page_title: Nile boat
section_title: Boat design / steering
hierarchical_section_title: Nile boat / Boat design / steering
caption_attribution_description: Predynastic boat as depicted on pottery vase in "Ancient Egyptian Ships and Shipping" by William F. Edgerton. Private Edition as distributed by University of Chicago Libraries, reprinted from American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literature, Vol. XXXIX, No.2, January, 1923.
context_page_description: The Nile River is a major resource for the people living along it, especially thousands of years ago. The El Salha Archaeological Project discovered an abundance of evidence of an ancient boat that traveled the Nile River dating back to 3,000 years ago. Pictographs and pebble carvings were uncovered, indicating a boat more advanced than a simple canoe. This evidence of a progressed Nile boat includes a steering system which may have been used in the Nile for fishing and transportation.
context_section_description: Some detail and aspects of boat construction can be inferred from the image on the granite pebble, as first reported by D. Usai and S. Salvatori in December, 2007. The back half of the boat image is in the best state of preservation. A steering system and cabin are situated at the approximate center of the boat. A composite steering system can be discerned with a tiller placed at a greater than 45° angle with a long pole ending in an ovoid blade. Tiller and pole with blade are fixed to the top of a vertical yoke. Boat and steering system design resemble those painted on the walls of Badarian huts and pottery jars. There are similarities with some boats  depicted in rock engravings in Nubia (Sudan); and those painted on walls and pottery in the Gerzan and Nagada cultures of Predynastic Egypt.
  “In particular the image of a steering gear fixed to a vertical pole inserted in the stern upper hull can be found in  boat rock engravings from the Abka region in Sudanese Nubia; and from Akkad which is south of  the third Cataract on the left  bank of the Nile in the Northern Dongola Reach. The blade strongly resembled those of the boat of El Khab. This kind of composite helm was still in use on Egyptian ships  built during the New Kingdom. The dome-like cabin on the upper hull is also a well known feature on boat representations dating to the Gerzean and Predynastic periods in Egypt and Nubia.” The Khartoum Mesolithic boat may be said to represent the end of important, coordinated developments in boat design. The  specific features of the boat depicted on the rock from the 16 D-5 site must have been designed earlier in the Nubian Mesolithic. As this approach to hull design, cabin layout and steering mechanism are found on boats thousands of years later, it had been judged the best possible architecture for small and medium size Nile boats during the Khartoum Mesolithic. As the first and best choice in Nile boat nautical architecture, this design persisted in boat building tradition for several thousand years. Slight modifications would produce either a fishing or cargo boat.
caption: Predynastic boat, pebble petroglyph <3200 B.C.
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