http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ mirrored file For complete access to all the files of this collection see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php ========================================================== Home Home Ships of the World: An Historical Encyclopedia Publication Data Dedication Foreword by Eric. J. Berryman Preface Note Literary Ships Chronologies Glossary Bibliography ResourceHome U.S. History Western Civilization World Civilizations Bookstore Ships of the World: An Historical Encyclopedia Cheops ship /L/B/D/: 143 × 18.7 × 4.9 (43.6m × 5.7m × 1.5m). /Tons/: 94 disp. /Hull/: wood. /Built/: Egypt; ca. 2500 bce. The oldest, largest, and best-preserved vessel from antiquity, the Cheops ship was found accidentally during the course of a clearance excavation at the Great Pyramid at Giza in 1954. The operation was directed by Kamal el-Mallakh, an architect and Egyptologist working for the Egyptian Antiquities Service. While removing debris just south of the pyramid, excavators discovered two long pits carved in the bedrock and sealed with 14-ton limestone blocks. On opening a small hole into the first pit, el-Mallakh noticed an odor of cedar wood. The first glimpses into the darkness revealed a complete, dismantled boat, superbly preserved in its airtight tomb. According to one investigator, the boat's timbers "looked as hard and as new as if they had been placed there but a year ago." The boat was almost certainly built for Cheops (Khufu), the second pharaoh of the Fourth Dynasty of the Egyptian Old Kingdom. The Great Pyramid was Cheops' tomb, and the cartouche of his son, Djedefre, was found on several of the limestone blocks that sealed the boat pit. The painstaking process of documentation and excavation followed the initial discovery. More than 1,200 separate pieces of wood were recovered, ranging in size from pegs a few centimeters long to timbers of more than 20 meters. About 95 percent of the ship was built of cedar, probably imported from Lebanon, with the remainder, including acacia, used for cross-bracing in some deck sections, sidder for tenons, hornbeam for oar blades, and sycamore for battens, pegs, and other details. After the pieces had been removed from the pit and conserved, the complex work of reconstruction began. The jigsaw puzzle was put together over a period of 13 years by Haj Ahmed Youssef Moustafa, director of restoration for the Antiquities Service. The careful recording of each piece in its initial position proved crucial to the reconstruction, since the elements of the ship had been arranged logically in the pit: prow at the west end, stern at the east, starboard timbers on the north side, port timbers on the south, hull pieces at the bottom and sides of the pit, and superstructure elements on top of the pile. Ancient carpenters' marks in the form of symbols in the hieratic Egyptian script gave additional clues about the positioning of individual pieces. In 1982, almost 28 years after the original discovery, the Cheops boat was opened to the public in a specially built museum next to the pyramid. The Cheops ship is an example of the "shell-first" construction that lasted until about 1000 ce. The builders first put together the hull, adding the internal structural members only after the external shell was complete. The boat has no keel. Instead, the hull is built around a flat bottom made up of 8 timbers, averaging 13 meters in length and 13 centimeters in thickness. Two nearly symmetrical sets of planking form the remainder of the shell, with 11 large planks on each side. These strakes are lashed together from rail to rail, scarfed together at their ends, and further secured with 467 tenons. In the water, the timbers would expand and the rope lashings shrink, resulting in a strong, watertight fit. Thin wooden strips (battens) cover the inboard faces of the seams between the planks. Over the battens are fitted 16 floor timbers?large, curved pieces, each shaped from a single piece of cedar, lashed to the strakes to strengthen the hull. The long sturdy center girder, or spine, runs longitudinally amidships, held up by forked stanchions attached to the floor timbers. The 66 deck beams are supported by the spine and notched sheer strakes. The deck beams, in turn, are dadoed to receive the square and trapezoidal sections of decking. The hull and deck support three independent structures. On the foredeck, ten slim poles with elegant papyrus-bud finials support a small, lightweight canopy with a plank roof. Aft of midships is the main deck cabin, consisting of an anteroom and main chamber. Its outer walls are constructed of twelve cross-braced wooden panels?five on each side and two at each end. Built directly over and forward of the main cabin is the third superstructure, a canopy believed to have been covered by reed mats. The graceful forms of the high prow and steeply raked stern are derived from rafts of bundled reeds, the earliest form of Nile boat. The stempost is carved in high relief to resemble a bundle of papyrus stalks lashed together with rope. The boat was equipped with five pairs of oars, varying from 6.58 to 8.35 meters in length. An additional pair of steering oars was mounted on the afterdeck. The positioning of the oars in the reconstruction is conjectural and the question of how the vessel was actually powered has been much discussed. The twelve oars seem an inadequate source of propulsion for a craft this size. It has been suggested that the royal boat would have been towed by smaller craft, with its own oars used only for steering and maneuvering. There are several theories about the purpose of the boat. Although it has been suggested that the ship was intended only as a "solar barque" to carry the resurrected king with the sun god Re in an eternal circuit of the heavens, some of the battens show clear imprints of ropes; this could only have resulted when the boat was afloat, as the cordage shrank and the wood softened and swelled. It is speculated that the ship was either a funerary barge used to carry the king's embalmed body from Memphis to Giza, or that Cheops himself used it as a pilgrimage boat to visit holy places and that it was buried for his use in the afterlife. Jenkins, /Boat beneath the Pyramid/. Landström, /Ships of the Pharaohs/. Lipke, /Royal Ship of Cheops/.