The Solar Boat

Unlike more astute travelers, like my son, who have had the wisdom to describe and interpret their experiences while they retained some degree of immediacy, this nascent blogger, in telling this tale, must summon from the fog of forgetfulness events no less than eighteen months past and as distant as the Great Pyramids seen from 30,000 feet. Thus, your chronicler is compelled to resort to practices often employed by other putative memoirists: studied embellishment (translation: outright lying) and a bit of research (translation: borderline plagiarism).

You see, I wasn't blogging when my wife and I journeyed to Egypt in February 2006 under the auspices of Washington and Lee University, never envisioned any future blogging, and felt no urgency to memorialize the details of this trip for myself or posterity--other than to compose five pages of rhyming couplets--more a half-hearted stab at humor than serious history--which I abandoned in frustration when I got two days behind, and to scratch out some barely legible notes for future reference, a well-intentioned but futile exercise, as the purported epic remained untouched upon my return home.

Looking back at my pseudo-artistry for the first time in, literally, eighteen months, I realize that, as I thought at the time, it's not as good as I wanted it to be, but it's better than I gave myself credit for when I declined to read it at our tour group's farewell dinner in spite of the entreaties of my friend Martha Goodman. And it's probably fortuitous that I quit writing when I did; not only was the subject matter becoming repetitive--one pharoah, tomb, monument, and temple after another--but so were the rhymes.

What I do regret about that trip was not preparing myself better. I hardly imagined the scope of our sight-seeing nor the surfeit of information with which we would be inundated. I remembered nothing of Ancient Egypt from my high school or college studies--where it lay buried among other great civilizations that had risen and fallen--and I stubbornly refused to read our itinerary or peruse the 346-page Discovery Channel Travel Guide provided by Washington and Lee. I deserved to be overwhelmed, and I was.

From our first morning visit to the Cairo Museum, which houses the world's largest collection of Egyptian artifacts (no surprise there), including the treasures of Tutankhamen and the mummies of the mightiest pharoahs, through our midweek tours of the Valley of the Kings and the magnificent temples of Karnak and Abu Simbel, to our last day spent at the massive Pyramids of Giza, which we had first glimpsed in their towering grandeur from the patio of our room at the historic Mena House Hotel the evening before, we were awed by the marvels of antiquity, the amazing constructs of a civilization lacking electrical energy, the intellectual development of a society 4000 years old, and the restorative and preservative powers of modern archaeology. In addition, we were fortunate to enjoy the sevices of a handsome, charming, and brilliant Egyptologist, Tariq El Shabiki, whose knowledge of all things Egyptian--whether Ancient, Middle-Aged, Victorian, or Contemporary--and many things American--particularly music--seemed unlimited.

Some time during that last day, sandwiched between a camel ride (My wife Maggie took two, the first unscheduled, when she was lured aboard by an entrepreneurial driver.) and a viewing of Pharoah Khufu's mortuary temple, we were ushered into a non-descript--but air-conditioned--building in the shadow of his Great Pyramid. Tariq proceeded to explain that we were inside a museum, a boat museum, to be exact, and to point out various artifacts and photographs relating to one particular boat, deemed the Solar Boat. The photographs depicted the discovery and excavation of the boat in 1954 by Kamal el-Mallekh, one of five actually buried in the tomb and one of two unearthed intact.

According to Tariq, in an early case of faulty engineering, upon its completion in 2500 B.C., the boat was found to be too large for the pit which had been built to house it. Consequently, the builders had to break it down or, in Tariq's words, "fold the boat in two," in order to make it fit the burial space.

Among the materials on display were samples of the wood and rope used in construction, cedar wood imported from Lebanon, Egypt's first colony, and rope woven from the fiber of the palm tree. Apparently, panels of wood were tied together with the rope and sealed to make the vessel watertight.

In his inimitable style and polished accent, Tariq gave us an extensive lesson in the boat's mythology. Although some Egyptologists have speculated that the boat was a funerary barge which transported the king's embalmed body from Memphis to Giza, or a pilgrimmage ship in which Khufu himself visited holy places, and buried with him for his use in the afterlife, Tariq subscribed to the theory that it was a solar barge, designed to carry the resurrected Pharoah, with all the possessions and necessities of his second life, across the sky following his father, the sun god Ra. (Wikapedia)

Tariq continued by describing how the archaeologist Mallekh, after his discovery, completely dismantled the boat into 1224 individual pieces in the pit, removed them, and painstakingly reconstructed them over a period of seven years--recreating the original 43-meter vessel. At this point, Tariq held out his hands, palms up, paused, and dramatically raised them and his head skyward, simultaneously exclaiming: "And there it is!"

I looked up, and my jaw dropped in astonishment. For truly, there it was, a glorious window into the past, a 4500-year-old wooden boat, appearing as seaworthy as any afloat today and proving that boats, at least at first glance, haven't changed that much in 45 centuries. The perfectly formed hull curved up fore and aft like a giant ram's horn. A chamber for the Pharoah and his courtiers was anchored firmly to the upper deck, while spindly oars protruded from the superstructure like antennae from an insect. Ramps and walkways enabled observers to examine all aspects of the boat, and, upon closer inspection, my amazement intensified.

More than the Great Pyramids, or the elaborate crypts, or the priceless treasures, or the intricate hieroglyphics, this solar boat symbolized and encapsulated in one striking revelation the realities of that ancient civilization. It seemed that our entire week of immersion had been pointing to this moment. The majesty and power--the megalomania--of the Pharoahs, the peculiarities and the totality of the religious mythology, the mundane activities of daily life, the crude technological sophistication of these master builders, the reach of the Empire, archaeology as the foundation of our understanding of antiquity--all seemed to sail aboard that solar boat.

Or fly, rather, traversing the heavens like the sun god it chases, an unusual image of Ancient Egypt, to be sure, but one that persists in my consciousness and which, as I reflect on it and its meaning for me, illuminates others more dimly perceived--not enough for me to resume my poetry, but enough to animate memories of a fabulous place. If you ever have the opportunity, go there.