Page 21 - The Tigris Expedition

The Tigris Expedition

source? Or does it mean only that both people had inherited the
same kind of reed-ship?
The reed-ships of ancient Egypt had been illustrated by the artists
of the Pharaohs in such detail that I had been able to copy the vessel,
including its steering gear and rigging, when I built the reed-ships
Ra I and Ra II for testing in the open ocean. Such minute details are
not shown in Mesopotamian art, but the reliefs on a slab wall
brought to the British Museum from a royal palace in Nineveh
depict a realistic battle between reed vessels of Assyria and
Babylonia. The ships are big enough to reveal double rows of
Assyrian soldiers on deck as they embark to massacre fleeing men
and women, with the victims thrown overboard to the fish and
crabs. These large reliefs show in great clarity that the reed-ships of
the twin-river country were built like those on the Nile.
No motif is more common in the miniature art of the
Mesopotamian cylinder seals than the reed-boats used by the
legendary heroes in the period of settlement. In all principles these
boats are the same as those shown in greater detail in Nineveh and
Egypt. Yet there was one fundamental difference. The Egyptian
reed-boat builders had access to papyrus. In former times papyrus
grew in abundance all along the banks of the Nile from its sources to
its delta. The Sumerians had no papyrus; instead, the marshes of
Mesopotamia offered another tall fresh-water reed, locally known
as berdi.
After our two experiments with an Egyptian style vessel in 1969
and 1970 I knew that a correctly built papyrus ship could cross a
world ocean. Ra /, built by Central African Budumas, had almost
crossed the Atlantic when the lashings broke. In the following year,
with Ra II built by South American Aymara Indians, we sailed all
the way from Africa to America. But berdi differs markedly from
papyrus both in form and in substance. And what is worse, science
had decided that berdi is very water absorbent. There was only one
authority on ancient Mesopotamian watercraft in our time, the
Finnish scholar Armas Salonen. In his learned and thorough study
of all types of vessels used in the twin river country in former times
he has nothing to say about the elep urbati, the reed vessels, except a
reference to the general belief that they quickly absorbed water ‘and
unquestionably had to be brought ashore to dry out after use’.2
There was agreement on this point in the very sparse literature
touching on this subject. The Sumerian reed-ships, accordingly,
could have served only as river boats.
How could this modern verdict be reconciled with the ancient
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