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Chapter 5. Conclusions
- Texas A&M University Press
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Sometime, probably during the late thirteenth or early twelfth century, a competent artisan in Egypt constructed a simple model of a ship. Wooden ship models are virtually unknown in Egypt during the New Kingdom apart from those found in royal XVIIIth-Dynasty tombs, and this model is remarkable for several other reasons as well. First, the ship represented in the model is easily identifiable as a galley type first used by Mycenaeans and was perhaps their invention. It had also been readily adopted and adapted by elements of the Sea Peoples, however, as we learn from a study of the Medinet Habu naval battle scene, a similar ship painted on a cremation urn at Hama in Syria, as well as other evidence. Second, the ship was meant to sit on a cart with wheels. The model is unique in the degree of detail that it supplies regarding the structural and polychromatic aspects of these Helladic galleys. As with all depictions of ships and boats, however, it is important to remember that this is a representation and not the ship itself and that there could be—and, more important, there are—differences between the copy and its prototype. The model maker may have been an Egyptian artisan commissioned to build it. Despite the foreign prototype ship with which he (I assume that the artisan was a male) dealt, the similarity of the rendering of the forecastle deck to royal XVIIIth-Dynasty wooden ship models is striking, and the exaggerated rockered form of the hull also speaks of a strong Egyptian influence. Unfortunately, we do not have a clear view of the wagon that supported the ship model: Only its four wheels survive. The most important aspect of the model from a ship-construction point of view is its three-dimensional confirmation of the stanchion system, which in an actual Helladic galley would have served to support the superstructure and centerline deck. This system of stanchions sets the Helladic galley apart from all other oared ship of its age, making it the prototype for all later developments of Greek warships. As the Sea Peoples brought this type of ship to the Levant, it also served as a starting point for later Phoenician galleys. W. M. F. Petrie reconstructed the model once with the stempost bird-head device facing outboard and once with it reversed and facing inboard, which is its present state, being glued solidly in place. The question of which of the two reconstructions is correct is grounded in the seeming enigma of how the Mycenaean galley tradition 202 Chapter 5 survived the Dark Ages. With the fall of the palace-based Mycenaean culture, Greece and the Aegean were largely depopulated. Moreover, while the Dark Ages appear to be shrinking chronologically, it is still difficult to explain how such complex knowledge could have continued under such limiting circumstances. The simplest explanation (Occam’s razor) for the continuation of the Mycenaean Greek galley tradition across the Dark Ages is that it survivedinCyprus ,whereanenergeticpalace-basedAchaean culture prospered during the Late Cypriot III and CyproGeometric periods. During the Submycenaean period Cyprus and Greece reestablished communication, and much of the subsequent momentum for Greece’s renewal, particularly at Athens, may be attributed to these contacts, which are credited both with the introduction there of iron and with a Cypriot influence on ceramics. The only evidence for the size of the Gurob model’s prototype galley is a row of black daubs on each side of the hull, which must represent oarports. Although most of these dots have been lost, the existent spacing makes a series of twenty-five-dot oarports per side reasonable, suggesting that it represents a pentekonter. Given an interscalmium of 1 meter per rower, the prototype galley would have required 25 meters to house the rowers and another few meters at bow and at stern, for a total length of about 30 meters. Although some have assumed that these oarsmen on Helladic galleys worked their oars against tholepins , we have in fact no evidence of tholepins on Mycenaean vessels. The Gurob ship model is also unique for its time in presenting a remarkable display of colors on a Helladic ship representation. Most ship depictions dating from the time about which Homer wrote, as well as the time when he is believed to have lived, are incapable of expressing color as they are, for the most part, monochromatic silhouettes. Only much later, with the appearance of ships on black-figure vases, do we...