Note 13 — Chapter III · Ancient Mariners and Explorers

At what period India was first reached is uncertain. When Solomon imported peacocks from that country (the land of the peacock), the sea route was already well known. It is significant to find that all round the coast, from the Red Sea to India, Ceylon, and Burma, the Egyptian types of vessels have been in use from the earliest seafaring periods. The Burmese junks on the Irawadi resemble closely, as has been indicated, the Nile boats of the ancient Egyptians.13 The Chinese junks were developed from Egyptian models. More antique Egyptian boats than are found on the Chinese coast are still being used by the Koryak tribe who dwell around the sea of Okhotsk. Mr. Chatterton says that the Koryak craft have “important similarities to the Egyptian ships of the Fourth and Fifth Dynasties (c. 3000–2500 B.C.). Thus, besides copying the ancients in steering with an oar, the fore-end of the prow of their sailing boats terminates in a fork through which the harpoon-line is passed, the fork being sometimes carved with a human face which they believe will serve as a protector of the boat. Instead of rowlocks they have, like the early Egyptians, thong-loops through which the oar or paddle is inserted. Their sail, too, is a rectangular shape of dressed reindeer skins sewed together. But it is their mast that is especially like the Egyptians and Burmese.” This mast is made of three poles “set up in the manner of a tripod”. The double mast was common in ancient Egypt, but Mr. Chatterton notes that Mr. Villiers Stuart “found on the walls of a tomb belonging to the Sixth Dynasty (c. 2400 B.C.) at Gebel Abu Faida, the painting of a boat with a treble mast made of three spars arranged like the edges of a triangular pyramid”.14 Thus we find that vessels of Egyptian type (adopted by various peoples) not only reached China but went a considerable distance beyond it. Japanese vessels still display Egyptian characteristics. In the Moluccas and Malays the ancient three-limbed mast has not yet gone out of fashion. Polynesian craft were likewise developed from Egyptian models. William Ellis, the missionary,15 noted “the peculiar and almost classical shape of the large Tahitian canoes”, with “elevated prow and stern”, and tells that a fleet of them reminded him of representations of “the ships in which the Argonauts sailed, or the vessels that conveyed the heroes of Homer to the siege of Troy”.