Humbler craft: Rafts of the Egyptian Nile, 17th-20th Centuries AD

Abstract

Written accounts and images created by foreign travellers on the Egyptian Nile over the past four centuries indicate the widespread use of rafts and floats for both local and long-distance Nile travel. Many of the materials employed are poor survivors in archaeological deposits, or are otherwise easily overlooked as components of river-craft: moreover, several of these raft types were built for a single season or journey, then dismantled. Well preserved wooden boats belonging to the pharaonic élite have commanded the attention of maritime archaeologists of the Nile. But these traveller accounts alert us to a class of vessels not yet recognized in archaeological deposits, and which point to a humbler quotidian experience of Nile navigation than the royal ships of antiquity.