THE oldest known remains of seafaring ships have been identified in a series of cave stores on the Red Sea coast of Egypt. Built of cedar and acacia wood, the ships had been attacked by marine worms, and the site seems to have been a shipbreaker’s yard dating to the middle of the second millennium BC.

The discovery, at Wadi Gawasis near the modern port of Safaga, also yielded boxes which give vital clues on Egyptian contact with the mysterious kingdom of Punt (The Times, January 31). The ship timbers there suggest that parts of pharaonic seagoing vessels were fabricated in the Nile Valley and transported overland for assembly on the coast, according to Cheryl Ward of Florida State University.

River vessels for use on the Nile have long been known, including the ceremonial boats from the Great Pyramid at Giza, dating to around 2,500BC, and four others of the reign of Senwosret III from Dashur not far to the south.

“The presence of extensive damage to planks and fastenings by the shipworm or marine borer provides irrefutable evidence of seafaring,” Dr Ward said. “Most of the timbers were in contexts that indicate their reuse in ramps and walkways, and many were significantly reworked.”

Some of the timbers were marked in red paint, applied, Ward believes, during “an aggressive careening and rotremoval process” that has yielded thousands of timber fragments. One of the caves also yielded neatly arranged coils of rope, used for rigging and “left for the next expedition, one that never came”, she said.

The rope bundles each contain at least 20m (65ft) of rope and perhaps half as much again. They have not been touched for some 3,500 years and need urgent conservation, Ward said. “The rope, probably made from half grass, looks stable, but thousands of tiny fragments around each bundle show internal decay: the extreme dryness promotes brittleness.”

The timbers include planks from the hull, marked by the presence of gribble (shipworm damage), and mortise-andtenon joints. Some planks had marks which may have been to facilitate assembly, which Ward said is “logical in considering how ships built at a Nile shipyard could be easily reassembled on the Red Sea shore”. The Great Pyramid boats of the Pharaoh Khufu (Cheops) had similar shipwrights’ marks.

The blades of two steering oars and a stanchion were also found. Overall, Ward said, “the technology and dimensions of hull components are consistent with what might be expected of seagoing ships in the Middle Kingdom” — similar to the Nile boats, but sturdier.

The primary activity outside the caves was shipbreaking, while inside there is evidence of damaged wood being removed from planks before their reuse. “It is likely that once ships returned from their voyage, they were examined by shipwrights who marked unsatisfactory timbers with red paint. Workers then began to remove planks from the hulls by prying seams apart and sawing or chiselling through the tenons,” Ward said.

The Wadi Gawasis finds add to “our understanding not only of the role of shipbuilding technology, but of the vast administrative and bureaucratic nature of Middle Kingdom contacts with the world beyond Egypt’s borders”.

• For the past century and a half, visitors to Pompeii have had to trek into Naples to see one of the Roman city’s most famous relics: since 1843 the Alexander Mosaic has hung on the walls of the National Museum there. Now a full-sized replica has been installed in the House of the Faun, where the mosaic was discovered, recreating the sumptuous impression once experienced by guests at one of Pompeii’s richest villas.

  “I want visitors to have the impression they are entering the same luxurious house in which the ancient Pompeian owners lived before it was destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD79,” Pietro Giovanni Guzzo, superintendent of Pompeii, says in Archaeology.

  The mosaic, 5.5m (18ft) by 2.75m, was recognised as a masterpiece as soon as it was uncovered in 1831: Goethe admired it, and the German scholar Ludwig Curtius called it “the most royal picture in the world”. It depicts the bare headed and wild-eyed Alexander the Great on his horse, Bucephalus, facing the Persian ruler Darius in battle as the latter swings his chariot round to flee. Darius has his right arm extended towards Alexander in an unfathomable gesture as the two men ’s eyes meet across the mêleé of fallen men and horses.

  The event in question has been disputed, some favouring the Battle of Issus on the Turkish coast in 333BC, others the decisive conflict at Gaugamela near Mosul in Iraq two years later. But the virtuosity of its portrayal is undoubted; more than two million tiny stone tesserae have been employed in making the replica.

  The work was carried out by a team of eight from the International Centre for the Study and Teaching of Mosaic (CISIM) in Ravenna, under the direction of Severo Bignami. While the original coloured marbles came from across the Roman Empire, notably from Egypt, Bignami’s team were able to find equivalent or similar tones in local stone.

  A full-size photograph of the original was traced on to tissue paper, which was impressed into soft clay in moulds to create “a kind of tattoo of the outlines of the mosaic”, the report says. The moulds were divided into 44 sections for ease of handling; the tesserae were inserted into the clay, kept damp by water sprays, and when each section was complete it was covered with a layer of gauze and glue to hold it together and rolled up.

  The sections were then assembled on a permanent concrete base and installed in the House of the Faun after 16,000 hours’ work and at a cost of about £125,000.

  Archaeology Vol. 59 No. 1: 36-40