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Related: About this forumNile shipwreck discovery proves Herodotus right - after 2,469 years
Greek historians description of baris vessel vindicated by archaeologists at sunken city of Thonis-Heraclion
Dalya Alberge
Sun 17 Mar 2019 04.30 EDT Last modified on Tue 19 Mar 2019 08.53 EDT
In the fifth century BC, the Greek historian Herodotus visited Egypt and wrote of unusual river boats on the Nile. Twenty-three lines of his Historia, the ancient worlds first great narrative history, are devoted to the intricate description of the construction of a baris.
For centuries, scholars have argued over his account because there was no archaeological evidence that such ships ever existed. Now there is. A fabulously preserved wreck in the waters around the sunken port city of Thonis-Heracleion has revealed just how accurate the historian was.
It wasnt until we discovered this wreck that we realised Herodotus was right, said Dr Damian Robinson, director of Oxford Universitys centre for maritime archaeology, which is publishing the excavations findings. What Herodotus described was what we were looking at.
In 450 BC Herodotus witnessed the construction of a baris. He noted how the builders cut planks two cubits long [around 100cm] and arrange them like bricks. He added: On the strong and long tenons [pieces of wood] they insert two-cubit planks. When they have built their ship in this way, they stretch beams over them They obturate the seams from within with papyrus. There is one rudder, passing through a hole in the keel. The mast is of acacia and the sails of papyrus...
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/mar/17/nile-shipwreck-herodotus-archaeologists-thonis-heraclion
UpInArms
(51,289 posts)Thank you
eppur_se_muova
(36,314 posts)so they built their ships up from smaller pieces of wood this way, or wove them from reeds. Note the mast of acacia, almost the only wood available in a dry, largely desert environment.
Once they got access to the Cedars of Lebanon, they sort of overharvested.
Nitram
(22,945 posts)Collimator
(1,639 posts)There is a charming description of Alexander the Great's troops' response to their first sight of cotton plants in a book that I own. According to the excerpt in The Encyclopedia of Fabrics ,they thought that they were looking at tiny little lambs curled up atop the cotton plant stalks.
If the boat in question was constructed before the era of Alexander the Great's conquests, it is unlikely that cotton was available in Egypt. Wool would have been a common fabric and can be woven in lighter, "Summer" weights. Finely woven linen is the likely source of the fabrics depicted in the iconography of the time.
Nitram
(22,945 posts)Papyrus must make for a rather stiff sail...
Karadeniz
(22,600 posts)burrowowl
(17,654 posts)Renaissance mines couldn't go as deep as described by Agricola, but they did!