TAA i.3.1.18

                                   MODELS OF BOATS/<Boat-Models> FOUND IN THE TOMB

                                                                      OF TUTANKHAMEN.

          Previous to the discovery of the Tutankhamen tomb, 

the available information as to the types of boats in use 

in Egypt during the XVIII Dynasty consisted, almost entirely, 

of pictorial representations, in two dimensions only. Con-

sequently the discovery of thirty-five models of boats, 

eighteen in the Treasury and seventeen in the Annex, has 

thrown much light on the types of boats then in use. For 

the representation of boats has always presented considerable 

difficulties to the draughtsman and painter, which/<while> the 

Egyptian method of depicting them in exact profile makes it 

particularly difficult to appreciate their very considerable 

widths and their well-rounded form.

          The models are all of the class technically known as 

block-models, that is, they are carved out of a single block 

of wood, or of several blocks of wood joined together, but 

are not built up out of a number of small planks and beams as 

were the boats which they represent. As a result, although they 

produce with considerable accuracy the external shape of the 

actual boats, they give no information – except in one particular 

instance, to be mentioned later – as to the details of con-

struction and the methods by which the boats were built. <All, however, represent 
                  carvel-built vessels – with planks 
                  set edge to edge, & not overlapping – as have always been the great majority 
                  of Mediterranean craft, even to the present day.>

Viewed from the standpoint of design, the models fall 

into two very distinct classes, those which represent/<illustrate> the 

boats which were in actual daily use on the Nile at that period 

and those which represent boats with a religious or ceremonial 

significance.

          In the latter class the decorations are archaic and 

there is much that has survived from the primitive papyrus 

canoe <and its immediate successors>, just as our own state-coaches, state barges and royal