A stone relief from Hatshepsut's temple shows the quarter rudder of an ancient Egyptian Punt ship. Archaeologists and ship designers based their replica ship design on historical images as well as artifacts from the caves at Wadi Gawasis. Posted on 03/10/2009 1:36:39 PM PDT by BGHater
It turns out the oldest seafaring ships ever found actually work
An archaeologist who examined remnants of the oldest-known seafaring ships has now put ancient Egyptian technology to the test. She teamed up with a naval architect, modern shipwrights and an on-site Egyptian archaeologist to build a replica 3,800-year-old ship for a Red Sea trial run this past December.
The voyage was meant to retrace an ancient voyage that the female pharaoh Hatsheput sponsored to a place which ancient Egyptians called God's land, or Punt. Ship planks and oar blades discovered in 2006 at the caves of Wadi Gawasis provided a basis for the ship reconstruction.
"The planks that we looked at from the archaeological site are in great condition," said Cheryl Ward, the maritime archaeologist at Florida State University who headed the effort.
The nearly 4,000-year-old timbers even contained shipworms which had tunneled into the ships during sea voyages, leaving behind tube-like shells that filled up the wood like a sponge. Ward was able to estimate from the shipworms that the ship endured a six-month, 2,000-mile round trip to Punt -- located in modern Ethiopia or Yemen.
A French production company called Sombrero and Co. approached Ward with the idea of recreating the ancient journey for a documentary, and so her team set about resurrecting a ship for the modern expedition.
Douglas fir from North America best resembled the cedar wood used by the Egyptians, in terms of strength and density. Naval architect Patrick Couser drew on better-known watercraft designs from ancient Egypt to design a ship which matched relief images seen on Hatshepsut's funerary temple.
The 66-foot-long by 16-foot-wide ship was completed by October 2008 using ancient Egyptian techniques. Frames and nails didn't enter the equation -- instead planks were designed to fit like pieces of a puzzle. The timbers swelled snugly together after being immersed in the Nile River.
A 24-person international crew eventually took Min of the Desert on its maiden Red Sea voyage, after short trial runs on the Nile. Political considerations and the threat of modern-day pirates cut the voyage short after sailing 150 miles in a week, but the ancient Egyptian engineering held up.
"The technology we used had not been applied to shipbuilding for more than 3,500 years, and it still works as well today as it did then," Ward said.
Ancient EngineeringA stone relief from Hatshepsut's temple shows the quarter rudder of an ancient Egyptian Punt ship. Archaeologists and ship designers based their replica ship design on historical images as well as artifacts from the caves at Wadi Gawasis.
Drawn to Life
Naval architect Patrick Couser based the design of Min of the Desert on the ship components found at Wadi Gawasis, as well as the dimensions of an ancient Egyptian "Dashur" boat. By doubling the dimensions and curvature of the "Dashur" boat, Couser produced a design that fit the profile of the Punt ships in Hatshepsut’s temple.
Moving Min
The ship was built at Hamdi Lahma & Brothers Shipyard in Rashid (Rosetta), Egypt. A truck then transported the completed vessel to the Red Sea, rather than abiding by the ancient Egyptian practice of carrying it piece-by-piece across the desert.
Learning to Row
"When it was time to raise the sail and point our bow south toward the land of Punt, we had only our crew and human energy to rely on," Ward said. "Whether standing and rowing over the rail, hauling on a line to hoist the sail without the help of pulleys or keeping track of our progress along the shore, we all felt connected to those ancient sailors on their epic voyages."
Passing History
Min of the Desert sailed past the ancient pharaonic harbor at Mersa Gawasis, located on the Red Sea coast of Egypt. Ward joked that some of the more experienced sailors were ready to sail on to Panama.
Wind Power
The replica ship managed an average speed of 6 knots over a two-day period, and at one point achieved burst speed of 9 knots. "Even though seas were incredibly rough and we corkscrewed through them sometimes, it was very relaxed," Ward said.
"Duh!!!"
-Thor Heyerdahl
Ping.
Proof of intelligent design.
Ra! Ra! Ra!
That is neat! I didn’t realize they were so big, I would have expected it to be smaller.
If they didn’t work, they wouldn’t have been seafaring, now would they?
It doesn’t say what they made the sails of in those days.
The environmental wackos are getting, we may be building a fleets of those again.
My guess would be linen
Square sail running before the wind works with almost everything. Ask Huck Finn.
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Feb. 27, 2006
Courtesy Boston University and World Science staff
Archaeologists say they have uncovered the oldest remains of sea-faring ships in the world. The finds include cargo boxes containing goods from the “lost” land of Punt, a fabled southern Red Sea trading center, the researchers add.
A 24th-century B.C. relief of a ship under sail (Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art)
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The discoveries turned up during excavations in two man-made caves that the team said it had previously found on Egypt’s Red Sea coast.
“One of the rooms contained coils of ship rope, all neatly tied and knotted—just as the sailors left them almost 4,000 years ago,” said Boston University’s Kathryn Bard, co-director of the excavations. “The view into this cave is truly astonishing.”
Well-preserved cedar planks and decking timber showed the ancient Egyptians were excellent ship builders, and support an idea that they reached Punt by sea, the researchers said. They added that the findings may help them determine the location of Punt, a longtime puzzle.
Reported findings also included five parallel rock-cut rooms in the caves, for storing ship equipment; a large stone anchor; shards of Egyptian storage jars; and a limestone tablet, or stela, of Pharaoh Amenemhat III, inscribed with his five royal names.
The researchers also said they found two intact cedar steering oars last spring, when they unearthed the caves. They speculated that the oars were used on 70-foot-long ships from a 15th-century B.C. expedition launched by Egypt’s Queen Hatshepsut to Punt.
Well-preserved and intact, the oars are the first complete parts from a sea-faring ship found in Egypt, they added. Near the oars were pieces of pottery and a stela with hieroglyphics detailing trade expeditions to Punt. * * *
thanks Fred Nerks.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1365657/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1566605/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1580599/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1775584/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2026499/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2034082/posts
'"This is a very important discovery and sheds light on Ancient Egyptian naval technology and the elaborate ancient Red Sea trade network," Mustafa told the Weekly. He said that people tend to assume that the Egyptians did not do many long-distance trips because very few remains of these sites have been found. Based on this belief, they also thought that Punt was located in southern Sinai and not in southern Sudan or the Eritrean region of Ethiopia.'
Returning to Egypt with gifts from Solomon. Deir el-Bahri:
At a guess I would suggest either cotton or linen.
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