page_title: Reed boat
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Reed boat / History
caption_attribution_description: Species: Cyperus papyrus Family: Cyperaceae Image No. 7
context_page_description: Reed boats and rafts, along with dugout canoes and other rafts, are among the oldest known types of boats. Often used as traditional fishing boats, they are still used in a few places around the world, though they have generally been replaced with planked boats. Reed boats can be distinguished from reed rafts, since reed boats are usually waterproofed with some form of tar. As well as boats and rafts, small floating islands have also been constructed from reeds.
  The earliest discovered remains from a reed boat are 7000 years old, found in Kuwait. Reed boats are depicted in early petroglyphs and were common in Ancient Egypt. A famous example is the ark of bulrushes in which the baby Moses was set afloat. They were also constructed from early times in Peru and Bolivia, and boats with remarkedly similar design have been found in Easter Island. Reed boats are still used in Peru, Bolivia, Ethiopia, and until recently in Corfu. The explorations and investigations of the Norwegian ethnographer and adventurer Thor Heyerdahl have resulted in a better understanding of the construction and capabilities of reed boats.
context_section_description: The image on the right shows petroglyphs of a reed boat and men. The reed boat is similar to those depicted in cave paintings in Scandinavia, something that led Thor Heyerdahl to theorise that the Scandinavians came from the area that today is Azerbaijan. In the Gobustan Petroglyph Reserve there are more than 6,000 petroglyphs carved by the hunter-gatherers that lived in these caves 12,000 years ago. At that time the Caspian Sea was much higher and washed against the lower rocks of the hill.
  Another site is Wadi Hammamat in Qift, Egypt, where there are drawings of Egyptian reed boats dated to 4000 BC
  The oldest known remnants of a boat made with reeds (and tar) are from a 7000-year-old seagoing boat found in Failaka Island, Kuwait.
  The Ancient Egyptians built boats from papyrus reeds, which were widely cultivated along the Nile River and Delta. This reed was also used for many other purposes, especially for providing papyrus writing parchments. Other reeds of the genus Cyperus may have been used as well. Theophrastus in his History of Plants states that the rigging on King Antigonus' fleet, used to fasten the doors when Ulysses slew the suitors in his hall, was made from papyrus reed. Light skiffs suitable for the navigation of the Nile were constructed with stems cut from papyrus reed, as shown by bas-reliefs from the fourth dynasty where men cut papyrus, and use it to make cordage and sails and to build a reed boat.
  According to the Bible, when the Pharaoh issued a decree to kill all the Israelite males, the baby Moses was saved by his mother, who set him adrift on the Nile in an ark of bulrushes. The bulrushes this small boat or basket was built with may have been papyrus. The prophet Isaiah refers to Ethiopian vessels of reed in Isaiah 18:2.
caption: The Ancient Egyptian used papyrus reeds to make boats
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