Viking-Age War Fleets: shipbuilding, resource management and maritime warfare in 11th-century Denmark

This is the publication of proceedings of the international colloquium ‘La Batellerie Égyptienne’ (‘Egyptian River Craft’) held in Alexandria in June 2010. Organized by the Centre d’Études Alexandrines, the event brought together many renowned researchers, mainly French-speaking, working in the field of ancient shipbuilding and navigation. The Nile was the focus of the colloquium, and, by a twist of fate, this review was written on board a ship anchored in the estuary of the ancient Canopic branch of this river. The book is dedicated to Honor Frost, and a foreword by J-Y. Empereur commemorates her contribution to Alexandrian studies. In the Introduction, P. Pomey emphasizes that the subject of many articles is not restricted by the riverbed of the Nile, but goes beyond it to the great coastal lakes of the Delta. Neither is the historical scope of this volume limited to Antiquity, as it contains a lot of ethnographic material. The editor admits that this ambitious approach would produce inevitable lacunas. The volume is subdivided into three sections. The first, somewhat artificial section, contains contributions devoted to Egyptian rivercraft and Nilotic navigation during the Pharaonic period (ending in 332 BC) but equally includes communication networks and harbour infrastructure in Antiquity. It is followed by a section on Nilotic navigation and shipbuilding in the Graeco-Roman, Byzantine and Islamic periods, while the third part of the book deals with ethnographic topics. The opening article by M. Abdel-Maguid follows in the wake of the Introduction, giving an overview of available iconographic, archaeological and textual material on Ancient Egyptian rivercraft during Pharaonic times. The author considers main constructional features and types of Nilotic vessels while illustrating the major lines of technological evolution with numerous images. Sief El-Din Gomaa presents the network of inner waterways in Egypt during the Graeco-Roman period. The author first briefly describes the geography of waterways and main river-ports from Egyptian Nubia downstream. The geography of the Delta is given in detail and includes the position of major canals from the results of the latest archaeological research. The second part of the paper, less than one page, is devoted to the historical evolution of the network. The third part enumerates its major functions and mentions the mean duration and risks of voyages. In the reviewer’s opinion this is too voluminous (50pp.) for a paper entirely based on secondary sources, while the numerous maps are repetitive. The contribution by Bergmann and Heinzelmann (in English) sums up the preliminary results of a multidisciplinary research project on the topography, development and economic role of Schedia, an important customs-post and port on the Canopic branch of the Nile created by the first Ptolemies. The topography of the site and constructional phases up to Late Antiquity are considered in much detail. The second part of the book starts with two interrelated articles providing deep and captivating analysis of Ancient Egyptian rivercraft in GraecoRoman times through papyri in one case and a single extremely rich iconographic source in the second. The first, by P. Arnaud, well-argued and written in the author’s characteristic lively style, is devoted to Nilotic freighters as they appear in papyri between 300 BC and AD 400. Arnaud underlines the immensity of the task of analysing a corpus of more than 500 chronologically discontinuous and varied documents. Moreover, the only serious effort in this direction was made almost a century ago with only a small part of the study published (Merzagora, 1929, La navigazione in Egitto nell’età greco-romana, Aegyptus 10: 105– 148). The article just opens ‘several windows’ on the subject; but the reviewer finds these windows perfectly oriented and wide. It is worth noting the extensive citation apparatus which includes full original texts of the papyri discussed together with French translations. The paper begins by considering three navigational spaces of Nilotic navigation (sea, river and lake), citing numerous arguments supporting the conclusion that in Hellenistic times the Nile was perceived as an extension of the sea. Special attention is paid to the presence of large seagoing ships, in particular the kerkouros. The author shows that, contrary to the opinion that large ships came upriver during the flood (end of August or early September), documents attest that ships with a tonnage of more than 10,000 artabs (c.250 metric tonnes) came up the Nile, sometimes as far as Thebes, almost exclusively in winter (December to February), when although the water was low the wind was generally favourable. The reason is probably