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Herodotus 2.96.1 —2*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Alan B. Lloyd
Alan B. Lloyd
Affiliation:
University College of Swansea
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Extract

This passage from the most important of all our textual sources on Ancient-Egyptian shipbuilding has been discussed by me in my newly published Commentary. There I followed the traditional view whereby is translated as ‘thwarts’’, is taken to describe thwarts passing from one gunwale to the other in such a way that each end was placed ‘on top of the gunwale, and the sentence is understood to refer to caulking with papyrus. J. S. Morrison has in recent years on several occasions offered a radically different translation under the influence of the Fourth-Dynasty boats interred beside the Great Pyramid of Gîza (c. 2600 B.C.). His criticism of the old rendering seizes upon three points:

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , May 1979 , pp. 45 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1979

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References

page 45 note 1 Herodotus, Book II. Commentary 1–98 (Leiden, 1976), pp.384 ff.Google Scholar

page 45 note 2 In a review of Casson, Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World, Inter-national Journal of Nautical Archaeology 1 (1972), 230 ff.Google Scholar and in Greenhill, B., Archaeology of the Boat (London, 1976), pp.161 ff.Google Scholar

page 45 note 3 Nour, M. Z., Iskander, Z., Osman, M. S., and Moustafa, A. Y., The Cheops Boats, i (Cairo, 1960);Google ScholarLandström, B., Ships of the Pharaohs (London, 1970), pp.26 ff.Google Scholar

page 45 note 4 Greenhill, , op. cit., p.162.Google Scholar

page 45 note 5 Loc. cit.

page 45 note 6 Op. cit., pp.161 ff.Google Scholar

page 45 note 7 Landstrom, , op. cit., pp.90 ff.Google Scholar; Gotrlicher, A. and Werner, W., Die Schiffsmodelle im alten Ägypten (Wiesbaden, 1971), pi. XLIV.Google Scholar

page 46 note 1 Reisner, G., Models of Ships and Boats (Catalogue Général du Musée du Caire) (Cairo, 1913), 4798 ff.Google Scholar; Glanville, S. R. K. and Faulkner, R. O., Catalogue of Egyptian Antiquities in the British Museum. II. Wooden Model Boats (Oxford, 1972), e.g. pp.8–13.Google Scholar

page 46 note 2 e.g. Landström, , op. cit., pp.99 (317), 101 (319), 110 (342), 112 (345 and 348), etc.Google Scholar

page 46 note 3 Clarke, S., ‘Nile Boats and other Matters’’, Ancient Egypt (1920), pp.5 ff., 43 ff.Google Scholar; Hornell, J., ‘The Frameless Boats of the Middle Nile. Part I’’, Mariner's Mirror 25 (1939), 417 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘Part 2’’, op. cit. 26 (1940), 125 ff.Google Scholar; id., Water Transport (Newton Abbot, 1970), p.215Google Scholar; cf. Greenhill, , op. cit., p.1ll, fig. 63.Google Scholar

page 46 note 4 LSJ 757, s.v.; Casson, L., Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World (Princeton, 1971), p.220.Google Scholar

page 46 note 5 Cf. Herodotus, , 4.201.1Google Scholar; Strabo, , 12.7.3 (C570).Google Scholar

page 46 note 6 Cf. Herodotus, , 1.187.1Google Scholar; Aristophanes, , Plutus 1207.Google Scholar

page 46 note 7 If we exclude lexicographers, in this sense is confined to Herodotus and Procopius (Bell. Goth. 4.22.12)Google Scholar. Its inter-pretation is based on Herodotus 1.194, Hesychius, s.v. (where it is glossed as ‘the futtocks of ships’’, cf. Casson, , op. cit., p.221), and the context of Procopius.Google Scholar

page 46 note 8 So Basch, L. (‘Ancient Wrecks and the Archaeology of Ships’’, IJNA 1 (1972), 45 ff.)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and J. S. Morrison (in Greenhill, , op. cit., pp.165 ff.).Google Scholar

page 46 note 9 Basically there are two ways of building a plank-boat. Either one constructs a plank shell and then fits in such bracing as is necessary or one constructs a skeleton of frames and the planks are then fitted around that. In the first case the frames are said to be ‘passive’’, in the second ‘active’’. However, intermediate stages do occur where one or more ‘active’’ frames are used together with ‘passive’’ frames. As far as I know, neither skeleton-building nor the occasional use of ‘active’’ frames has been identified in the Mediterranean World before the fourteenth century A.D. (Casson, , op. cit., pp.202 ff.Google Scholar, and Christensen, A., ‘Lucien Basch: Ancient Wrecks and the Archaeology of Ships: a Comment’’. IJNA 2 (1973), 137 ff.).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 47 note 1 The complex relationship between etymology and semantic evolution suggests the advisability of extreme caution in using this method (cf. the development of the English ‘tack’’ and ‘truck/truckle’’).

page 47 note 2 Clarke, , op. cit., p.50. He further remarks ‘To caulk a hull as we do it, the boat must be on land and attacked from the outside, but in the case of the naggr the traveller remedies the leak as he travels along, which indeed I have assisted in doing!’’Google Scholar

page 48 note 1 Aristophanes, , Wasps 127–8.Google Scholar

page 48 note 2 Lloyd, , Herodotus, Book II. Introduction (Leiden, 1975), pp.149 ff.Google Scholar

page 48 note 3 Cf. Boreux, C., Études de nautique égyptienne (MIFAO 50) (Cairo, 1925) p.289.Google Scholar

page 48 note 4 Op. cit., pp.290 ff.Google Scholar

page 48 note 5 It should be observed that Herodotus is talking about the structure of the boat at the time of building. After long use shell-built boats often weaken and it is perfectly possible that in Egypt, as elsewhere, they eventually needed strengthening by the insertion of ribs (cf. Casson, , op. cit., p.202).Google Scholar