and fields, and on long journeys outside Egypt. The big landowners kept them by the hundred. Around 2250 BC an expedition leader, Harkhuf, based at Aswan, recorded his return from a trading mission to Nubia. With him were 300 donkeys laden with exotic goods.
The stubbornness of donkeys was as evident to ancient Egyptians as it is to us today. To express what they saw as the donkey’s malign character, Egyptians associated the donkey with the god Seth and sometimes wrote the word with the special determinative of Seth,( a’a, perhaps in imitation of a donkey’s bray).
Donkeys were equally at home in Palestine, and a surviving Egyptian picture shows a tribal leader riding one. For a time in the late Middle Kingdom and in the subsequent century when northern Egypt was ruled by Palestinian kings called the Hyksos (see no. 2, “Desert”), Palestinian families made their homes in the eastern delta. Beside their tombs they cut separate pits for the burial of donkeys and also sheep, a custom they had brought with them. It is probable that the animals were sacrificed at the time of burial.
42.
CHARIOT
The earliest evidence of the wheel in Egypt is found in pictures of siege warfare in the 6th Dynasty and 1st Intermediate Period (c. 2300/2050 BC), where wheels are seen fixed to the bottom of a scaling ladder or a siege tower. Evidence of the wheel is so rare that we do not even know what word ancient Egyptians used for “wheel” prior to the New Kingdom. We cannot judge, therefore, how widespread wheeled transport was. In the New Kingdom, when the evidence increases a little, both spoked and solid wheels appear in pictures and models of four- and six-wheeled wagons, the former sometimes used to bear coffins. It was presumably on vehicles of this kind that King Tuthmosis III transported his fleet of riverboats across Syria for a campaign on the river Euphrates against the kingdom of Mitanni, a remarkable feat only briefly mentioned in his annals.
By the beginning of the New Kingdom the Egyptians had adopted the two-wheeled chariot from their Near Eastern neighbors, whose better equipped armies the Egyptians now faced up to more determinedly than before. They needed two horses, one on either side of a central pole, and to maintain stability over rough ground, they had their lightly built wheels widely set on a long axle. The chariot became the key instrument of warfare and symbolized the vigor and bravery of the king (and his courtiers) both in hunting and in warfare.
To possess a chariot was to join a social elite. The upkeep of horses and chariots needed specialist support. Their introduction and use gave rise to a whole new professional group, the “stable masters,” a new technical vocabulary, and the development of skills needed to build and maintain the ancient equivalent of our racing car.
43.
BOAT, TRAVELING UPSTREAM
Ease of transport along the Nile encouraged Egypt to develop into an integrated society. Officials of the Pharaoh constantly traveled between the court and the provinces carrying detailed instructions and reports, controlling the country and its resources. Most people did not have to travel very far to catch a boat. Even today the edge of the floodplain in Upper Egypt is never more than 20 kilometers from the river, and in ancient times this would have been less, with many of the towns and cities close to the riverbank. In the delta the Nile conveniently divided into several branches (now reduced to two), which brought many cities on that broad flat plain within reach of water transport. Boats and barges carried farmers and kings, armies and scribes, the annual harvest, and giant loads of stone. The Colossi of Memnon, each one 18 meters high and made from a single block of a particularly dense stone, quartzite, must have been floated down to Thebes on immense barges from the quarries 200 kilometers to the south. Rich men owned many boats, for fishing, for pleasure,
The stubbornness of donkeys was as evident to ancient Egyptians as it is to us today. To express what they saw as the donkey’s malign character, Egyptians associated the donkey with the god Seth and sometimes wrote the word with the special determinative of Seth,( a’a, perhaps in imitation of a donkey’s bray).
Donkeys were equally at home in Palestine, and a surviving Egyptian picture shows a tribal leader riding one. For a time in the late Middle Kingdom and in the subsequent century when northern Egypt was ruled by Palestinian kings called the Hyksos (see no. 2, “Desert”), Palestinian families made their homes in the eastern delta. Beside their tombs they cut separate pits for the burial of donkeys and also sheep, a custom they had brought with them. It is probable that the animals were sacrificed at the time of burial.
42.
CHARIOT
The earliest evidence of the wheel in Egypt is found in pictures of siege warfare in the 6th Dynasty and 1st Intermediate Period (c. 2300/2050 BC), where wheels are seen fixed to the bottom of a scaling ladder or a siege tower. Evidence of the wheel is so rare that we do not even know what word ancient Egyptians used for “wheel” prior to the New Kingdom. We cannot judge, therefore, how widespread wheeled transport was. In the New Kingdom, when the evidence increases a little, both spoked and solid wheels appear in pictures and models of four- and six-wheeled wagons, the former sometimes used to bear coffins. It was presumably on vehicles of this kind that King Tuthmosis III transported his fleet of riverboats across Syria for a campaign on the river Euphrates against the kingdom of Mitanni, a remarkable feat only briefly mentioned in his annals.
By the beginning of the New Kingdom the Egyptians had adopted the two-wheeled chariot from their Near Eastern neighbors, whose better equipped armies the Egyptians now faced up to more determinedly than before. They needed two horses, one on either side of a central pole, and to maintain stability over rough ground, they had their lightly built wheels widely set on a long axle. The chariot became the key instrument of warfare and symbolized the vigor and bravery of the king (and his courtiers) both in hunting and in warfare.
To possess a chariot was to join a social elite. The upkeep of horses and chariots needed specialist support. Their introduction and use gave rise to a whole new professional group, the “stable masters,” a new technical vocabulary, and the development of skills needed to build and maintain the ancient equivalent of our racing car.
43.
BOAT, TRAVELING UPSTREAM
Ease of transport along the Nile encouraged Egypt to develop into an integrated society. Officials of the Pharaoh constantly traveled between the court and the provinces carrying detailed instructions and reports, controlling the country and its resources. Most people did not have to travel very far to catch a boat. Even today the edge of the floodplain in Upper Egypt is never more than 20 kilometers from the river, and in ancient times this would have been less, with many of the towns and cities close to the riverbank. In the delta the Nile conveniently divided into several branches (now reduced to two), which brought many cities on that broad flat plain within reach of water transport. Boats and barges carried farmers and kings, armies and scribes, the annual harvest, and giant loads of stone. The Colossi of Memnon, each one 18 meters high and made from a single block of a particularly dense stone, quartzite, must have been floated down to Thebes on immense barges from the quarries 200 kilometers to the south. Rich men owned many boats, for fishing, for pleasure,
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