Note 160 — Chapter III

The Acantha is a species of Mimosa, or Acacia, still common in Egypt, and the origin of our “gum Arabic,” perhaps the same as the Shittim wood of Exodus. The present boats are built of it. The Egyptians exported “fine linen” for sail-cloths to Phœnicia (Ezek. xxvii. 7). Hempen (Herod. vii. 25) and palm ropes (not papyrus) were used for the tackle. The process of making them may be seen on the tombs at Beni-Hassan and Thebes, and specimens of them have been often found. The modern boatmen place a stone aft to keep the boat’s head to the stream. Col. Chesney (ii., p. 640) found the Arabs using a bundle of hurdles and a stone for the kufahs on the Euphrates, exactly as described by Herodotus. Baris occurs in Æschylus, technically, as an Egyptian boat (Suppl. 815 and 858); see also Plutarch, Isis, c. 18; Iamblichus De Myst. 5, 6. All their larger, and even their market boats, had cabins. Wilkinson adds that there is as much difference now as of old in the size of the boats; and that there are some (which can only navigate the Nile during the inundation) which are rated as high as twenty-four thousand bushels of corn. The war vessels of the eighteenth and nineteenth Dynasties had a single row of twenty to fifty oars, like the Greek penteconters.