The River Nile has always been important to Egypt. It provides water to irrigate the land for crops, for drinking, washing, catching fish, and building. But most of all it provides a means of transportation, and has done so for thousands of years. Until the advent of rail and motor vehicles, there was only one way to travel: by boat.
For much of the year, the wind blows from north to south, such that a craft under sail could travel from the Mediterranean via the Delta to the First Cataract at Aswan, returning with the current and sails taken down. This fact is even embedded into the written hieroglyphs and included in the phrase ‘travel north’ as hieroglyph P1, boat with sails down, or ‘travel south’ as P2, boat under sail (Gardiner notations).
Many tombs had model boats left with the deceased for their use, or even real examples. Tomb walls carried pictures of gods in boats, or ordinary people going about their daily river activities. Boats were used to carry gods during festival celebrations. They carried images of the dead from the East Bank to the Land of the Dead on the western shores, and they bore the gods in their journey across the heavens for the 12 hours of the night.
