notes 10 and 60. Cf. K. Zibelius, Afrikanische Orts- und Volkernamen in hieroglyphi- schen und hieratischen Texten (Wiesbaden. 1972). 162-63.

3 L. Bradbury, "Reflections on Traveling to 'God's Land' and Punt in the Middle Kingdom." JARCEtb (1988), 127-56.

4 W. K. Simpson, "Historical and Lexical Notes on the New Series of Hammamat Inscriptions," JNES 18 (1959), 20ff., especially true if the five cartouches of Menkheperre have been correctly reassigned to the priest-"King" of the 25th Dynasty.

37

38 JARCE XXXIII (1996)

Fig. 1. Map of KurguslKari and the Hagar-el-Merwa. Composite drawing by author based on J. A. Arkell, "Varia Sudan- ica, "JEA 36 (1950), 36-39; O. G. S. Crawford, "Field Archaeology of the Middle Nile Region, "RUSH 1 (1953), 6-7; and J. Vercoutter, "New Egyptian Texts from the Sudan, " RUSH 4 (1956), 67-68.

by the twenty or more graffiti copied by Vercout- ter at Kurgus, the majority of which were 18th Dynasty, possibly a few from the 19th Dynasty.5

Such commercial trafficking lends weight to Herzog's claim that Punt could be reached by sailing up the Nile and its tributaries.6 However,

it must be stressed that any nautical trip into the interior of Africa via the Middle Nile and Atbara Rivers and on to the western entrance7 of Punt during the New Kingdom commenced from the banks around Abu Hamed and Kurgus since it

5 J. Vercoutter, "New Egyptian Texts from the Sudan," RUSH 4 (1956), 68; unfortunately, not all of these graffiti have been published.

6 R. Herzog, Punt [Abhandlungen des Deutschen Archao- logischen Instituts Kairo, Agyptologische Reihe, Band 6] (Gluckstadt, 1968), esp. 81-83. Herzog overlooked the stelae on the Hagar-el-Merwa (note 2 above) which could have added force to his thesis. Cf. L. Stork, Die Nashorner (Ham- burg, 1977), 241-85.

7 Punt was approached on its eastern side via the Red Sea, K. Kitchen, "Punt and How to Get There," Orientalia 40 (1971), 184ff; Bradbury, fARCE 25, esp. 127ff., despite C. Vandersleyen, "Pount sur le Nil," DE 12 (1988), 75-80. Proof that "Great Green" also meant "sea" can be adduced from the material left at the 12th Dynasty port at Mersa Ga- wasis, Bradbury, op. cit., for sources plus Hatshepsut's sailing reliefs which show salt water fishes of the Red Sea variety, Kitchen, op. cit., 193 note 42, and water-skins hung from the fore and aft truss, C. S0lver, "Egyptian Shipping of about

KPN-BOATS, PUNT TRADE, AND A LOST EMPORIUM 39

is unlikely the Egyptians then or at any time attempted to maneuver their merchant fleet up the rapids of the 4th Cataract against the current and the north wind.8

Both Vercoutter9 and Posener10 recognized that from the top of the 4th Cataract one could gain entrance into the Land of Punt via the river or overland. It was Arkell's opinion that New Kingdom caravan expeditions were made to and from Punt as early as Hatshepsut's reign.11 Po- sener, citing a passage in the Queen's Deir el Bahari inscription, considered it as proof there was a second route other than the Red Sea, an inland one, leading to Punt.12 O'Connor pondered its use by those bringing herds of cattle to the Queen.13 Kemp, too, thought that the more than twenty new Kingdom graffiti Vercout- ter found at Kurgus indicated a "local market" or perhaps "a direct route to Punt," thus the "graffiti mark the passage of the Egyptian armies."14

Kitchen, while agreeing with Herzog's location and Nile avenue into Punt, postulated that it may have commenced as far north as modern Berber,15 situated but one hundred fifteen miles south of Kurgus.

Although many scholars16 do not concur with Kitchen's vast expanse for the Land of Punt, it remains a fact that once the Egyptians established an outpost at the top of the 4th Cataract they were in a position to conduct overland trade with this highly desirable supplier and with any intermediaries occupying the territory between their two borders.17 Thus it seems worthwhile to examine pictorial evidence of commercial ex- changes between Punt and Egypt which most likely transpired in the vicinity of the frontier post at Kurgus.

I. A Puntite delivery scene found in Tomb 143 (fig. 2) has perplexed Egyptologists since Davies published the double register in 1935. 18 The

1500 B.C.," Mariner's Mirror 22 (1936), 436-37 and 444. No doubt wjd wr designated both Nile River, Mediterranean, and Red Seas, just as Bahr in the Sudan represents the Nile, all its tributaries, river streams [T. D. Murray and A. S. White, Sir Samuel Baker - A Memoir (London, 1895), 52], the Red Sea, and even dry wadi beds such as Bahr bela Ma = River without Water, and Bahr Hatab = Wood River, R. Lepsius, Discoveries in Egypt, Ethiopia, and the Peninsula of Sinai (London, 1853), 136-37.

8 Bradbury, Serapis 8, esp. 4-8 and note 50; idem, KMT 3, esp. 55-56.

J. Vercoutter, "Une campagne militaire de Seti I en Haute Nubie," RdE 24 (1972), 208 n. 4; so too J. Leclant, Africa in Antiquity (Brooklyn, 1978), 67-68; O'Connor, JEA 73, passim. 10 G. Posener, "L'or de Pount," Agypten und Kusch 13 (Berlin, 1977), 341, n. 32. 11 A. Arkell, A History of the Sudan (London, 1966 [orig. 1955]), 80; while W. Max Muller, Egyptological Researches: Re- sults of a Journey in 190411 (Washington, 1906), 153, considered that the overland trade may have occurred as early as Thutmose I.

12 Posener, Agypten und Kusch 13, 341. Perhaps referred to again in her Speos Artemidos Inscription, line 15, A. Gar- diner, "Davies's Copy of the Great Speos Artemidos Inscrip- tion," JEA 32 (1946), 46. See A. Lloyd, "Necho and The Red Sea: Some Considerations," JEA 63 (1977), 144 with notes 14- 15; Kitchen, Orientalia 40, 188; B. Kemp, "Old Kingdom, Mid- dle Kingdom and Second Intermediate Period in Egypt," CHA I (Cambridge, 1982), 723. 13 O'Connor, CHA I, 935 n.l.

14 B. Kemp in RD.A. Garnsey and C.R. Whittaker, eds., Im- perialism in the Ancient World (London, 1978), 28-29, citing Vercoutter, KUSH 4, 68.

15 Kitchen, Orientalia 40 , esp. 188 and 203. 16 For example, O'Connor, CHA I, 900 with fig. 12.18; idem,/A 73, 118 and fig. 2; Kemp, Imperialism, 10; C. Vander- sleyen, Les Guerres dAmosis, fondateur de la XVIII dynastie (Brus- sells, 1971), 52 note 8; M. Alliot, "Pount-Pwane, L'Opone du Geographe Ptolemee," RdE 8 (1951), Iff.; P. Montet, Eternal Egypt (New York, 1964), map; Zibelius, Afrikanische Orts- und Volkernamen, 114-17; A. Zayed, General History of Africa II: Ancient Civilization of Africa II, ed. by G. Mokhtar (Berkeley, 1981), 144-48; Abdel-Aziz Saleh, "The GNBTYW of Thutmo- sis Ill's Annals and the South Arabian GEB(B)ANITAE of the Classical Writers," BIFAO 72 (1972), 247-48; Nina M. and N. de Garis Davies, "The Tomb of Amenmose (No. 89) at Thebes," JEA 26 (1940), 136; T. Save-Soderbergh, The Navy of the Eighteenth Egyptian Dynasty (Lund, 1946), 9 and n. 2; Muller, ER II, 39 esp. n. 2; W Vycichl, "Lag das Land Punt am Meer oder im Sudan?," CdE 45 (1970), 318-24; Stork, Die Nashorner, 262-64. 17 That there were go-betweens who received "many pay- ments" to convey from one to another the products from Punt is certain from URK IV, 344; ARE II, 287. Abdel-Aziz Saleh, "An Open Question on Intermediaries," Orientalia 42 (1973), 370-82; Kemp, Imperialism, 290 note 68; and Stork, Die Nashorner, 258-60 and 279-80, placed Miu south of Abu Hamed; discussed by O'Connor JEA 73, 122ff., with his location of Irem in the region of the Atbara. The fact that Egypt never conquered Punt even in the New Kingdom argues that it must have lain considerably beyond the reach of the Egyptian army, O'Connor, CHA I, 918 and 940. 18 N. de G. Davies, "The Work of the Graphic Branch of the Expedition: 1934-1935," BMMA (Nov. 1935), Part II, 46- 48 with figs 2 and 3; W. Wreszinski, Atlas zur alt degyptischen Kulturgeschichtel (Leipzig, 1915), 347 and 348; URK IV, 1472; and mentioned by Herzog, Punt, 18; PMl, 255-57; J. Vandier,


Fig. 2. Relief from Tomb 143 Depicting a Trading Encounter with Natives from Punt. Scene from T. Sdve-Soderbergh, The Navy of the Eighteenth Egyptian Dynasty, fig. 6.

scenes show the receipt of rafts from Punt by Min, Chief Treasurer for Thutmose III and Amenhotep II, who had brought with him to the water's edge a number of Egyptian soldiers and bearers. In the upper register, the products from Punt have been unloaded and "incense, ebony, a monkey, goods packed in sacks of skin, an incense tree, etc." were traded for the Egyp- tian items depicted directly below consisting of bread, jars (of beer/wine?), and skins (of grain?). After negotiations were completed, the Egyp- tians collected the goods from Punt as Min's chariot with double-harnessed horses was made ready "... making a good journey bearing products, (being) all good articles of Punt myrrh . . . incense trees . . . "19 The two Punt rafts, each

holding five or six people, are shown reloaded with their Egyptian merchandise and hoisted sails setting off for home.

When he presented the relief, Davies ques- tioned associating the two frail boats with vessels that could endure a voyage upon the Red Sea. He wrote, "Color, shape and absence of marking al- most preclude a heavy raft of wood, though this would seem to be demanded, not only to weather storms and defy the coral reefs but even for step- ping a high mast and steering gear and securing the one running halyard. Something exceedingly primitive is rather suggested, such as the coracles which navigated on the Euphrates then as now. . . . the deck can have been raised but little above the sea and is unprovided with the slightest bulwark against breaking waves or tempestuous winds."20 This remarkable commercial endeavor was commented on by Save-Soderbergh when he pondered the "two exceedingly primitive, large bolsterlike sailing rafts with a simple rig ... It is hardly possible to find another explanation than that given by Davies, though the rafts look most inadequate for their purpose, but we must take

Manuel d'archeologie egyptienne IV (Paris, 1964), 576 and figs. 313(2) and 314; W. Helck, Zur Verwaltung des mittleren und neuen Reichs (Probleme der Agyptologie) (Leiden-Cologne, 1958), 352 and n. 2, and 468, identified Tomb 143 as owned by Min. 19 Davies, BMMA (Nov. 1935), 48; URK IV, 1472. E. Cruz- Uribe checked the text of the original publication of the relief in Tomb 143 and offered this slightly different translation of the fragmented inscription (personal communica- tion). See also B. Cummings, Egyptian Historical Records of the Later Eighteenth Dynasty II (Warminster, 1984), 163. 20 Davies, BMMA (Nov. 1935), 48-49.

XPJV-BOATS, PUNT TRADE, AND A LOST EMPORIUM 41

Fig. 3. Keleks on the Tigris - Then and Now. a. Assyrian relief at Nimrud ca. 700 B.C. After V. Place, Ninive et l'Assyrie III (Paris, 1867), pi 4 3. L, fig. 1. b. After J. D. Newman, Thrones and Palaces of Babylon and Nineveh, 233, ca. A.D. 1873.

into account the Egyptian artist has probably sim- plified and misunderstood the strange craft."21

Could these strange river rafts be float-boats or keleks?22 Inflated rafts are perfect conveyances for plying shallow river tributaries or rocky rapids; for their buoyancy, caused by inflated goat or sheep skins (rarely lungs or bladders) like those used on the Tigris River, provides the needed stability for riding the current.23 When keleks

(fig. 3a and b) are compared with the versions from Tomb 143, three similarities can be quickly noted: 1) the shallow draft rafts float mainly above the water; 2) the cargo and passengers sit atop decks made from wooden boards or branches; and 3) they have identical silhouettes of rounded bow and stern. 24

21 Save-Soderbergh, Navy, 23-25 with fig. 6, and again by N. de G. Davies, The Tomb of Rekh-mi-Re' at Thebes I- II (New York, 1943 [reprint 1973]), 19. 22 Lloyd, fEA 63, buried this suggestion in note 17 on page 144.

J. P. Newman, The Thrones and Palaces of Babylon and Nineveh: from Sea to Sea: A Thousand Miles on Horseback (New York, 1876), 233-234 and 296, crossed the Tigris River on one. J. Hornell, "Floats and Buoyed Rafts in Military Opera- tions," Antiquity 19 (1945), 72-79 but esp. 74-75. L. Casson, Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World (Princeton, 1971),

3-4, assigned the worldwide invention of inflated rafts to "re- mote times." See below notes 24 and 36. M. -C. de Graeve, Ships of the Ancient Near East (c. 2000-500 B.C.) (Leuven, 1981), 39ff., cites the earliest reliefs of inflated skin rafts found at Nimrud ca. 700 B.C.; B. Landstrom, The Ship (New York, 1961), 10-11; A. Villiers, Men, Ships and the Sea (Washington, 1963), 13; B. Greenhill, Archaeology of the Boat (Middle town, 1976), 97 and fig. 50. For its use in historical and recent times, see Lt. -Colonel Chesney, The Expedition for the Survey of the Rivers Euphrates and Tigris II (New York, 1850 [repr. 1969]), 633-41.

24 Although their rounded ends might plausibly repre- sent quffas (coracles) as considered by A. W. Sleeswyk, "On


Given the setting along the eastern bank in the vicinity of Kurgus, it can be easily imagined that the two Punt rafts glided down the Atbara River or a tributary from some unknown depar- ture point, reached the confluence of the Atbara and Nile and then skimmed over the rapids at the 5th Cataract with their "prized" possessions to trade. The fact that gold is not listed in the commodities ferried from Punt, coupled with the few adults participating and the fact they were not admitted into Egyptian territory, suggests this was an individual enterprise (reciproc- ity) rather than a royal shipment of "marvels" from Punt. Moreover, a Nile trip resolves the curious absence of water-skins since fresh water was not a problem for those traveling by river.

In order to head upstream from the east bank at Kurgus, the merchants on the two skiffs had raised their sails to catch the strong prevailing north wind which would carry their flat-bottomed vessels against the Nile current. The same animal skins (trussed cowhides? probably contain- ing grain) originally seen on land are now shown transferred to the wooden decks of the rafts. Moreover the two Puntite children had disem- barked when the incense trees were unloaded.25 Thus the boats are shown departing for home and not arriving from Punt. The boats' position in the relief reflects the artistic accuracy of an

event which could have been witnessed from the east bank at Kurgus as the north wind billows the sails powering the rafts upstream. On the other hand, if the scene was viewed from a port on the Egyptian shore of the Red Sea, the relief would be a mirror image, and explains why scholars consider it an arrival scene.26

Additional confirmation that the location depicted in the painting from Tomb 143 was on the Nile, and not on the Red Sea coast, comes from the inclusion of incense trees in the cargo from Punt. Dixon alluded to the rarity of representations of imported cntyw-trees in Egyptian scenes by citing only five instances,27 mainly from the 18th Dynasty. In the published portion of the trading relief from Tomb 143, Davies drew a par- tially destroyed cntyw-tree in leaf. Of an unpub- lished scene Davies wrote, "To the left the asses are being driven back with their new loads, but the tree has to be carried on a yoke by two men."28 One can therefore assume that the val- uable incense tree(s) had made the trip from Punt in condition worthy of barter and transportation on to Thebes.

Could the float boats as depicted by the artist accomplish such a task on the Red Sea? Kitchen estimated that it would take Hatshepsut's fleet about thirty days to return from Suakin to Quseir;29 and another two or three days would have to be tacked on to that duration if they de- parted from Adulis as some scholars prefer. Even if the rafts from Punt set off in winter to take advantage of the Red Sea current and wind,30 it would surely take them at least as long as

the location of the land of Punt on two Renaissance maps," IJNA 12.4 (1983), 286, their high flat decks suggest that the conventional wooden frames (fig. 2) had been lashed to the inflated skins as would also be necessary to secure the sails, mast-posts and steering gears. In fact the sophistication of the Puntite skin rafts apparently was never attained by the keleks in Mesopotamia. Note too that the lateen sail had a yard but no boom, thus tacking could have been achieved. A loose- footed sail is not seen again until Ramesses Ill's lion-headed warships and the boats of the Sea Peoples, R. L. Bowen, "Egypt's Earliest Sailing Ships," Antiquity 34 (1960), 122-23 and fig. 8; Casson, Ships and Seamanship, 37-38 and note 19, concluded that it was a guess as to where - Aegean, Crete or Levant - the rig originated; idem. The Ancient Mariners (Princeton, 1991, revised edition), 41-42. A. Raban, "The Medinet Habu ships: another interpretation," IJNA 18.2 (1989), 170-71, called the new braided rig "revolutionary." S. Wachsmann, "The ships of the Sea Peoples," IJNA 10.3 (1981), 214-16, believed the rig was developed by Ca- naanites; S. Vinson, "The Earliest Representations of Brailed Sails," JARCE 30 (1993), 133-50. An added advantage to inflated skins is that they act as separate air chambers so that puncturing one does not sink the raft. 25 Davies, BMMA (Nov. 1935), 49; Save-Soderbergh, Navy, 23; Herzog, Punt, 18.

26 Vandier, Manual IV, 576-77. The arrival scene in the upper register shows piles of myrrh, a myrrh tree and bowing Puntites.

27 D. M. Dixon, "The Transplantation of Punt Incense Trees in Egypt," JEA 55 (1969), 55-65, listed the Deir el Ba- hari reliefs, those from the tombs of Puyemre and Rekhmire, and Ramesses Ill's Medinet Habu reliefs. While including the cntyw-tree from Tomb 143, Dixon did not note the relief from the same tomb published by Save-Soderbergh, Navy, 25, fig. 5; and Wreszinski, Atlas I, 347, where several cntyw-trees are depicted. Both Ramesses II and Ramesses III left textual records of importing cntyw-trees, Dixon, ibid., 59 with notes 10-11, and 64 note 2.

28 Davies, BMMA (Nov. 1935), 49; Vandier, Manual III, 577-78; Save-Soderbergh, Navy, 23; Dixon, JEA 55, 59 note 1. 29 Kitchen, Orientalia 40 , 196 and 198-202.

30 Kitchen, ibid., 196. Inge Hofmann, up3 jm cj n mw kd," GM4 (1973), 19, states that the south winds drive the current only as far as Tokar during Sept. -May, while between Oct.-

KPN-ROATS, PUNT TRADE, AND A LOST EMPORIUM 43

Hatshepsut's ships, perhaps twice as many days.31 Admitting the Puntites had adequate fresh water, due to the winter rains in the Red Sea Hills,32 could the temperamental cntyw-trees, riding on an unprotected platform and daily washed with waves of salt water which kills most plant life, really survive the forty, sixty or eighty days needed for the rafts to reach Wadi Gewasis?33 On the other hand, the Boswellia and Commi- phora trees still grow in Eritrea and Kassala while the frankincense species, Commiphora peduncu- lata, is indigenous to the Gallabat and adjacent Ethiopia regions.34 Trees dug up in any of these places could have been current-borne downriver in about a week or less to end the journey, per-

haps with bare roots but living and worth being carried off after the Puntites rendezvoused at the Kurgus market-place.

Inflated rafts plied the coral reefs along the coastlines of South Arabia and East Africa long before classical writers discovered them. Strabo35 and Pliny actually attributed the invention of this raft design to "King Erythras for use between the islands in the Red Sea"36 and presumably also on his rivers. Yet this type of water craft has not been mentioned by experts in their studies of ancient Egyptian ships or sailing ventures on the Nile37 or even by authors discussing these

Jan. only as far as 19 N; Bradbury, JARCE 25, note 14 and fig. 1. 31 Rafts of skin going against the current slide backwards without powerful winds from behind and the use of many oars (which are not shown on these rafts); on the Red Sea they would need a strong southern wind which is rarely present and then only for a few months' duration, Bradbury, JARCE 25, fig. 1. 32 Bradbury, JARCE2b, note 14. 33 Davies, BMMA (Nov. 1935), 47, estimated a year or more for this Puntite trip. The trees Hatshepsut's ships carried home were placed well back from the fore and aft and on "decking over the centerline of the vessel: along the gun- wales an open space has been left to allow the rowers to sit to their oars," Casson, Ships and Seamanship, 21. The sharp ris- ing foreposts and curved sternposts also provided some shelter from high waves. Since there was no protecting fence around the center decks to contain the prized cargo in rough seas, one wonders if the bulk of "marvels" were not actually placed below deck where the Egyptian gifts were stowed in the arrival scene, as observed by Solver, MM 22, 434; so too R. O. Faulkner, "Egyptian Seagoing Ships," JEA 26 (1941), 8. Nonetheless, the decks of the Queen's seagoing ships were considerably higher out of water than the decks of the two Punt rafts which could have been no more than a foot or a foot and a half above the water level.

34 In the Pyramid Texts incense comes from Nubia (803e, 864c, 1718), Save-Soderbergh, Navy, 10 with note 2. Kitchen, Orientalia 40, 186; A. Lucas, Ancient Egyptian Materials & In- dustries (London, 1948 [orig. 1926]), 91-92; idem, "Cosmet- ics, Perfumes and Incense in Ancient Egypt," JEA 16 (1930), 49 with note 3; idem, "Notes on Myrrh and Stacte,"/A 23 (1937), 28; Herzog, Punt, 64-65; but if cantyw is equated with gum-arabic, "the Sudan is by far the best-known producer," Lucas, Anc. Eg. Materials . . . , 186. Hofmann, GM 4, 20, with references to aromatic substances found in regions of Soua- kin, Tokar, Aqiq, and territories east of Keren. J. W. McCrin- dle, in his translation of The Christian Topography ofCosmas, an Egyptian Monk (London, 1897), 38 note 4, reported "Dr. Gla- ser derives the name Ethiopia from atyob (the plural of taib,

frankincense) so that it thus denotes generally the frankincense countries. In the restricted application Ethiopia designated the Kingdom or Island of Meroe." J. Lewis Krapf, Travels, Researches, and Missionary Labours (London, 1968 [orig. I860]), 467, frankincense and other exports from Ethiopia including ebony trees [Mping] and cinnamon trees [Mdella- sini] , 501-2 and notes. So too W. C. Plowden, Travels in Abys- sinia and The Galla Country with An Account of a Mission to Ras AH in 1848 (London, 1868), 127. According to L. Torok, "Economy in the Empire of Kush," ZAS 111 (1984), 51, "Philostratos (vita Apol., VI 2) recounts that the Ethiopians barter gold . . . myrrh and other incense for Roman (sc. Egyptian) ware . . . "; Lloyd, JEA 63, 144 note 15, believed that "frankincense could have come down the Nile as early as the Vlth Dynasty . . . (and) possibly the myrrh used by Ta- nutamun at Napata came the same way." J. Leclant, "Egypte- Afrique," BSFE 21 (1956), 34. Incense and gum trade is still carried on, R. Pankhurst, "The Trade of Northern Ethiopia in the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries," Journal of Ethiopian Studies 11 (1964), 70-71, 75, noting Barentu did a flourishing export trade in gum during the last two centuries. J. L. Burckhardt, Travels in Nubia (London, 1968 [orig. 1822]), 262, for liban mini and srum arabic traded at Shendi. 35 Strabo, Geography, XVI, 4.20. 36 Pliny, Natural History VII, 56.206, recorded that before the time of Danaus "rafts were used for navigation, having been invented by King Erythras ..." Nabataeans' a%e5iaic; rafts used for plundering Egyptian ships was reported by Strabo, Geography, 16.4.18. Pliny, AW VI, 34.176, noted that "the Asci- atae made rafts of timber placed on a pair of inflated oxhides and practised piracy." Periplus connected the Asciatae with the peoples from Asich who founded Axum, W. Schoff, The Periplus of the Erythrean Sea (London, 1912), 126, #33. Accord- ing to this source, the "Berbers themselves crossing on rafts to Ocells and Muza on the opposite shore . . . ," 24-25, #7; he further noted that frankincense was brought "to Cana on rafts held up by inflated skins after the manner of the country," 32, #27; plus Schoff 's discussions, 62, 126-27, 143-45. 37 Save-Soderbergh, Navy, passim; J. Hornell, "The Sail- ing Ship in Ancient Egypt," Antiquity 17 (1943), 27-41; nor even in his discussion in Antiquity 19, 72-79; A. Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt (New York, 1971 [orig. London, 1894]), 479- 89;A.Nibbi, The Sea Peoples and Egypt (New Jersey, 1975), esp.


particular rafts.38 Nonetheless modern Egyptians and Sudanese are familiar with this mode of transportation. While on the upper Atbara River in 1861 Samuel Baker launched a four-person inflated skin raft. Later his Arab bearers showed him how to make a single skin raft from an an- telope within which they packed raw meats and ammunition to keep dry while crossing the water.39 Burckhardt decried the lack of "Ramous, nor any of those goatskins, which, when inflated, often serve as a conveyance on the Nile." At a later time he regretted there were no "inflated goatskins to tie to the necks of the camels," and so he had to tow them across the river.40 Bruce too noted that the Galla of Ethiopia sometimes used inflated skins to cross rivers, probably referring to the jandi, a large tanned ox-skin ferry boat still in use today on the Blue Nile.41

Did the ancient Puntites early in the 18th Dy- nasty know how to make an inflated-skin raft? Knowledge of how a skin raft is made helps to provide a plausible solution to that question. Ac- cording to Worcester, first "the animal is killed by a stab in its throat. A small incision is then

made inside one of the hind-legs and air is blown in and pummeled round until the skin is separated from the flesh all over the carcass. The head is cut off, and the hind-legs are split. The skin is next drawn forward over the body, re- maining whole from loins to neck save for the openings at the ends. After the hair or wool has been scraped off, the skin is tied up at the loins, neck and fore-legs and salt and vegetable oil are poured in ... The skin is inflated orally through the orifice at the end of one of the fore-legs" (fig. 4a). He continued, "the legs, pointing up- wards, are lashed to the wooden framework of the raft, and the skins are secured to each other by a trailing line passing round each orifice."42 He further reported that an inflated raft carries a far heavier load than a log raft, draws extremely little water, and is easier to handle - especially around bends in the river - than a wooden raft.43 A small inflated raft about seven feet square needs twelve sheep skins and could carry six or seven people or half a ton of cargo. Two similar rafts joined together could carry up to a ton. Sometimes as many as 500 to 1000 skins were lashed together to form a large barge (fig. 5).44

Moreover it is believed that these primitive floats were among man's earliest river conveyances all over the world, along with log and bark floats and reef rafts.45 Thus the possibility exists that if the Puntites knew how to make a goat or sheep skin container, they might have inflated it for crossing streams or sailing their rivers.

In the same Theban tomb scene there is a stuffed animal skin with its legs in the air on the top of the piles of myrrh brought by the Puntites (fig. 4c). It was probably tied at both the head and tail ends (fig. 4d), but much of the drawing was already destroyed when Davies restored it. This representation of an inflated skin, whether filled with myrrh or perishable trade goods, testi- fies that ca. 1450 B.C. these natives of Punt could have known the technique for making a buoyant

124-36; Herzog, Punt, 73-80; H. Kees, Ancient Egypt: A Cul- tural Topography (Chicago-London, 1977 [orig. 1954]), 106ff.; J. Breasted, "The Earliest Boats on the Nile" JEA 4 (1917), 174-76; B. Landstrom, Ships of the Pharaohs (New York- London, 1970), passim. 38 Davies, BMMA (Nov. 1935), 46ff.; Save-Soderbergh, Navy, 23-25; R. Bowen, "Boats of the Indus Civilisation," MM 42 (1956), 288-89 with fig. 4, showing the two rafts. Hornell, Antiquity 17, 40; Herzog, Punt, esp. 74-75; Sleeswyk, IJNA 12.4, 287, thought they were lighters moving goods between Punt and Egyptian ships docked at Dahlak Island; Saleh, Orientalia 42, 379-80, considered them boats crossing from the Arabian coast to the Egyptian side of the Red Sea; see above n. 22. 9 S. W. Baker, The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia (London, 1872), 121, 136-40, he attached eight inflated skins to a bed- stead upon which they lashed all their baggage for passage over the river.

40 Burckhardt, Travels in Nubia, 68-69, and 199, but he had earlier used them, 71. See also R. Herzog, "Ethnograph- ical Notes on the Sudan in an Early Traveller's Account," Sudan Notes and Records 38 (1957), 125. Burckhardt reported that Ramous were four trunks of date trees tied together and worked by paddle, and noted such a craft was represented on Egyptian temple walls, op. cit, 47 and 314. Rafts of logs, although probably used in antiquity by the Egyptians, never showed up in their art, Bowen, MM 42, 288. 41 J. Bruce, Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, 1768-73 (London-Edinburgh, 1790 [1813 ed.]), Book VI, c. 14; inflated skins were at this time used by the Galla tribes, Hor- nell, Antiquity 19, 73.

42 G. R. C. Worcester, "The Inflated Skin Rafts of the Huang Ho" MM 43 (1957). 73-74 with fis-s. 1-2.

43 Ibid., 73. Log rafts can split up on hitting rocks. 44 Ibid., 74; and Casson, Shits and Seamanshib, 4. 45 Landstrom, Ships of the Pharaohs, 20, early sewn boats;

Casson, Ships and Seamanship, Ch. 1, and notes therein; Vil- liers, Men, Ships and the Sea, 13; Greenhill, Archaeology of the Boat, Ch. 5.


a. After G Worcester, MM 43, fig 1. b. After B. Landstrom, The Ship, #6.

c. Tomb 143 from N. de G. Davies, BMMA (1935), fig. 2. d. Author's restoration.

e. Skins of Fruit from N. de G. Davies, Tomb of Rekh-mi-re, Vol. I, pl. xxix.

Fig. 4. Sketches of Animal Skins.

f Relief from Memphis tomb of Horemheb shoiuing soldiers filling water-skins. After G. Martin, The Hidden Tombs of Memphis (New York, 1991), fig 21.


Fig. 5. Kelek, Bridge of Boats, and Quffa at Bagdad A.D. 1873. After J. Newman, Thrones and Palaces of Babylon and Nineveh, 187. Bridge of Boats as when Amenhotep II crossed over the Orontes River, "the noise of his chariot-wheels was like that of his patron the thunder-god.

" M. Dower, "Syria c. 1550-1400 B.C., " CAH 11:1 (1973), 460.

skin raft (see too fig. 12 with myrrh-filled skins carried by Puntites) .

Presumably the Egyptians themselves in the re- motest of times had become aware of this primitive mode of transportation since they sewed leather garments and bags, used hides for grain sacks, carried water and wine in skins, made bel- lows for working metals from skins, and even put wool-filled skin pillows under the heads of their dead as early as the Der Tasa/Badari periods.46

Their determinative "water-skin" is an inflated animal skin tied at both ends with its tail hanging down. Sdw, formulating such words as "rescue," "water-skin," "cushion," "sdtf-raft," and "stolen" or "robbed,"4 seems to indicate their familiarity with the flotation device which may even appear in a 1st Dynasty seal (fig. 6a)48 around the same time as alabaster water-skin vessels were

46 W. Hayes, The Scepter of Egypt I (New York, 1953 [reprint 1978] ) , 13; C. Aldred, Egypt to the End of the Old Kingdom (New York, 1965), 24, for pillows under the heads. Soft and tanned skin garments were sewn with bone needles as early as the Badarian Period. A Lythgoe, Naga-ed-Der TV - The Predynastic Cemetery N 7000 (Berkeley-Los Angeles, 1965), listed from various tombs: stitched leather protective pouch, pp. 13, 19, 24, 27, 127, 145, 282; leather bags holding pebbles and mala- chite, 35, 205, in tombs with Gerzean pots. See too URKTV, 1104, 3-4, for cushions made of skins; A. Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar (Oxford, 1927, [ed. 1957]), F 30, pp. 465 and 595; WbW, 560. 4-5.

47 Sdw, Faulkner, A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian (Oxford, 1981), 273; WbW, 563. In the 'Eloquent Peasant,' "Savior from all water's harm: See I have a course without a ship! Guider to port of all who founder: Rescue (sdw) the drowning! ..." (i.e., a life preserver), M. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature I (Berkeley-London, 1973), 175. And from Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage, here sdw should be translated "raft" as Faulkner translated it (Diet, 274) rather than "board" as did Lichtheim, AEL I, 153 and 156 with note 10, since the word has a boat determinative.

48 Vandier, Manuel, III, fig. 574 and pp. 862-63, calling them "flotteurs"; P. E. Newberry, Ancient Egyptian Scarabs (Chi- cago, 1975), 107, and pl. IV #1, noting it belonged to predynastic time but was found at Abydos in a 1st Dynasty tomb.

XPN-BOATS, PUNT TRADE, AND A LOST EMPORIUM 47

manufactured which were discovered at Abydos andAi (fig. 6b).49

The text next to the scene of the two inflated rafts reports, "trading good, pure things . . . after the arrival of the Kpn-boats" (chc.w n Kpn).50 One might wonder why these rafts were not called sdw-boats, but possibly here is the solution to the repeatedly debated question - what was a Kpn or Kbn.t/Kbnj.t-boat?51 Newberry52 and Save- Soderberg, who cited the sewn boats in Hatshep-

Fig 6. Predynastic and First Dynasty Animal Skin Represen- tations, (a) Possible inflated animal skin floats with fore-legs and steering oar (bottom row) from tomb ofDjer. After Van- dier, Manuel, III, fig 574. (b) Zoomorphic alabaster vessel discovered at Ai After R. Amiran, IF] 20, fig. 5.

sut's fleet,53 both reasoned that boats and ships constructed mainly by sewing, tying, or lashing (tenons and ligatures), as opposed to those which

49 R. Amiran, "Egyptian Alabaster Vessels from Ai," IE] 20 (1970), 175-77 with fig. 5; W. M. Petrie, Royal Tombs of the Earliest Dynasties, Vol. I (London, 1900), 28, and plate xxxviii #3, from the 1st Dynasty tomb of Mersekha Semerkhet. 50 E. Cruz-Uribe kindly called my attention to the final line not translated by Davies; URKIV, 1472.16; Cummings, Egyptian Historical Records II, 163. There is a Nile Kbn.t-boat in Neferhotep's funeral scene from the 19th Dynasty, J. Gard- ner Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of Ancient Egypt (Birch ed. Ill, London, 1878), pl. LXVII.2; also in Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt, 320-21 upper; written as ^MJH^ Save-Soder- bergh, Navy, 48 with note 2. Hekanakht living in Upper Egypt mentioned a scmast for a Kbnj.t-boat, T. G. H. James, Hekanakht Papers and other Early Middle Kingdom Documents (New York and Oxford, 1961), Text XX: 9, verso 1. 7, p. 58. From time of Sesostris III-Amenemhat III a Kbn.t-boat was loaded at the palace at Itjet-towe in the Delta, W. K. Simpson, "Papyrus Lythgoe: A Fragment of a Literary Text of the Mid- dle Kingdom from El-Lisht," fEA 46 (1960), 67-68 and pl. XV A, and 70 n. 2.

A Sinai inscription belonging to Year 5 of Ramesses IV, KRI VI, 26-27, is generally understood as boasting of loading Kbn. t-ships with produce of [every land] by Chancellor [. . .]-hotep; for example, A. Nibbi, "Gold and Silver From the Sinai," GM 57 (1982), 40. However closer examination of KRI VI, 27 line 4 = ft?*"f. shows that the Chancellor was loading Mni-ships for a country or foreign port named [. . .]bti [note throw stick and country sign]. Moreover, the place-name of Byblos evolved during the late 12th- 13th Dy- nasties when the b changed to p before the start of the 18th Dynasty, S. H. Horn, "Byblos in Ancient Records," in Andrews University Seminary Studies I (1963), 52-61 esp. Table I. For Mwi-ships built in Egypt see below note 67. 51 Wb V, 118-19; H. Frankfort, "Egypt and Syria in the First Intermediate Period," fEA 12 (1926), 83 note 3; Faulk- ner, fEA 26, 3ff.; idem, "Egyptian Sea-going Ships: a Correc- tion," JEA 27 (1942), 158; A. Nibbi, "Some Remarks on the Assumption of Ancient Egyptian Sea-Going," MM 65 (1979), 204-6; idem, Ancient Byblos Reconsidered (Oxford, 1985), 25ff.; and D. Redford, "Egypt and Western Asia in the Old King- dom," TARCE23 (1986), 127 note 26.

52 P. Newberry, "Notes on Seagoing Ships," fEA 28 (1942), 65, citing spt with cord sign; for the verb sp-t "to bind," W. Edg- erton, "Ancient Egyptian Ships and Shipping," AfSL 39 (1922- 23), 109ff. esp. 129; E. A. Budge, An Egyptian Hieroglyphic Dictionary (New York, 1978 [orig. London, 1920]), 661 A, has

P^'^J**! recorded Kbnt without source, see below note 60. Homer, Iliad, 11.135, has Agamemnon reporting that after 9 years the planks of their boats had rotted and the cords (sparta - O7rdpxr|, oTtdpxov) worked loose [or "our ship timbers rot and the cables snap and fray," trans, by R. Fagles, The Iliad (New York, 1990), 103] also used by Herodotus, 5.16. For sparta as a Greek word for ropes on ships, see, H. S. Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon, rev.ed. (Oxford, 1961), 1624; J. Morrison and R. Wil- liams, Greek Oared Ships 900-322 B.C. (Cambridge, 1968), 50. Sparta/ Spartos in Greek became spartum in Latin and in Spanish, espar'to indicating Spain's Lugeum spartum grass employed in cording, Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language, Ed. by W. A. Neilson (Springfield, 1956), 873. Pliny, NH, 19.30, called esparto-grass a miracle due to its use all over the world for cording ships. See Edgerton, op. cit. 129, for the binding of a boat depicted in tomb of Khnumho- tep son of Neheri at Beni Hasan. For similar scenes in the tombs of Ptahhotep and Akhethotep, E. Teeter, "Techniques and terminology of rope-making in Ancient Egypt," fEA 73 (1987), 7lff. and pl. VII, who pointed out that scenes of boat building are often adjacent to scenes of rope-making. 53 Save-Soderbergh, Navy, 12 note 4, 16 note 2, 48 with note 1 on p. 49; A. Gil-Artagnan, "Projet 'Punt' Essai De Reconstitution D'un Navire et D'une Navigation Antique," BSEF73 (1975), 28-43.


Fig. 7. Details of Sahure's Seagoing Ships with Hogging-Trusses and Rope Girdles. Note man standing on hogging truss. After B. Landstrom, Ships of the Pharaohs, #189-91.

were tree-pegged (tenons doweled in the mortises), were vessels that bore the designation Kbn.tlKnbj.t or ^bra-ships.

So complex a subject as sewn ipn-boats in Egyptian history deserves a separate paper, but certain supportive evidence needs to be briefly summarized. As with other ancient peoples, sewing or lacing planks together was the original method in Egypt of assembling wooden boats for use on the Nile, and later, on the seas. Thus, their sewn and tied boats were the first vessels to sail to Byblos.54 The Royal Ship of Cheops from the 4th Dynasty and the ships of Sahure return- ing to Egypt with Syrians on board in the 5th dy- nasty55 are examples of Egyptian boatbuilders' ability to lash and bind the planks with ropes,

and confine the lacing mainly to the interior of the craft.56 Possessing only a central shelf or spine, since on the Nile a real keel was unnec- essary, their keelless seagoing ships were further strengthened with hogging-trusses which could be twisted to tighten for proper tension, plus cable ropes bound around the hulls fore and aft and truss-girdles (fig. 7).57 Starting in the late 5th Dynasty and throughout the 6th Dynasty inventive maritime changes were made by boat- wrights as appear in their ship reliefs and boat

54 Some scholars have dated Byblos voyages as early as the Thinite Period, Save-Soderbergh, Navy, 32 and note 6, 47, and 48 note 5; Landstrom, Ships of the Pharaohs, 25; H. Kan- tor, "The Early Relations of Egypt with Asia," JNES 1 (1942), 196; but M. Saghieh, Byblos in the Third Millennium B.C. (War- minster, 1983), 105-6, argued Egyptian trade with Byblos commenced only late in the 3rd Dynasty.

55 L. Borchardt, Das Grabdenkmal des Ko'nigs S'ajhu-re' II (Leipzig, 1913), plates 11-13. Save-Soderbergh, Navy, 15-16, called ships "pure Egyptian"; and Landstrom, The Ship, 16 with #25; idem, Ships of the Pharaohs, 63-66 with #187-99; cf. Casson, Ships and Seamanship, 35-36.

56 N. Jenkins, The Boat beneath the Pyramid (London, 1980), 100-108. See too P. Pomey, "L'epave de Bon-Porte et les Bateaux Cousus de Mediterranee," MM 67 (1981), 235-37. H. Frost, "Egypt and Stone Anchors," MM 65 (1979), 153. The antecedent to the Royal Ship may have been the flat- bottomed wooden boat built of planks stitched together, Landstrom, The Ship, 119. On origin of plank-sewn boats see, J. R. Hale, "Plank-built in the Bronze Age," Antiquity 54 (1980), 118ff., esp. 124-25; J. Hornell, "Origins of Plank- built Boats," Antiquity 13 (1939), 35-44; idem, Antiquity 17, 32. For probable restoration of a Gerzean three-plank sewn boat, Landstrom, Ships of the Pharaohs, 20.

57 Landstrom, Ships of the Pharaohs, 20, 28-29, 47, and esp. 146, for his placement of the central shelf [a longitudinal piece of wood down the middle of the ship near the floor boards] see his p. 29 #86. For hogging-trusses, cables and truss-girdles see pp. 64-68 and figs.

A7W-BOATS, PUNT TRADE, AND A LOST EMPORIUM 49

models. Modifications took place in the steering oars, shape of sail, and the sheer mast was re- placed by a pole mast;:>8 but, importantly, the joining of the wooden planks by tenons doweled in deep mortises became their main method of fastening.09

Because sewn ships had made the Byblos run for some five hundred years, the traditional edge- joining technique of shipbuilding assumed the appellation Kbn.t to distinguish it from the more developed cabinet-like construction. Kbn.t is first attested in the reign of Pepi II for a ship being reassembled on the Red Sea for a voyage to Punt, a task Henu was to duplicate nearly two centuries later. ()() Two new types of hull construction were revealed by Sesostris I's el-Lisht boat [mortise-and-tenon joints with some web-lashing in strategic places], and the Dahshur boats of Sesostris III [which instead of a frame had through-going beams and dovetail fastenings]. ()l Still the old procedure of sewing and lashing boat planks continued, but to a lesser degree throughout their history.

Hatshepsut's flotilla of Kp?i-ships traveling to Punt were constructed remarkably like Sahure's

Fig. S. Xnu Kingdom flogging Tmsses. (a) IlatshepsuCs Kpn-ships. After C. Ton, Ancient Ships, pi I. (b) Hatshep- sut's massive obelisk barge. After C. S0lver, "The Egyptian Obelisk-Ships MM 26 (1940), 240-41, jig 2.

sewn boats built one thousand years before. Cal- culated to have been some 80-90 feet long, her merchant galleys with hogging-trusses and cable- bound stems and sterns (fig. 8a) indicated to Casson that these clipper ships were without keels, hence in need of this additional longitudinal support.02 The next report of Kpn-boAts also happens to be the only extant mention in an Egyptian text of any Kbn,tlKpn-sX\\ps on the Mediterranean until the Late Period. It occurred when, about twenty-five years after her trading mission to Punt, Thutmose III collected various woods, poles, masts and trees brought by Kpn- ships, Skt- and Kftijxv-bo'dls to his Djahy harbors. (K*

)9 Mortises which received tenons may have been used as early as the First Dynasty, some appear on Cheops' boat, S. Vinson, Egyptian Boats and Ships (Buckinghamshire, 1994), 18-20, with ill. 10, but the V-shaped holes for lashing over- whelming dominated; Edeerton, /\AS7. 39, 129. (>() I'RKl, 134; AKEl, 360, IVpi-Nakht actually used the term (sp) "bind" in line 12, ARIA, p. 149 note g. After Henu none of the three Pith Dynasty voyages to Punt from the harbor on the Red Sea, Bradbury, JARCE 25, 145, refers to A.'/;//-ships in the extant material left at the coastal site; but "regular pieces of wood with mortise" found there were perhaps contemporary, A. H. Saved, "Observations on recent discoveries at Wadi Gawasis," JEA 66 (1980), 156-57 and fig. 3 [see below note 611. ()l It was "a form of lashing using a woven webbing," = a thin woven strip of twisted plant fibers according to C. W. Haldane, "Boat Timbers from El-Lisht: A New Method of Ancient Egyptian Hull Construction," MM 74 (1988), 141- 52; idem, "A fourth Dahshur boat," JEA 71 (1985), 174-75; Landstrom,

.S7///M of the Pharaohs, 90-91.

()2 Casson, Ancient Manners, 14-15, explained the hogging- truss as "heavy hawser looped about its ends and twisted to the proper tension." (ones wrote of the truss, "a heavy rope under tension secured around the hull at the stem and stern and supported on one or more stanchions above deck level. It provided longitudinal rigidity to the hull in the absence of a keel." D. Jones. Boats (London. 1995). 88. See above note 57.

(W AREU, 492; I'RKW, 706. It might be pondered if on this single occasion the king meant that his warehouses received


Fig. 9. Egyptian Ships with Keels, (a) Boat model from tomb of Amenhotep II. After B. Landstrom, Ships of the Pha- raohs, #339. (b) Boat model from tomb of Tutankhamon. After B. Landstrom, Ships of the Pharaohs, #331. (c) Ram- esses IIFs lion-headed warship. After B. Landstrom, Ships of the Pharaohs, #345.

The trading event depicting inflated Kpn-rafts were more or less contemporary with documents from the royal dockyard at Prw.nfr near Memphis where King's Son Amenhotep supervised building or refitting Skt- and Kftijw-boats among other

craft.64 Significantly, it is with the reigns of Thut- mose III and Amenhotep II that, as far as is known, the final reference to a Kpn-boat has been preserved for some one thousand years.65 The reason may rest with the two boat models found in the tomb of Amenhotep II which exhibit the first true keels in Egyptian boats (fig. 9a).66 These models imply that they had incorporated the single timber keel in some of their traveling ships, and certainly those sailing on a high sea. It was about this time too they adopted the Levantine seagoing Mns-ship which did possess a keel (fig. 10a and c).67 These nauti-

various pieces of wood carried by boats which actually sailed from the port of Byblos. He did not incorporate "A/m-boats" in his text when he built boats at Byblos in order to cross the great river during his Euphrates campaign, Cummings, Egyp- tian Historical Records II, 2 [BarkelText= 1232ff.]. There were some 28 words for ship in the Ugarit language (western Semitic) (F. Thureau-Dangin, "Vocabulaire de Ras Shamra," Syria 12 (1931), 228-30 for No. 5), yet Ugarit seagoing ships were mainly called canyt, J. Sasson, "Canaanite Maritime In- volvement in the Second Millennium B.C. ," JAOS 86 (1966), 128-38; E. Lipinski, "An Ugaritic Letter to Amenophis III Concerning Trade with Alasiya," Iraq 39 (1977), 216.

64 S. R. K. Glanville, "Records of a Royal Dockyard of the Time of Tuthmosis III: Papyrus British Museum 10056," Part I ZAS66 (1930), 105ff.; Part II ZAS 68 (1932), 7ff., see below note 69. The present writer follows Redford's reassignment of this text to Amenhotep II, "The Coregency of Tuthmosis III and Amenophis II." TEA 51 (1965), 107-22. 65 The 19th Dynasty Kbn.t- funeral boat lacked a sail and just as the spelling of Kbn harkened back to the OK and MK form, the sewn religious boat may have harkened back to the bark in the Osiris and Isis story. For the error in the Sinai inscription from the rei^n of Ramesses IV, see above note 50. 66 Landstrom, Ships of the Pharaohs, 107-8, #338 and #339, listing Cairo EM 4944 [Reisner, 96], and Cairo EM 5164 [Reisner, 138]. Lloyd, did not accept these models as proof of keels, A. Lloyd, "Triremes and the Saite Navy," JEA 58 (1972), 271 and note 3, citing the hogging-trusses on Hat- shepsut ships as evidence of lack of keels. It should be re- membered that her ships sailed some 75 years earlier. 67 There is little doubt that Mws-trading vessels were built with keels since they are not shown with hogging trusses or the girt-ropes at stem and stern, N. de G. Davies and R. O. Faulkner, "A Syrian Trading Venture to Egypt," JEA 33 (1947), 41, and pl. VIII. Seagoing Mns-ships were probably intro- duced from the Levant during Thutmoses III-Amenhotep II 's reigns, M. Basch, "Le navire Mns et autres notes de voyage en Egypte," MM 64 (1978), 99-123. The earliest scene of a Mni-boat was found in Tomb 17 of Nebamon, physician to Amenhotep II, and was apparently crewed by the Syrians depicted, Save-Soderbergh, Navy, fig. 10; for full relief see Vandier, Manuel IV, fig. 320 XII. Egyptian captain cBy, of a Mns-ship ca. 1380 B.C., gave four jars of incense to his king, W. Hayes, "Inscriptions from the palace of Amenhotep III," JNES 10 (1951), 94 and fig. 17; Wb II, 89, 6-9. Mws-merchant ships are shown in Kenamon's Tomb 162 from the reign of Amenhotep III, Davies and Faulkner, JEA 33, 40-46 and pl. VIII. By Ramesside times Egyptians had their own Mns (Hrr?) trading galleys 100 cubits [150 feet] long (20 cubits less than the Shipwrecked Sailor's boat). Seti I built them to fetch drug herbs (Jidw herbs) from God's Land for the temple of Amon, F. Griffith, "Abydos Decree of Seti I at Nauri,"/A 13 (1917), 199 and pl. XL; KRIl, 45ff.; W. Edger- ton, "Egyptian Seagoing(?) Ships of One Hundred Cubits,"

SW-BOATS, PUNT TRADE, AND A LOST EMPORIUM 51

cal achievements may have been adapted by the highly skilled Egyptian and Syrian boatmen at Prw.nfr^ since the term "keel" = i~- Q appears in their registry of wood dispersed nearly five hundred years before the term was used in Wen- amon's story.69 Such a technical advance in their

maritime practice goes far to explain the lack of interest, henceforth, in building seaworthy ships the old-fashioned way, at least for a while.

During the closing years of the 18th Dynasty, two boat models with keels were placed in the tomb of Tutankhamon ca. 1350 B.C. (fig. 9b).70 About the same time a 30-foot merchant ship of unknown nationality was wrecked at Ulu Bu- run off the coast of Lycia. Divers discovered that it, too, was of "shell-first" mortise-and-tenon construction and had a keel made of fir,71 as did the Cape Gelidonya wreck which sank ca. 1200 B.C.72 At the end of the 20th Dynasty Smendes was sent a keel of Vwood intended for the Nile bark of Amon by Prince Kakar-Baal during Wenamon's detention in his Byblos harbor.

The evidence that the Egyptians used keels in their larger ships from ca. 1430 to ca. 990 B.C. bodes well, if not definitely, for Marx's theory that the warships of Ramesses III had lion-headed rams (fig. 9c).73 Arguing that Egyptians "had no keel and without the longitudinal strength im- parted by this feature ramming would have been suicidal," Lloyd expressed his doubts that rams were a New Kingdom innovation.74 Since his impression is no longer valid, and with the cer- tainty that Egypt's navy and large merchant ships, including their seagoing Mni-boats,75 had been equipped with keels for some two hundred years prior to the invasion of the Sea Peoples, there is no obstacle to recognizing the Medinet Habu

AJSL 47 (1931), 50-51. In his first year Ramesses II sent a Mns- galley to God's Land to bring marvels to Amon, Save-Soder- bergh, Navy, 57 and note 2; ARE III, 274. Later the king had Mni-ships carry products from foreign lands to Amon ["Poem of Pentaur"], KRI II, 38.10-15. See too Lansing 4.10, Anast. IV: 3.10, and Pap. Turin B Vs.l, 7, in R. Caminos Late-Egyptian Miscellanies (London, 1954). In Year 8 Ramesses III dis- patched Mw5-galleys in a surprise (?) attack against the Sea Peoples' boats, KRIV, 40, 1.8. He had Mediterranean and Red Sea fleets of Mns-galleys, Pap. Harris in AREW, 211 and 328; a Chancellor loaded Mwi-ships in the time of Ramesses IV [see above note 50]; Ramesses VII triumphed over them in his Hymn V, "The Menesh ships, those which are in the {sea? . . . the} head(?) of the Great Green. They have turned their backs upon their gods; they have forgotten the tem- ples . . . [R. VII] , who bringest the menesh-ships back to the Black Land," V. Condon, Seven Royal Hymns of the Rames- side Period (Berlin, 1978), 12-13, 20-21, 41 [Pap. Turin CG 54031]; KRI VI, 393ff. Less than 60 years afterwards Kakar- Baal informed Wenamon that 20 Mns-ships in his harbor had trade dealings with Smendes, AREW, 574; Lichtheim, AELII, 226. The Syrian Mws-ships were later converted into biremes and still later into triremes by Sidon and Tyre, see below n. 91. 68 Some scholars have wondered if Mws-ships were not chartered by the Egyptians from the Syrians, Vinson, Egyptian Boats and Ships, 45. Yet the pax Aegyptiaca established by Thutmose III-Amenhotep II and the Memphis dockyard attest to abundant financial resources, Lebanon timber and technical shipbuilding skills, all conducive to maritime development.

69 Glanville, ZAS66, 119, verso Col. 6.12-15, four "stakes" of 17-12 cubits also Col. 8.6 and 9-10; idem. ZAS68, 27, 32 and 36. In his discussion #82 with notes 5-7, Glanville compared tp-ht(}) i"- Q with the term in the Wenamon passage aiM^^ = "keel," as the word is consistently translated by E. Wente, The Literature of Ancient Egypt (New Haven and London, 2nd Edition 1973), 151; Lichtheim, AEL II, 227; J. Wilson, ANET, 28; A. Gardiner, Egypt of the Pharaohs (Ox- ford, 1976 rep.), 310; ARE IV, 582; H. Goedicke, The Report of Wenamun (Baltimore and London, 1975), 95, however Goe- dicke cited Wbl, 502, 6-7, reading pipit when he should have cited Wb V, 294.3 , reading tpj; in Saite period see Wb V, 294.6. Might this term for keel be interpreted as "first wood" i.e., the first piece to be put in place when building a ship? From the Wenamon story it seems certain that Egyptians were in- corporating a keel of 130 cubits in the holy bark of Amun Userhet even as early as Ramesses III, Goedicke, op. cit., 142- 43, note 156; ARE IV, 209, and one for the Temple of Ptah, AREW, 331. The keels of these larger river craft would have been scarfed.

70 Landstrom, Ships of the Pharaohs, 107, #331-33. 71 Information given by G. Bass to unidentified author of "Underwater Archaeology, 1984," Anatolian Studies 35 (1985), 212; idem "A Bronze Age Shipwreck at Ulu Burun ..." A] A 90 (1986), 285, and dating; the wreck to LH IIIA:2.

72 G. Bass, "The Cape Gelidonya Wreck: Preliminary Re- port," AJA 65 (1961), 270-71 and 175 with n. 54; R. Giveon, "Dating the Cape Gelidonya Shipwreck," Anatolian Studies 35 (1985), 99-101; a dating Bass considered plausible, AJA 90, note 4.

73 E. Marx, "The "First Recorded Sea Battle," MM 32 (1946), 242-51, and idem, "The Origin of the Ram," MM 34 (1948), 118-19; accepted by Landstrom, Ships of the Pharaohs, 112 and note 24; idem The Ship, 33; and Y. Yadin, The Art of Warfare in Biblical Land (London, 1963) , 253 and 342, but did not cite Marx's earlier studies.

74 Lloyd, TEA 58, 271. 75 See above note 67; Basch MM 64, 107-8, equated the

lines from center pole occasionally shown as rigging ropes or pulley ropes.


Fig. 10. Mns-ships Trading and at War. (a) Tomb of Ken- amon from time of Amenhotep III. After Davies and Faulkner, JEA 33, pi 8. (b) Syrian Bir ernes in Assyrian Relief ca. 700 B.C. After C. Torr, Ancient Ships, pi 2. (c) Mns-ship from time of Ramesses II. After L. Basch, MM 64, fig. 2.

relief as the first attested operation in history of the ram as an assault weapon.76 Landstrom realized that the rams on Ramesses Ill's fighting ships were simply a continuation of their keels (re- inforced by the storming bridge running from fore to aft) terminating with bronze sheathed lion heads.77 Such a device could have been mounted on the highly maneuverable Egyptian traveling ship without much difficulty. The partial deck over midship was utilized three hundred years earlier on Hatshepsut's ships, according to Cas- son.78 That these rams were not at water-level was unimportant since the Sea Peoples' boats had two high stems and therefore could have been easily knocked over as the relief so depicts. Ramesses III declared his warships were designed to attack the

76 J. S. Morrison and R. T. Williams, Greek Oared Ships - 900-322 B.C. (Cambridge, 1968), 7-11, 37, and pls. 1-2, believed several Bronze Age representations of Mycenaean ships had rams not cutwater protrusions. Their observation was accepted by A. Lloyd, "Were Necho's Triremes Phoenician?," JHS 95 (1975), 55; and at first, L. Basch, "Phoenician Oared Ships, MM 55 (1969), 142 with note 3. Later Basch, defining a ram as "an offensive weapon designed to sink or damage an enemy ship, while at the same time being structurally part of a prow . . . ," concluded that "all keel-projections can in fact be explained, during the Bronze Age, either as protections against beaching, or as cutwaters," L. Basch, "Another Punic Wreck in Sicily: its ram," IfNA 4.2 (1975), 201, after which he cited Geometric representations as possible early rams. For difference between ram and cutwater, L. Basch, "When is a Ram Not a Ram," MM 69 (1983), 129-42. Unlike the rams in classical times which forced ships to beach stern first, Ramesses Ill's rams allowed beaching bow first. The ram "shifted the emphasis to men that manned the oars" from the marines, Casson, Ancient Mariners, 76, which may account for the handful of marine archers on Ramesses Ill's warships.

A 3rd century B.C. warship sunk off the coast of northern Israel, had a ram that was bolted with bronze bolts, had mortise-and-tenon joints, and was designed with a casting "to return the reactive shock on the ram head in five directions: centrally into the wedge and ramming timber, along the two wale pockets, upward along the cowl, and downward along the bottom plate, . . . the result was a vertical stiffness and longitudinal flexibility which worked well in shell-first forms of construction," J. R. Steffy, "The Athlit Ram - A Prelimi- nary Investigation of Its Structure," MM 69 (1983), 229-47, esp. 241-42.

77 Landstrom, The Ship, 27; Casson, Ships and Seamanship, 30-35; Morrison in Greenhill's Archaeology of the Boat, 155-58.

78 Casson, Ships and Seamanship, 21 and 87; Marx, MM 32, 246; F. Meijer, "Thucydides 1.13.2-4 and the Changes in Greek Shipbuilding," Historia 37 (1988), 461-63, "all raono- remes and biremes . . . had a raised deck over the centerline only," p. 463.

KPN-BOATS, PUNT TRADE, AND A LOST EMPORIUM 53

enemy at the river's mouth, not on the sea, so that the fourteen to twenty-two powerful oarsmen per ship propelling toward the sitting duck-headed boats realized quick success.79 The monoreme was born.

Within the Third Intermediate Period and Late Period the two-level oared biremes evolved along with the triremes,80 moving ship warfare to the high seas. Throughout the Saite-Persian- Ptolemaic Periods Egyptian triremes bearing the ram plied the seas. Herodotus reported that Necho II (610-595 B.C.) built squadrons of triremes on the Erythraen and Mediterranean Seas.81 His triremes were probably the same fleet that Apries employed a decade or two later82 to defeat the ramming ships of the Phoenicians

when Sidon and other major Syrian seaports were temporarily captured and Cyprus was at- tacked.83 One must assume that the Saite warships were equal or superior to the heavy, rounded Mns-ships converted into biremes by the Phoenicians (fig. 10b). After Apries' naval force, with Carian and Ionian mercenaries, came up against Amasis (570 B.C.), the usurper boasted of his victory over Apries' Kbn.t-ships.84 Both de Meulenaere and Lloyd connected the Kbn. t-ships of Apries with triremes.85 Lloyd was persuaded that the revival of the archaic Egyptian "Kbn.t" for the fast-running war galleys followed the rule that "the new object or idea which requires a name must bear some general similarity to the object or ideas whose appellation it is borrow- ing."86 In other words, the Kbn. ^-triremes had to resemble or reconstitute an aspect of the ancient Egyptian Kbn.t-ships which, as argued above, were boats sewn, bound and trussed the old- fashioned way.

Unfortunately no remains of a trireme have been found, so scholars must make do with representations on vases and fragments, some showing only small portions of the ships. How- ever, Athens' shipyard lists (ca. 330 B.C.) and classical writers' statements regarding the warship have helped nautical experts to reconstruct the swift ship. One long puzzling feature, apparently originally unique with the trireme, was the

79 See above note 69. A single timber keel actually deter- mines the length of a ship. Trireme experts allow three feet per oarsman plus the bow and stern which in the case of Ramesses Ill's warships permits an estimated length of about fifty feet from lion head to stern.

80 According to Pliny, NH, Book VII, 207, the double- banked galley was invented by the Erythraeans. Whether Damastes, the authority used by Pliny, was indicating the port of Erythrae on the peninsula near Chios Island which sup- plied only 8 triremes out of 353 at Lade [Hdt. 6.8.2] or the country of King Erythras on the Red Sea, of whom Pliny wrote in the previous passage, seems unclear. The origin of the two-banked ship in Greece has been dated ca. 725 B.C. by R. T. Williams, "Early Greek ships of two levels," JHS 78 (1958), 121-30. The well-known Phoenician biremes in Sen- nacherib's relief at Nineveh are dated to ca. 700 B.C. (fig. 10b), A. H. Layard, Monuments of Nineveh (First Series London, 1853), pl. 71. The two-level ship apparently had "no direct kinship with" the trireme according to C. Starr, The Ancient Warship," Classical Philology 35 (1940), 369.

Aminocles of Corinth was cited as building the first triremes (in Greece?); but Clement d'Alexandrie, Stromateis, i 16, 76, attributed the invention to the Sidonians. On the controversy of origin of triremes see, J. A. Dawson, "The First Greek Triremes," Classical Quarterly 41 (1947), 18-24; A. Lloyd, "The Trireme Controversy," JHS 100 (1980), 195-98 and notes therein; L. Basch, "M. le Professeur Lloyd et les trieres: quelques remarques," JHS 100 (1980), 198-99, with notes. 81 Herodotus, II, 159; Lloyd, JEA 63, 142ff. The Carians and Milesians no doubt took a leading role in Necho II 's Syr- ian war since after the victory Necho II sent his armor to the ancient oracle Temple of Apollo at Brachidae/Didyma some 10 miles south of Miletus. Hdt. I. 46 and 158.

82 Herodotus, II, 161; Diodorus, 1.68. Wooden triremes had an average lifetime of 20 or perhaps 26 years, Casson, Ships and Seamanship, 90-91 and note 68; but C. Starr, The Influence of Sea Power on Ancient History (Oxford-New York, 1989), 90 note 40, pointed to a 4th century merchant ship that lasted 80 years.

83 Herodotus, II, 163. Vandersleyen, Les Guerres dAmosis, 144-45, thought Apries had seized the Kbn.t-f[eet of the Phoenicians, and thus it was those captured Kbn. /-ships with Syrian crews that Apries sailed against Amasis. But Kbn.t is an Egyptian ship classification not Phoenician, hence the 30,000 Hdw nbw(t) are Carian and Ionian mercenaries [so Hdt.] who had been immigrating and residing in Egypt since the early years of Psammetichus I; A. Spalinger, "Psammetiches, King of Egypt," JARCE 13 (1976), 133-47. 84 ARE IV, 1003 line 3, and 1005 line 12. Lloyd, JEA 58, 272 with n. 2. Amasis relocated most of these Carians and Ionians to Memphis, Hdt. II, 154; Milesian and Ionian traders and seamen in the western Delta were given the "free port" of Naucratis where the Hellenium was built, Hdt. II, 178-79; J. Boardman, The Greeks Overseas, Their Early Colonies and Trade (London, 1980), ch. 4. M. Mellink, "The native kingdoms of Anatolia," CAH 111:2 (Cambridge, 1991), 662- 65; T. G. H. James, "Egypt: The Twenty-fifth and Twenty-sixth Dvnasties" CAH 111:2, 708ff.

85 Lloyd, JEA 58, 268 with note 3 and 272. The present writer has not had access to H. de Meulenaer's Herodotos over de 26ste Dynastie (Louvain, 1951), 60 with note 49.

86 Ibid. 272.


hypozoma, a 280 to 340-foot long twisted flax or hemp rope. Morrison and Williams noted that this rope was the first named and most important of all the trireme's ropes in Greek inscriptions and inventories.87 In order to reactivate a trireme out of drydock two hypozomata had to be issued and rigged according to Piraeus' dockyard entries.88

After debate and experiments, naval archi- tects determined that the hypozoma was a rope undergirdle which could be tightened by twist- ing. "The object of the girdle was to subject the outside skin to a constricting tension which would keep the structure from working loose under the stress of navigation under oar and sail, the shocks of battle, and the constant strains of hauling up and down beaches."89 The cable

ran round the outside of the hull from stem to stern and back again "to protect the hull structure against breaking its back by hogging . . . [hence] . . . would act like a hogging truss" (fig. lla-c).90 With the introduction of the hypozoma for triremes, the ancient Egyptian hogging truss was back.91

87 Morrison and Williams, Greek Oared Ships, 294-98. Of the hemp rope Torr wrote: "On the war-ships the hull was strengthened externally by a set of cables. These were known as hypozomata, or girdles, ends of each cable being joined together, so as to make it a complete girdle . . . ," then he likened them to the Egyptian cables of Hatshepsut's ships that "stretched from stem to stern over posts amidship." Return- ing to the trireme's cables, Torr continued with, "these cables must primarily have been intended to prevent the ship from going to pieces under the heavy shocks from ramming and the constant strain from the working of so many oars, for otherwise they would have been employed on merchant- ships also," C. Torr, Ancient Ships (Chicago, 1964 edition), 41-42. Torr cited a Greek warship with similar cable ca. 200 B.C., the Telephos frieze from Pergamos, p. 41 note 101. Cf. J. Morrison and J. Coates, The Athenian Trireme (Cambridge, 1986), 170-72, "it seems that we must accept that the rope ran from stern to stem and back again within the hull, where alone it can be structurally significant," see too 196-98, 206 and 245. In 1987 Morrison and Coates spearheaded the building and trial [no ramming] of the 123-foot replica, Olympias, fastened with 22,000 oak dowels and 17,000 handmade nails, and which "substituted steel rope for the hypozomata, the two lengths of twisted flax rope that ran from stem to stern to help hold the trireme together," A. Toufexis, "The Glory That Was Greece," TIME (Aug. 17, 1987), 73. Casson proclaimed the end of the century-old hypozoma debate pronouncing that "they 'girded' the ship horizontally 'under' the line of the gunwale . . . [and] ... a short but powerful loop passed vertically about the stern to furnish a point for anchoring the girding cables at this awkward spot. There seems to have been some sort of device (tonos "stretcher") to keep them at the proper tension." Casson then cited three fragments, figs. 108, 119 and 125, which he thought depicted the device, Shii)s and Seamanshii), 91-92, and others in notes 76-78.

88 Morrison and Williams, Greek Oared Shits, 295. 89 Torr, Ancient Ships, 41-42.

90 Morrison and Coates, The Athenian Trireme, 197 and fig. 57. 91 None of the books picturing ancient boats from Thera, Crete, Greece or Phoenicia that I consulted show a hogging truss apparatus, whereas this cable was clearly present on Cheops' ships [with truss girdles] (fig. 7), and Hatshepsut's obelisk barge and sailing clippers to Punt (fig. 8a-b), Land- strom, Ships of the Pharaohs, 64. Was the rope cable an Egyptian contribution possibly in Necho II's reign perhaps motivated by the long siege of Askelon, a Syrian war on the horizon or a plan to circumnavigate Africa? If it was true that his triremes were launched early in his reign, then the ships' design and initial construction probably began under his father [Did Necho play the same role as the son of Amen- hotep II?]. The canal, also excavated during his first years and wide enough "to allow two triremes to be rowed abreast," took 120,000 lives, which also implies a number of years in the making, Hdt. II, 158. The need for two slipways and the prototype of the trireme (even if Egyptian shipwrights adopted the concept elsewhere) indicate some lapse of time for experimentation, trial and error before they could be produced in effective numbers. Egypt's long history of building 100-cubit seagoing Mws-ships and 130-cubit religious barks for the Nile suggests that seaworthy vessels crewed by 170 oarsmen carrying 30 marines were feasible after the invention of the outrigger. The question becomes which design of triremes, Greek or Phoenician, did the Egyptians adapt, improve or modify, or perhaps were the Egyptians the "inventor" of the Athens style warship? Basch demonstrated that there was more than one single type of trireme in antiquity: the Phoenician [beamy, rounded hull, outriggerless, with bow-shelter, row of shields and pointed rams] ; the classical Athenian trireme [outrigger, and hypozoma with snub- nosed or 3-pronged rams] and later Rome's two versions, L. Basch, "Roman Triremes and the Outriggerless Phoeni- cian Trireme," MM 65 (1979), 289-325; Casson, Ships and Seamanship, 92-96. Apries' success at Tyre and Sidon and his attack on Cyprus, the island Amasis conquered [James, CAH 111:2, 720-25, 737], may indicate Egypt had initially a superior navy. During the reigns of Amasis and Psammeti- chus III, Wadjhorresne was Admiral of the Royal Knb.t-fleet, G. Posener, La Premiere Domination Perse en Egypte (Cairo, 1936), 9. To the same time belongs a Carian stele showing a snub-nosed ramming warship found near the Serapeum, Lloyd, JHS 95, 59-60, and pl. VII b-c. It is of interest that of Xerxes' triremes at the Battle of Artemisium in 480 B.C. those from Egypt had the "best record," Hdt. VIII. 15.

The house of Ptolemy continued to use Kbn.t-ileets [URK II, 15.2 and 9; II, 16.15; II, 23.9 and 12; II, 77.15; II, 86.10; II, 87.11; II, 100.15; II, 113.2; II, 179.7]; and even the Asiatics

i^W-BOATS, PUNT TRADE, AND A LOST EMPORIUM 55

The return to the older method of construction was desirable for one important reason: hemp-bound and -tied boats could better with- stand the stress of hitting objects.92 The ramming triremes, the Egyptian keelless cargo ships sailing the Red Sea striking the coral reefs abound- ing in the inner channel, as well as the buoyant rafts of the Puntites rushing over the rapids to the market-place at Kurgus, all required the ca- pability to survive the shock of impact. Thus it was not the size, shape, or function of the craft, nor was it the building materials, manufactur- ing site, destination or manner of propulsion, or whether it sailed the Nile or on the seas that was implied by the name Kpn/Kbn.t-boat; it was its construction. For the 18th dynasty artist on the Kurgus bank seeing the inflated skin rafts with wooden decks, these lashed and tied craft were closer to Egyptian sewn boats than to their pegged ones.

Thus far the relief in Tomb 143 seems to preserve the only visual testimony to the Nile River commerce between Punt and Egypt transpiring

Fig. 11. Position of Hogging Truss in Greco-Roman Peri- ods, (a) Sketch of trireme (note 3 oar holes in line) from relief of Cartilius Poplicola, ca. 50 B.C. After L. Basch, MM 65, figs. 1 and 35. (b) A Two-banked ship, 2nd- 1st century B.C. After A. Ruesch, Guida illustrata del Museo Nazionale di Napoli (Naples, 1908), no. 642. (c) Trajan's Column Relief After L. Basch, IJNA 4.2 (1975), fig. 26.

had them by 310 B.C., URK II, 16.14; A. Spalinger, "The Reign of King Chabbash: An Interpretation," ZAS 105 (1978), 142ff. esp. 148-49 and note 42. The determinatives vary making it impossible to equate with any particular style of ship - quadriremes, quinqueremes, or others [Pliny, NHVH, 55.208], which is to be expected since hogging-truss girdles would be needed on ships of ever increasing size, weight and speed, Casson, Ships and Seamanship, Ch. 6. G. Roquet, "Vieux-Francais et Copte: Contacts Lexicaux," Part III "Un Nom De Bateau Egyptien En Vieux-Francais Des Croisades: KBN(t) . . . ," BIFAO73 (1973), 19ff., noted that Kbn.twzs the etymon for 8 variants of a Coptic word for a certain type of ship, see p. 19 note 1 and p. 22 note 2. 92 J. Steffy's recent study of the Athlit Ram, see The Athlit Ram, ed. by L. Casson and J. R. Steffy (College Station, 1991), 29ff., theorized that its three ramming prongs were designed to prevent the ram from penetrating the hull of the enemy where it would embed, and was instead intended to split open the seams of the enemy's ship, see above note 76. This brings to mind the two merchant ships sunk ca. 600- 550 B.C. which exhibited double-assembled manner of construction: the tenons doweled in the mortises and corded with flax and esparto-grass, Pomey, MM 67, 225-43; and M. Bound, "Early observations on the construction of the pre-Classical wreck at Campese Bay, Island of Giglio," in S. McGrail and E. Kentley (ed.) Sewn Plank Boats (Greenwich, 1985), 49-62. Only the discovery of a trireme will help to es- tablish how much trussing, sewing and binding was needed for their offense and defense.


at her Kurgus/Karoy frontier.93 No doubt small groups of Puntite merchants as well as other tribes from the hinterlands of Africa periodically made their way to the Egyptian border post, just as the Nhsj.w sailed to Semna and the Medjays traded along the Nile during the Middle King- dom. One can envision the customary dispatch recording their exchange with the Treasurer Min: "The ten Puntites arrived in Year [x] month [x] day [x] in the morning, in order to carry on trade. That which (they) brought has been traded and they have set sail by ascending the current toward the place from where they had come, bread, grain and beer having been given to them alike . . . "94

II. Unless the Land of Punt included all of Meroe Island up to the east bank of the Nile between the 6th and 5th Cataracts, river commerce between Punt and Egypt would have been lim- ited to late October into early December, when

the flow of the seasonal Atbara and its tributaries permitted the passage of ferryboats and rafts.95 However, overland movement from Punt and interior Africa to Kurgus could have occurred throughout the dry season - October/Novem- ber to April/ May. Such a long-distance caravan may be presented in a scene in Tomb 89 which Davies96 and Save-Soderbergh97 likened to the commercial activity depicted in Tomb 143. King's Treasurer Amenmose (reigns of Thutmose III to Amenhotep III)98 was shown with his troops, greeting about a dozen Puntites bringing skins filled with myrrh to trade. Two men, singled out as "Chiefs of Punt," stand before double heaps of myrrh (fig. 12) as Amenmose and his scribes record the transaction. Business completed, the eighteen Egyptian porters, Amenmose, and his charioteer headed into the desert carrying their newly acquired ebony log and tusks of ivory, while six donkeys are laden with skins of the treasured myrrh.

If this representation reflected overland trade at the entry port at Karoy, the omission of seafaring ships from the scene which concerned Davies is explained.99 Once more what is striking about the incident, like the one in Tomb 143, is that the Punt convoy of men with their merchandise did not continue into Egypt. Surely this is an example of two merchants from Punt leading their human caravan to the Egyptian frontier for the sole purpose of trade after which they were turned back at the outpost.

III. There is, however, a second relief in Min's Tomb 143 which illustrates robed envoys from Punt not turned back at the Karoy border, for

93 The arrival of goods by boat from Punt mentioned in the Sinai inscription of Sobekhotep called Panehsi, A. Gar- diner, T. Peet and J. Cerny, The Inscriptions of Sinai I (Lon- don, 1952), pl. LXVI No. 211, dated to Year 36, II prt 9, of Amenhotep III, adduced a hmntyw-bozt (Faulkner, Diet., 327; W&III, 283.5) in the trading situation. Lines 18-19 restored byHelck, "Die Sinai-Inschrift des Amenmose," MIO 2 (1954), 188-93; URKW, 1892, 1.17, report that among Panehsi's various career assignments as Superintendent of the Trea- sury, he went forth to the two sides of the Great Green [gswy Wyd-wr] to announce the wonders of Punt and to receive cntyw, kmyt-gum and other goods brought by the [foreign] chiefs in their hmntyw-ship . . . along with tribute from the hill countries. These events probably did not take place on the Red Sea as generally believed (for example Saleh, Orien- talia 42, 380-82) for the following reasons: (1) Thutmose I also used the term gswy when he joined the territory from Napata to Kurgus [Tombos Inscription, URKW, 84, 1.2] thus Panehsi could have met Puntites at several trading stations along the Nile. (2) Hmntyw-ships are very ancient river craft, Wb III, 283.5. Uni built six hmntyw-ships for cargo along with three (tow) boats and one war ship in Nubia, ARE I, 322; URKl, 107, 1.8. Thutmose III listed hmntyw-boats as tribute from Kush every year, Barkel Text, Reading Book 60, 1.12; URKW, 1237, 1.1-2, and later in lines 6-8 said his army had carried off hmntyw-ships during a Kush campaign. This ship appears in a religious text of Amenhotep, son of Huy, URK IV, 1823, 1.4. It would seem most likely that Panehsi followed in the footsteps of Treasurers Min and Amenmose and rendezvoused with the chiefs from Punt along the Nile banks at Kurarus.

94 Compilation following P. C. Smither, "The Semnah Despatches," JEA 31 (1945), 3-10.

95 Murray and White, Sir Samuel Baker, 52ff.; Burckhardt, Travels in Nubia, 314ff.

96 N. and N. de G. Davies,/A 26, 136 and pl. XXV; N. de G. Davies, "A Fragment of a Punt Scene," JEA 47 (1961), 21-22.

97 Save-Soderbergh, Navy, 25 and fig. 7; so Vandier, Man- uel IV, 574 and fig. 311. 98 Davies, JEA 26, 131; while Save-Soderbergh, Navy, 25, assigned the relief to the time of Thutmose IV; PMl, 182. See N. de G. Davies, "The Graphic Work of the Expedition," II, BMMA (Dec. 1924), 50 fig. 6, for a sketch of Thutmose III on tomb's wall; Helck, Zur Verwaltung, 402, 510-11, perhaps he was the same man Helck placed in Amenhotep IPs reign; PML 181-83; URKW, 1021-22.

99 Davies, JEA 26, 136.


Fig. 12. Scene from Tomb 89 Showing Amenmose Receiving Skins Filled with Myrrh, and Other Tribute from Puntites. After N. and N. de G. Davies, JEA 26, pl. XXV.

they present their "marvels" to an unidentified king who must be either Thutmose III or Amen- hotep II.100 In this formal scene two kneeling figures offer a variety of products from Punt. The oxen and the antelopes shown were not likely conveyed to Egypt on floating rafts like those depicted in the adjacent scene; nor were such big animals retrieved by Hatshepsut's large ships, for she boasts only of baboons, monkeys and dogs,101 the identical animals listed among the things carried back by the ship and crew dur-

ing the rescue of the Shipwrecked Sailor in the Middle Kingdom.102 If the above analysis is his- torically correct, then the elaborately attired am- bassadors or chiefs from Punt depicted in Tomb 143 conducted their caravan and cattle to the Theban court via the Nubian Eastern Desert cor- ridor after having been admitted into Egyptian- held territory at the Kurgus/Karoy border.

IV The place-name Kari/Karoy is first attested in Year 4 of Amenhotep II,103 some 80 years after

100 Davies, BMMA (Nov. 1935), 45, fig. 1, the king's name has disappeared; URK IV, 1473; the unusual dress was discussed by Vandier, Manuel IV, 577; Save-Soderbergh, Navy, 99_93

101 URKIV, 329; ARE II, 265; E. Naville, The Temple ofDeir el-Bahari, III (London, 1894-1908), pl. LXXIV, showing three

monkeys/baboons on two of the departing ships; Save- Soderbergh, Navy, fig. 2 on p. 14. O'Connor has called attention to the fact that the large animals shown in the Deir el Bahari reliefs came overland and not on her ships, fEA

102 I.irhtheim. ART A. 214. 103 URKW, 1448; ARE II, 800.


Thutmose Fs conquest, and was spelled 4.^, iiM, or u^.104 Thus the mention of Kari and the relief in Tomb 143 of the floating rafts trading with the Egyptians are more or less contemporary since Treasurer Min served both Thutmose III and Amenhotep II.

Why was the district at the top of the 4th Cata- ract - from Abu Hamed to Kurgus - so named? A possible hint might be found in similar Egyptian words, ^ ]y^. k3i,


Saggs cited four lines in Nimrud letter XII, ca. 735 B.C., reporting that the people of Tyre, busy bringing trees down from Mount Lebanon to the wharves = karani and warehouses = bit kar(r)dni [both plural forms of KAR = kdru "quay"] , had killed their tax-collectors. A new tax-collector from the warehouses (= bit kar(r)dni) at Sidon was appointed.116

In 734 B.C. Tiglath-Pileser III established a bit Kdri, a quay or market-place, on the border between the Brook of Egypt and Gaza.117 Fourteen years later Sargon II, after defeating the Egyp- tians at Rafiah, recorded that he "opened the sealed [ka]r-ri of Egypt" so that Assyrians and Egyptians could trade.118 The Assyrians had a kdru at the harbor of Arvad Island as mentioned by Elat when he analyzes the differences in the function of the &^rw-institution during the Neo- Assyrian Empire, Old Babylonian Period and Old Assyrian Period.119

The Tyrians founded a commercial town on the African coast in 814 B.C. and named it Kart-hadast [Qartihadasht], "New Town," now Carthage.120 Three hundred years later the Carthaginians sent colonists beyond the Pillars of Hercules to the west coast of Africa where they settled Karikon Teichos (= "Carian fort") among others.121

Kar is not a Greek word according to Graves,122 yet early in the Mycenaean Period Kar was the eponymous founder of Megara, with major ports, on the Saronic Sea and Gulf of Corinth, while its acropolis was still called Karia, after Kar, in the days of Pausanias.123

Tradition has it that another Kar founded Caria/ Karia, home of the Karikaisa warriors and members of the Hittite coalition against Ramesses II.124 Here was the great trade center and port of ancient Miletus, the territory of the seafaring traders, Milesians {Mylasas} and the port city, Halicaranassos. During the reign of Psammatichus I these Carians and Ionians joined in establishing the foreign trading center, Nau- cratis, in the western Delta. Naucratis is spelled ^L"M or o^T which contains the word Kar between two city determinatives, a pictorial com- ment on their monopoly of Greek trade.125

Bradbury. Kpn-Boats, Punt Trade, And a Lost Emporium

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