Nile boat

The Nile River is a major resource for the people living along it, especially thousands of years ago. The El Salha Archaeological Project discovered an abundance of evidence of an ancient boat that traveled the Nile River dating back to 3,000 years ago. Pictographs and pebble carvings were uncovered, indicating a boat more advanced than a simple canoe. This evidence of a progressed Nile boat includes a steering system which may have been used in the Nile for fishing and transportation.

The earliest evidence for an ancient boat on the Nile is a rock art pictograph that dates to the Mesolithic. The El Salha Archaeological Project of the Italian Institute for African and Oriental Studies has been working in the central Sudan since the fall of 2000. The project's priority is the archeology of the Mesolithic and Neolithic cultures of this region of the Nile Valley. Of great interest to maritime archeology is an elongated burial mound on the west bank of the Nile, 25 km south of Omdurman. Beneath this Post-Meriotic burial and disturbed deposits was a compact, homogeneous layer of the Khartoum Mesolithic. Diagnostic gastropods were in this layer and radiocarbon dating delineates a time span of 7050 to 6820 BC.

An important artifact that speaks to the early history of boat design and ship building was found in the Khartoum Mesolithic layer. A recognizable outline of Nile boat had been cut into a granite pebble. This is the oldest known representation of a Nile boat, and the oldest depiction of a boat that is more advanced in design than a canoe. The dating of this pictograph pushes back the earliest evidence for Nile boats by 3,000 years.

Some detail and aspects of boat construction can be inferred from the image on the granite pebble, as first reported by D. Usai and S. Salvatori in December, 2007. The back half of the boat image is in the best state of preservation. A steering system and cabin are situated at the approximate center of the boat. A composite steering system can be discerned with a tiller placed at a greater than 45° angle with a long pole ending in an ovoid blade. Tiller and pole with blade are fixed to the top of a vertical yoke. Boat and steering system design resemble those painted on the walls of Badarian huts and pottery jars. There are similarities with some boats depicted in rock engravings in Nubia (Sudan); and those painted on walls and pottery in the Gerzan and Nagada cultures of Predynastic Egypt.

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