Daily life of the Egyptians revolved around the Nile River. The Egyptians used boats for many reasons. Some of those reasons were for funerary occasions, naval troops, hunting and to travel, far and fast. Boats were the Egyptian’s fastest way of travel so if they needed to make trades with a far away country, they would use boats.
Boats were also used for spiritual purposes. Some boats were even buried in the Egyptians' tombs. The Egyptians believed that boats were the way that the good people travelled to the after life.
Boats and ships were very important means of transport on the River Nile. Egyptians travelled within the country and to the Sudan and to other African countries to bring back animals such as lions, elephants, leopards, baboons, and cattle. They also imported exotic products such as leather, gold, ivory, ebony, electrum, ostrich feathers, and incense. Electrum is a natural alloy of gold and silver.
Although the number of surviving boats is not great, ideas about the shapes and purposes of boats in ancient Egypt are based on the hundreds of model boats found in tombs around the country. The most famous of these are the model boats of MeketRa. Models of papyrus boats were made of painted wood, while real boats were made of wood and a few were built of papyrus stalks. Reed rafts were mainly used for hunting in the marshes with poles, nets, or boomerangs and for organized sports and competitions. Boats made of papyrus were connected with gods and royalty. They were used for either daily activities such as sailing for entertainment or for religious events such as transporting statues of the gods, pilgrimages, or ceremonies related to banishing evil spirits. Wooden boats were used to transport heavy cargo. King Snefru had a navy of 40 ships that were used to import cedar logs from Lebanon. The features and designs of ancient Egyptian boats varied according to their function and whether they needed to sail on the Nile or across the Mediterranean Sea or the Red Sea. Cult and ceremonial boats sailed on the Nile and the sacred lakes. Two huge boats of King Khufu have been found. One of them was discovered in its pit to the south of the Great Pyramid of Khufu, while the other still lies in its pit to the west of the first. Made of cedar wood, the 1224 parts of the boat have numerous holes for the eventual "stitching" with ropes of halfa grass.
Two other slightly smaller boats belonging to King Senusert III at Dahshur are now exhibited in the Egyptian Museum. Thirty-five wooden model boats of different types were found in the tomb of King Tutankhamun. Some have decorated cabins to shelter the king and his courtiers.
Also the most famous boat is Cheops boat .The Cheops Boat is one of the largest ancient boats found to date. The Viking boats, found in Europe, are not more than 30 meters, whereas the Cheops Boat is 43.40 meters long. The prow is formed in the shape of a papyrus bundle and the rudder consists of two massive oars. Five giant oars on either side were used to propel the boat. On deck, the main cabin contained two rooms, one being the captain's quarters. Evidence of reed mats was found as well as ropes which were used to bind the various parts of the boat together. No metal nails were used at all in its building.
The Cheops Boat was discovered in 1954 by Kamal al-Mallakh, then Antiquities Director of the Pyramids area. He found two rectangular pits cut into the rock on the south side of the Great Pyramid of Cheops, close to the base of the pyramid. Each pit was about 30 meters long and was covered with 41 large blocks of limestone weighing about 18 tons each. A layer of thick mortar covered the stone blocks and helped protect the contents of the pit against wet weather, insects, and robbers. The ancient Egyptians had placed the parts of the boat in systematic order in 13 layers making up the major parts and its total 1224 pieces, the largest being 23 meters long and the smallest, about 10 cm.
Through a study of solar religion and funeral rituals which were known in Egypt, it is possible to understand the explanation behind the idea of burying boats of this kind beside pyramids. It is believed that five boats were placed around each pyramid, like that of Cheops. Some believe the wooden ship was a "solar boat" intended to be used by the deceased pharaoh in his eternal life as he journeyed across the sky from east to west to be united with the solar god Ra. Another theory is that it was used as a funerary boat, to carry the body of the late pharaoh in his pilgrimage before burial in the pyramid.
Other kind of boats called the river barque used for transporting obelisks from quarries to the installation sites. These luggage barques were the Egyptians primary use of displacement craft with wooden hulls. The ship building experience gained from building these types of freighters for the transportation of large scale building materials could have easily been transposed to the technologies applied in the building of sea-going vessels.
Displacement craft of this type would have been used in the construction of the Pyramids. The need to transport large stones of up to 70 tons from remote quarries to the site of the pyramids would have required the Egyptians to have developed this technology when building the Pyramids. This means the technology and its application for building this type of ship was approximately 1000 years old by the time Queen Hatshepsut built her fleet.
Another indicator for this conclusion was the fact that SahuRa had built naval craft and sailed the high seas and had recorded his exploits at his Pyramid complex. Sahure may have been one of the ancestors Hatshepsut had made reference to in her temple. It is clear that naval had been a regular undertaking in Egyptian history but needed a current champion to undertake a remarkable expedition during this generation of Egyptians.
