EGYPTIAN SHIPS. 



55 



harbors ; while the advantages presented by the Nile for inter- 

 course and traffic with the interior precluded the necessity of 

 resorting to commerce by sea. Sesostris, who lived about 1650 

 years before Christ, is supposed to have been the first king who 

 overcame the dislike of the Egyptians to the water. Herodotus 

 assigns him a large fleet in the Red Sea, and other historians 

 attribute to him fleets upon the Mediterranean. Upon his death, 

 his subjects relapsed into their former aversion for commerce. 

 Bocchoris, 700 B.C., imitated and revived his legislation upon 

 the subject ; and during the reign of Psammeticus the ports of 

 Egypt were first opened to foreign ships, and intercourse with 

 the Greeks was for the first time encouraged. It was Necho, 

 the successor of Psammeticus, who employed, 600 B.C., the 

 Phoenicians in the voyage around Africa of which we have 

 spoken ; and this enterprise bespeaks a monarch bent on mari- 

 time discovery. Apries, the grandson of Necho, took the city 

 of Sidon by storm and defeated the Phoenicians in a sea-fight. It 

 is probable that the Egyptians, had they continued independent, 

 would have become distinguished as a commercial people; but 

 seventy years afterwards they were conquered by the Persians, 

 and became successively subject to the Macedonians and Romans. 



We possess but little knowledge of the construction and 

 equipment of the Egyptian ships. According to Herodotus, 

 they were built of planks of the thorn-tree, fastened together, 

 like tiles, with a great number of wooden pins, and were entirely 

 without ribs. On the inside papyrus was used for stopping 

 the crevices. The sails were made of the papyrus, or of twisted 

 rushes. These vessels were always towed up the Nile, while 

 they descended the stream in the following manner. The cur- 

 rent not acting with sufficient force upon their flat bottoms, the 

 sailors hung a bundle of tamarisk over the prow and let it down 

 under the keel by a rope : the stream, bearing upon this bundle, 

 carried the boat along with great celerity. 



The Jews, whose country was ill situated for commerce by 



