Louvre

Nile Boats

The boats of the pharaohs. Papyrus boats, ships of oars and transport, sacred boats ... During the Pharaonic era, all kinds of boats sailed the Nile and even the high sea.

Without the Nile, the sacred river, Egypt would only be a vast desert. In ancient times, the annual flooding of its waters guaranteed the livelihood of those who inhabited its shores and, at the same time, it served as a privileged means of communication throughout the thousands of kilometers of its course. Therefore, in the daily life of the Egyptians, the ships played a fundamental role, whether for the movement of people, the transport of goods or numerous religious ceremonies. Very few remains of these boats are preserved, probably because the wood from which they were made was a precious, scarce, and undoubtedly often reused to make coffins, but there are many representations that show us the different types of vessels and its evolution.

Thus, some vessels of the Predynastic period show that then the rowing boats abounded, with a double cabin, and the hull followed a uniform curve from bow to stern. This feature of the great Egyptian ships serves to differentiate them from other supposedly Asian.