Page 396 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

the University of Pennsylvania ...
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The boats were buried in the shadow of a gigantic mud-brick enclosure,
thought to have been the mortuary temple of a Second Dynasty pharaoh
named Khasekhemwy, who had ruled Egypt in the twenty-seventh century
BC. O’Connor, however, was certain that they were not associated
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directly with Khasekhemwy but rather with the nearby (and largely ruined)
‘funerary-cult enclosure built for Pharaoh Djer early in Dynasty I. The boat
graves are not likely to be earlier than this and may in fact have been
built for Djer, but this remains to be proven.’
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A sudden strong gust of wind blew across the desert, scattering sheets
of sand. I took refuge for a while in the lee of the looming walls of the
Khasekhemwy enclosure, close to the point where the University of
Pennsylvania archaeologists had, for legitimate security reasons, reburied
the twelve mysterious boats they had stumbled on in 1991. They had
hoped to return in 1992 to continue the excavations, but there had been
various hitches and, in 1993, the dig was still being postponed.
In the course of my research O’Connor had sent me the official report
of the 1991 season, mentioning in passing that some of the boats might
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have been as much as 72 feet in length. He also noted that the boat-
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shaped brick graves in which they were enclosed, which would have risen
well above the level of the surrounding desert in early dynastic times,
must have produced quite an extraordinary effect when they were new:

Each grave had originally been thickly coated with mud plaster and whitewash so
the impression would have been of twelve (or more) huge ‘boats’ moored out in
the desert, gleaming brilliantly in the Egyptian sun. The notion of their being
moored was taken so seriously that an irregularly shaped small boulder was found
placed near the ‘prow’ or ‘stern’ of several boat graves. These boulders could not
have been there naturally or by accident; their placement seems deliberate, not
random. We can think of them as ‘anchors’ intended to help ‘moor’ the boats.
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Like the 140-foot ocean-going vessel found buried beside the Great
Pyramid at Giza (see Chapter Thirty-three), one thing was immediately
clear about the Abydos boats—they were of an advanced design capable
of riding out the most powerful waves and the worst weather of the open
seas. According to Cheryl Haldane, a nautical archaeologist at Texas A-
and-M University, they showed ‘a high degree of technology combined
with grace’. Exactly as was the case with the Pyramid boat, therefore
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(but at least 500 years earlier) the Abydos fleet seemed to indicate that a
people able to draw upon the accumulated experiences of a long tradition

27 Guardian, London, 21 December 1991.
28 David O’Connor, ‘Boat Graves and Pyramid Origins’, in Expedition, volume 33, No. 3,
1991, p. 7ff.
29 Ibid., pp. 9-10.
30 Sent to me by fax 27 January 1993.
David O’Connor, ‘Boat Graves and Pyramid Origins’, p. 12.
31
32 Ibid., p. 11-12.
33 Guardian, 21 December 1991.

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