In Egyptian desert, a surprising nautical find
Archaeologists generally downplay the Indiana Jones side of their discipline, full of derring-do and unexpected discoveries. But every once in a while, an amazing find surprises even the most experienced researchers. And that's just what happened two years ago when Boston University's Kathryn Bard reached into a hole in the sand at the edge of the Egyptian desert and found the first of six caves. Her research team of Italians and Americans now knows those caves hold the most ancient ship stores ever discovered, perfectly preserved timbers, ropes and other fittings perhaps 4000 years old.
"It's incredible, basically a mothballed military base where the people packed up and left," says marine archaeologist Cheryl Ward of Florida State University in Tallahassee, a member of the research team. A sand-covered bluff along the Red Sea — called Wadi Gawasis or "Wadi of the Spies" — was a lagoon during ancient Egypt's Middle Kingdom era. From there, the pharaoh's servants launched expeditions, perhaps five or six ships every few hundred years, to the fabled land of Punt somewhere in the southern Red Sea in a bid to return with ebony, ivory and rare spices, such as Frankincense, treasured by the priestly caste of the day.
Archaeologists suspected the site was used by the Egyptians for centuries, from perhaps 2600 B.C. to 1500 B.C., but the extent of the expedition's organization, and left-behind materials, has continued to surprise the researchers. Cedar timbers used to build ships were cut and aged in Lebanon, shipped to Egypt, built into boats on the Nile, disassembled and trekked on donkeys across the desert for 10 days and reassembled at Wadi Gawasis. After the three-month journey to Punt and back, the cargo was trekked across the desert and the ships were disassembled, repaired and returned to the Nile, Bard says. Inside the six man-made caves, and there may be more, the researchers found left-behind piles of rope, some as thick as your waist, sealed for the rigging of ships on the next expedition. As many as 3,700 men may have taken part in a typical expedition, judging from description of one such effort left on the tomb of Queen Hatshepsut.
"This was all done for the pharaoh," Bard says. A typical expedition would involve about five boats, each 45 to 70 feet long. The trip allowed Egypt to circumvent southern neighbors who controlled trade with Punt, which may have been a trading crossroads in both modern-day Ethiopia and Yemen. Successful expeditions carried tremendous propaganda value for rulers, such as King Amenemhat III, whose 1,800 B.C. stone inscriptions on the site recount two trips he commissioned.
Left behind at the site were timbers, some with numbers still on them that served as a "paint by number" guide to ship assembly, Ward says. The planks indicate that the ships were scaled-up versions of Nile river boats, lacking a keel but held together by mortise and tenon joints (slats fitted into slots in planks) between 10-foot planks. "This is already a different picture of what many people thought Egyptian ships were like," Ward adds.
Finding an industrial site, one where everyday Egyptians worked, rather than a ceremonial one, is unusual enough, Ward says. But finding a site with working materials still intact, untouched after perhaps 4000 years is "unique, absolutely unprecedented" she says. "It looks like a ship's chandlery [nautical shop] where you would go in today and buy rope." Wadi Gawasis holds the oldest seagoing ship parts ever found. And what is remarkable is the standardization across centuries that must have marked Egyptian ship-building that allowed sailors to re-use materials for expeditions decades apart, Ward says.
Bard and her Italian colleagues from the University of Naples, and the Egyptian antiquities authorities next plan ground-penetrating radar studies of the site to determine the full extent of the site, located in a desolate region close to only a few Red Sea resorts. Once a simple dig site, Wadi Gawasis now requires all sort of specialists, everything from tree experts to rope-makers, to examine the artifacts found there. "I think we are going to be there a long time," Bard says.
Each week, USA TODAY's Dan Vergano combs scholarly journals to present the Science Snapshot, a brief summary of some of the latest findings in scienctific research. For past articles, visit this index page.
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