24. Mau Piailug: “Pius Mau Piailug.”
25. Double canoes: McGrail, Boats of the World, 324–26.
26. capable of carrying: Ibid., 338; Kirch, On the Road of the Winds, 109–11.
27. coastal migration: Fladmark, “Routes”; Erlandson et al., “Kelp Highway Hypothesis.”
28. dearth of harbors: Arnold and Bernard, “Negotiating the Coasts,” 110.
29. 120 kilometers a day: Carvajal, Discovery of the Amazon, 99.
30. Andean civilization emerged: Moseley, Maritime Foundations of Andean Civilization, 7–17.
31. reeds, cotton, and gourds: Moseley, Incas and Their Ancestors, 47.
32. Chavín’s earliest long-distance trades: Stanish, “Origins of State Societies in Ancient Peru,” 45–48.
33. thorny oyster: Zeidler, “Maritime Exchange in the Early Formative Period,” 252.
34. views that Amazonia: Mann, 1491, 280–311.
35. “the great dominion of Machiparo”: Carvajal, Discovery of the Amazon, 199.
36. four hundred liters: Ibid., 201.
37. “two hundred pirogues”: Ibid., 218.
38. more than eighteen hundred nautical miles: Callaghan, “Prehistoric Trade Between Ecuador and West Mexico,” 798.
39. Affinities: Coe, “Archaeological Linkages,” 364–66; Anawalt, “Ancient Cultural Contacts.”
40. intermittent trade: Shimada, “Evolution of Andean Diversity,” 430–36.
41. balsas: rafts; Edwards, Aboriginal Watercraft.
42. “They are level”: Salazar de Villasante, in ibid., 62.
43. “By sinking some”: Jorge Juan y Santacilia, Relación Histórica del Viage a la América Meridionel (1748), in Edwards, Aboriginal Watercraft, 73–74, and n. 33. Juan y Santacilia went on to become chief constructor of the Spanish navy, and his two-volume shipbuilding treatise, Examen marítimo, theórico práctico…(1771), remained in print for fifty years. See Ferreiro, Ships and Science, 272–75.
44. fastest northbound passages: Callaghan, “Prehistoric Trade Between Ecuador and West Mexico,” 801–3.
45. excited no imitation: Chapman, “Port of Trade Enclaves in Aztec and Maya Civilization,” 131–42.
46. none of whom: Epstein, “Sails in Aboriginal Mesoamerica.”
47. Putun Maya: Allaire, “Archaeology of the Caribbean Region,” 711–12.
48. “by good fortune”: Colón, Life of the Admiral Christopher Columbus, chap. 89 (pp. 231–32).
49. oldest log canoes: Wheeler et al., “Archaic Period Canoes.”
50. forerunners of planked boats: McGrail, Boats of the World, 172–80.
51. Coastal people traded: Fisher, “Northwest from the Beginning of Trade,” 120–24.
52. “about 200 Men”: DeVoto, Journals of Lewis and Clark, Nov. 4, 1805 (p. 275).
53. Large dugouts: McGrail, Boats of the World, 172.
54. “ornimented with Images”: DeVoto, Journals of Lewis and Clark, Nov. 4, 1805 (p. 276); Ames, “Going by Boat,” 27–28, 31–32.
55. “the only tool”: DeVoto, Journals of Lewis and Clark, Feb. 1, 1806 (pp. 316–17).
56. Kayaks, Umiaks, and Baidarkas: Chapelle, “Arctic Skin Boats,” 174–211.
57. Dorset culture was replaced: Snow, “First Americans,” 186–93.
58. “It was sowed together”: Martin Pring, “A Voyage … for the discouerie of the North part of Virginia,” in Quinn and Quinn, English New England Voyages, 222.
59. The preferred bark: Adney and Chapelle, Bark Canoes and Skin Boats, 14–15, 29.
60. “The Indian”: McPhee, Survival of the Bark Canoe, 50.
61. “cocked his arm”: Ibid., 21.
62. “must be looked upon”: Adney and Chapelle, Bark Canoes and Skin Boats, 135.
63. “The board canoe”: Fernando Librado, in Hudson et al., Tomol, 39.
2. The River and Seas of Ancient Egypt
1. “And then with my eyes closed”: In Jenkins, Boat Beneath the Pyramid, 53.
2. “looked as hard”: In Lipke, Royal Ship of Cheops, 2.
3. The most important Egyptian towns: Wilkinson, Early Dynastic Egypt, 346–60.
4. “to sail southwards”: Montet, Everyday Life in Ancient Egypt, 173, note.
5. “Balance of the Two Lands”: Wilkinson, Early Dynastic Egypt, 58.
6. The score of wooden hulls: Ward, Sacred and Secular, 12. Egyptian ship remains from antiquity include fourteen hulls from Abydos, two from Giza (one unexcavated), five or six from Dahshur (four on exhibit, in Cairo, Pittsburgh, and Chicago), part of a fifth-century BCE hull from Mataria, near Cairo, and a collection of ship timbers from Lisht.
7. Larger reed rafts: Landström, Ships of the Pharaohs, 41, 94–97.
8. A bipod mast: Hornell, Water Transport, 46, 49; Johnstone, Sea-craft of Prehistory, 10, 70.
9. The oldest rendering: Carter, “Boat-Related Finds,” 91. This ceramic disc shows a bipod mast but not a sail.
10. royal mortuary in Abydos: O’Connor, “Boat Graves and Pyramid Origins”; Pierce, “After 5,000-Year Voyage”; Ward, “World’s Oldest Planked Boats.”
11. The inherent flexibility: In the fourteenth century, Ibn Battuta wrote, “The Indian and Yemenite ships are sewn together with [cords], for that sea [the Red Sea] is full of reefs, and if a ship is nailed with iron nails it breaks up on striking the rocks, whereas if it is sewn together with cords, it is given a certain resilience and does not fall to pieces.” Travels, 4:827.
12. The Khufu ship used: Ward, Sacred and Secular, 140.
13. no caulking: Ibid., 124.
14. sewn hull of the Sohar: Severin, Sinbad Voyage, 40: “Kunhikoya announced that I would need about fifteen hundred bundles of coconut string to build the ship I needed. I calculated the total length, and it came to four hundred miles! This seemed a colossal amount, but events proved Kunhikoya right.”
15. “I conducted the work”: In Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt, vol. 1, §746 (p. 326).
16. The Nubians may have originated: Ward, Sacred and Secular, 6.
17. One theory: Jenkins, Boat Beneath the Pyramid; Landström, Ships of the Pharaohs; and Lipke, Royal Ship of Cheops.
18. “the most beautiful in form”: In Simpson, Literature of Ancient Egypt, 17.
19. “Bringing from the workshops”: In Landström, Ships of the Pharaohs, 62.
20. two granite obelisks: Habachi, “Two Graffiti at Sehel,” 99. One inscription refers to “two great obelisks, their height 108 cubits” (57 meters), which would have weighed 2,400 tons each and required a barge 95 meters long by 32 meters wide, with a loaded displacement of 7,300 tons and a draft of 3 meters. For measurements of Hatshepsut’s barge, see Landström, Ships of the Pharaohs, 129–30.
21. “the ships were able”: Pliny, Natural History, 36.14 (vol. 10:29).
22. Colossi of Memnon: Wehausen et al., “Colossi of Memnon and Egyptian Barges.” The statues depict Amenhotpe III (1410–1372 BCE) but later Greek visitors took them to represent Memnon, an Ethiopian king whom Achilles killed at Troy. See Casson, Everyday Life in Ancient Egypt, 141.
23. “the raft is carried”: Herodotus, Histories, 2.96 (p. 119).
24. “the method of construction”: Ibid.
25. “a cargo-boat of acacia”: In Landström, Ships of the Pharaohs, 62. The Egyptians used two cubit measurements, one equal to 0.45 centimeters and the royal cubit of 0.525 meters; Wachsmann, Seagoing Ships, 345n16.
26. “ships go out”: In Pritchard, Ancient Near East, 1:259.
27. “forward-starboard”: Ward, Sacred and Secular, 8–9.
28. “down to Egypt”: In Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt, vol. 1, §322 (p. 148).
29. “If you descend”: “Tale of the Eloquent Peasant,” in Simpson, Literature of Ancient Egypt, 25–44, esp. 33, 36. Ma’at was both the concept and goddess of universal order and justice.
30. “The bow-rope of the South”: In Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt, vol. 2, §341 (p. 143).
31. ship of state: See fo
r instance, Sophocles, Oedipus the King, ll.27–30 (420 BCE); Plato, Republic, 6.488 (340 BCE); Horace, Odes, 1.14 (23 BCE); Sebastian Brant, Das Narranschiff (Ship of Fools, 1494); and Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 262–63: “O Captain! My Captain!” on the death of Abraham Lincoln (1865). Explaining his purpose in gathering traditional sailing ships for Operation Sail 1976 as a means of building international goodwill, maritime historian Frank O. Braynard wrote, “We are all seamen on the ship Earth.”
32. “only one warship”: In Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt, vol. 1, §322 (p. 148).
33. “ivory, throw sticks”: In ibid., vol. 1, §353 (p. 161).
34. sea route between Buto and Byblos: Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel, 22.
35. “forty ships”: In Wachsmann, Seagoing Ships, 9. The Palermo Stone is a list of pharaohs and their activities from the predynastic period through the middle of the Fifth Dynasty.
36. Fifth Dynasty reliefs: Wachsmann, Seagoing Ships, 12–18.
37. Crete and Egypt: Casson, Ancient Mariners, 17–18; Wachsmann, Seagoing Ships, 298.
38. “went forth from Coptos”: In Wachsmann, Seagoing Ships, 238.
39. “laden with all the products”: “The Shipwrecked Sailor,” in Simpson, Literature of Ancient Egypt, 52–53.
40. this voyage to Punt: Wachsmann, Seagoing Ships, 18–29.
41. carvings of fish: ElSayed, “Queen Hatshepsut’s Expedition.”
42. “the tent of the king’s-messenger”: In Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt, vol. 2, §§260–65 (pp. 108–10).
43. how the Egyptians navigated: Hydrographer of the Navy, Ocean Passages of the World, 89.
44. Murals at Avaris: Wachsmann, Seagoing Ships, 298; Kuhrt, Ancient Near East, 169.
45. “I have not left a plank”: In Pritchard, Ancient Near East, 2:90–91.
46. the Barkal Stela: Hornung, History of Ancient Egypt, 77, 90.
47. “The People of the Isles”: Casson, Ancient Mariners, 17, 20.
3. Bronze Age Seafaring
1. Enki: Kramer and Maier, Myths of Enki, 3.
2. Ennugi: Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia: Epic of Gilgamesh, tablet XI, p. 110.
3. The oldest evidence for ships with masts: Carter, “Boat-Related Finds,” 89–91.
4. quffa: Agius, Classic Ships of Islam, 129–32; Hornell, Water Transport, 101–8.
5. fragments of bitumen: Carter, “Boat-Related Finds,” 91–99.
6. Epic of Gilgamesh: West, East Face of Helicon, 402–17.
7. “Then Gilgamesh stripped”: Ferry, Gilgamesh, 62.
8. “How long does a building stand”: Ibid., 64.
9. “had ships of Dilmun”: In Potts, Arabian Gulf in Antiquity, 1:88.
10. “Ships from Meluhha”: In ibid., 1:183.
11. “My mother, the entum”: In Kuhrt, Ancient Near East, 48.
12. “from the Lower Sea”: In Gadd, “Dynasty of Agade,” 421.
13. a village of Meluhhans: Potts, Arabian Gulf in Antiquity, 1:165–67.
14. ancient port of Lothal: Deloche, “Geographical Considerations,” 320; Ghosh, Encyclopedia of Indian Archaeology, 1:297, 2:257–60. The prevailing alternative view is that the basin served as a reservoir for potable water or irrigation, a theory more in keeping with historic and current practice, although this identification is also problematic. See Leshnik, “Harappan ‘Port’ at Lothal,” which goes too far in writing that “Lothal’s identification as an international emporium” depends on the identification of the basin as a dock.
15. “dock of Akkad”: Potts, “Watercraft,” 135. The Akkadian word for a quay or wharf, karum, eventually referred to the commercial quarter of a town or to any association of merchants seeking collective security in alien lands. See Kuhrt, Ancient Near East, 92.
16. the Ras al-Jinz finds: Cleuziou and Tosi, “Black Boats of Magan,” 750–52; Vosmer, “Ships in the Ancient Arabian Sea,” 236, and personal communication, Sept. 23, 2005.
17. “asphalt for the coating”: In Cleuziou and Tosi, “Black Boats of Magan,” 747.
18. “Magan Boat”: The dimensions are 13 meters length overall, 11.1 meters length at the waterline, 3.9 meters maximum beam, and 10.5 tons displacement. The sail was 45 square meters. Ancient and ethnographic evidence indicate that the ancient shipwrights would have mixed various materials into their bitumen depending on its use. See Vosmer, “Magan Boat Project,” 51, 53.
19. capacity of about thirty gur: Vosmer, “Building the Reed-Boat Prototype,” 235.
20. Lu-Enlilla: Potts, Arabian Gulf in Antiquity, 1:145; Oppenheim, “Seafaring Merchants of Ur,” 13.
21. interest rates: Van de Mieroop, Ancient Mesopotamian City, 197–98.
22. a vessel proceeding downstream: Potts, Mesopotamian Civilization, 133.
23. “12 minas of refined copper”: In Potts, Arabian Gulf in Antiquity, 1:226.
24. “Minos, according to tradition”: Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, 1.4 (p. 37).
25. Neolithic migrants: Liritzis, “Seafaring, Craft and Cultural Contact in the Aegean,” 237–43; but see Wiener, “Isles of Crete? The Minoan Thalassocracy Revisited.”
26. archives at Mari: Wachsmann, Seagoing Ships, 83.
27. wall paintings: Doumas, Wall-paintings of Thera; Sherratt, Wall Paintings of Thera. Wachsmann, Seagoing Ships, 86–122, interprets all the scenes as ritualistic. On the term “quarter rudder,” see Mott, Development of the Rudder, 6–7.
28. Uluburun site: Bass, “Bronze Age Shipwreck.”
29. “fraught with disaster”: Pliny, Natural History, 5.35.131 (vol. 2:319).
30. Cape Gelidonya ship: Bass, “Cape Gelidonya”; Bass, “Return to Cape Gelidonya”; and Throckmorton, The Sea Remembers, 24–33.
31. “northerners coming from all lands”: In Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt, vol. 3, §574 (p. 241).
32. “twenty enemy ships”: In Wachsmann, Seagoing Ships, 343–44.
33. “My father”: In ibid.
34. “Shardana, rebellious of heart”: Sandars, Sea Peoples, 50.
35. “Against me the ships”: In Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel, 254.
36. Ramesses III’s victory: Kuhrt, Ancient Near East, 387; other sources give 1191 or 1186 BCE.
37. “Those who came”: In Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel, 256.
38. “The Report of Wenamun”: In Simpson, Literature of Ancient Egypt, 142–55.
4. Phoenicians, Greeks, and the Mediterranean
1. territory of the Canaanites: Aubet, Phoenicians, 12–16.
2. Hiram I: Ibid., 35–37.
3. “at the entrance to the sea”: Ezekiel 27:3.
4. “daughter cities”: Patai, Children of Noah, 136.
5. “Because of the wide prevalence”: Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, 1.7 (p. 39).
6. temple of Solomon: 1 Kings 5.
7. Ophir and Sheba: 1 Kings 9:27, 22:48–49; 2 Chronicles 8:18, 20:34–37.
8. “exultant city”: Isaiah 23:7.
9. established Carthage: Aubet, Phoenicians, 187–89.
10. Gadir: Ibid., 187–89, 247–49.
11. “only high economic returns”: Ibid., 240.
12. “wheat, millet”: Ezekiel 27:12–25. See Tandy, Warriors into Traders, 66.
13. Al-Mina: Polanyi, “Ports of Trade in Early Societies,” 30, 33.
14. “famed for its ships”: Evelyn-White, “Homeric Hymns to Pythian Apollo,” l.219 (p. 341).
15. “Nestor had a fine drinking cup”: I am indebted to Jim Terry for this translation. See Murray, Early Greece, 96; Powell, Homer, 31–32; and Tandy, Warriors into Traders, 203. The Homeric parallel is in the Iliad, 11.745–58 (p. 317).
16. “whose merchants were princes”: Isaiah 23:8.
17. “amassing a fortune”: Homer, Odyssey, 14.321–34 (pp. 310–11).
18. “purchased for himself”: Ibid., 14.512–14 (p. 316). Taphos is thought to have been an island off the west coast of Greece.
19. “so far from being”: Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, 1.5 (
p. 37).
20. images on vases: Casson, Ancient Mariners, 41–42, and figs. 11–12.
21. “catalogue of ships”: Homer, Iliad, 2.584–862 (pp. 115–24).
22. “they furled and stowed”: Ibid., 1.514–22 (p. 92).
23. “knocking them home”: Homer, Odyssey, 5.273 (p. 160). See Casson, Ships and Seamanship, 217–19, and Wachsmann, Seagoing Ships, 227, citing Homer, Odyssey, 9.382–88.
24. mortise-and-tenon joinery, sewn: McGrail, Boats of the World, 126, 134–38.
25. “Hers were the stars”: Homer, Odyssey, 5.303–4 (p. 161). Pleiades is otherwise known as the Seven Sisters, Boötes as the Herdsman or Plowman, and Ursa Major as the Great Bear.
26. “sung by the world”: Ibid., 12.77 (p. 273). The best known version of the Jason story is the third-century BCE Argonautica, composed by Apollonius while living at Rhodes, which was then at its height as a commercial maritime power. Apollonius was subsequently librarian of the library at Alexandria.
27. Ithaca is off the west coast: A persuasive case has been made recently that the ancient island of Ithaca is now, thanks to seismic activity, the Paliki peninsula on the island of Cephalonia, and that the modern Ithaca (Ithaki), to the east, is the ancient Doulichion. See Bittlestone, Diggle, and Underhill, Odysseus Unbound.
28. Pithecoussae: Tandy, Warriors into Traders, 72.
29. ship track, or diolkos: Werner, “Largest Ship Trackway in Ancient Times.”
30. Pontos Axeinos: King, Black Sea, xi–xii.
31. settlement on the Black Sea: Tsetskhladze, “Did the Greeks Go to Cholcis for Metals?” “Greek Penetration of the Black Sea,” and “Trade on the Black Sea.”
32. Theodosia: Strabo, Geography, 7.4.4 (vol. 3:237).
33. canal between the Nile and the Red Sea: For an overview of the confusion surrounding the existence and date of this canal, see Redmount, “Wadi Tumilat.”
34. “an oracle”: Herodotus, Histories, 2.159 (p. 145).
35. “The Phoenicians sailed”: Ibid., 4.42 (p. 229). See Lloyd, “Necho and the Red Sea.”
36. “his ship was brought”: Herodotus, Histories, 4.43 (p. 229).
37. Hanno: Ibid., 4.196 (although he does not mention Hanno by name); Pliny, Natural History, 2.67.169 (vol. 1:305); and Arrian, Indica, 8.43 (vol. 2:433).
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