In 1954, a young Egyptian archaeologist, clearing a site just south of the Great Pyramid at Giza, discovered a great papyriform ship, built for a king and then dismantled and buried at the height of the Egyptian Old Kingdom. This book tells the story of this Royal Ship--its discovery, excavation and reconstruction. The author also addresses who built the ship and why, how it has survived intact for so long, and what connection it may have had with the age-old Egyptian myth of the Sun-god, eternally journeying across the heavens in the Reed Float. This book is also the story of Ahmed Youssef Moustafa, Chief Restorer of the Department of Antiquities, who almost single-handedly put back together the 1,223 pieces of the ship.

Written to replace and extend Torr's Ancient Ships, this generously illustrated underwater Bible" traces the art and technology of Mediterranean ships and seamanship from their first crude stages (about 3000 B.C.) to the heyday of the Byzantine fleets. Originally published in 1971. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Drawing on archaeological and literary evidence, Dilwyn Jones examines the importance of the boat in Egyptian ritual and belief, as well as in everyday life. The sun god was thought to travel across the sky in a solar boat, and Egyptians believed that the deserving might join the god Osiris in his divine bark after death. Boats played an important part in funerary ritual; models were often placed in tombs to provide the deceased with safe passage through the Winding Waterway in the underworld. Also, boats are frequently depicted in tomb paintings. The Nile has always been a vital transport artery for Egypt and boats the principal means of travel. Early papyrus skiffs gradually gave way to wooden craft of increasing size and sophistication, ranging from fishing boats and barges to seagoing warships, splendid ships of state and enormous obelisk barges used to transport stone to temples and monuments. Dilwyn Jones traces the development of the different types of boats and the techniques of their construction through the Old, Middle, and New Kingdom periods. The book is illustrated with photographs of boat models and paintings and with line drawings.

The Encyclopedia opens with a general map of the region and a chronology of periods and dynasties, providing a context for the entries. The first section of the volume then comprises 14 overviews which explore the history and significance of each period. The main body of the text offers more than 300 alphabetically organized entries, written by some of the most eminent scholars in this field. Areas covered include: artefacts - glass, jewellery, sculpture archaeological practices - dating techniques, representational evidence, textual sources biographies - Howard Carter, Gertrude Caton Thompson, Gaston Maspero buildings - cult temples, private tombs, pyramid complexes geographical features - agriculture, climate, irrigation sites - Abydos, Dakhla Oasis, Thebes social organization - kingship, law, taxation The text is extensively illustrated with over 120 images. Each entry is followed by a selected further reading section which includes foreign language sources to supplement the available works in English.

During the Bronze Age, the ancient societies that ringed the Mediterranean, once mostly separate and isolate, began to reach across the great expanse of sea to conduct trade, marking an age of immense cultural growth and technological development. These intersocietal lines of communication and paths for commerce relied on rigorous open-water travel. And, as a potential superhighway, the Mediterranean demanded much in the way of seafaring knowledge and innovative ship design if it were to be successfully navigated. In Seagoing Ships and Seamanship in the Bronze Age Levant Shelley Wachsmann presents a one-of-a-kind comprehensive examination of how the early eastern Mediterranean cultures took to the sea--and how they evolved as a result. The author surveys the blue-water ships of the Egyptians, Syro-Canaanites, Cypriots, Early Bronze Age Aegeans, Minoans, Mycenaeans, and Sea Peoples, and discusses known Bronze Age shipwrecks. Relying on archaeological, ethnological, iconographic, and textual evidence, Wachsmann delivers a fascinating and intricate rendering of virtually every aspect of early sea travel--from ship construction and propulsion to war on the open water, piracy, and laws pertaining to conduct at sea. This broad study is further enhanced by contributions from other renowned scholars. J. Hoftijzer and W. H. van Soldt offer new and illuminating translations of Ugaritic and Akkadian documents that refer to seafaring. J. R. Lenz delves into the Homeric Greek lexicon to search out possible references to the birdlike shapes that adorned early ships' stem and stern. F. Hocker provides a useful appendix and glossary of nautical terms, and George F. Bass's foreword frames the study's scholarly significance and discusses its place in the nautical archaeological canon. This book brings together for the first time the entire corpus of evidence pertaining to Bronze Age seafaring and will be of special value to archaeologists, maritime historians, philologists, and Bronze Age textual scholars. Offering an abundance of line drawings and photographs and written in a style that makes the material easily accessible to the layperson, Wachsmann's study is certain to become a standard reference for anyone interested in the dawn of sea travel.