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Description. Although
the restorer turned the eight pairs of rowers in the wrong direction,
he correctly placed the pilot on the bow, where he holds an oblong fender,
or bumper, perhaps to watch for sandbars or sound the bottom. The bowsprit
held the mast rigging. The thwarts are suggested in red paint; the white
areas between them are probably voids. The mast partner (what holds up
the mast) is in the center of the boat. Two holes show where the helmsman
sat or squatted on the stern.
Chronology, numbers, and
function. Many model boats were placed in tombs in the First Intermediate
Period (about 2130-1980 B.C.) to the Middle Kingdom’s 11th and 12th Dynasty
(ends about 1759 B.C.). Often boats were found in pairs: one for going
up the Nile and the other, down. The tomb of Djehuty-nakht had at least
55 (Roehrig 114-5). This boat, like many others, was mass-produced with
little care. It was probably buried in the tomb chamber.
Published: Handbook
1973, 23. Ann Merriman will soon publish this antiquity in her dissertation
on Egyptian boat models (University College, London).
Other cited sources:
Catharine Roehrig, “Model Boats,” in Mummies
and Magic 114-5.
Other useful sources:
James Breasted, Jr., Egyptian Servant Statues, Bollingen Series
13 (Washington, D.C.: Pantheon Books Inc., 1948), 73-85; George Reisner,
Models of Ships and Boats. Catalogue Général des Antiquités
Égyptiennes du Musée du Caire (Cairo: L’Institut Français
d’Archéologie Orientale, 1913).
(RC)
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