Egypt's ancient boat-builders

A The scenes carved into a wall of an Egyptian temple dating from the 15th century BC, tell of a remarkable sea voyage from a mysterious land known as Punt, or 'Land of God'. They show a fleet of ships bearing exotic cargo, navigating through high-crested waves on a journey. The exact meaning of these detailed carvings has divided Egyptologists ever since they were discovered in the mid-19th century. Some people have argued that Punt was not on the sea, or a fictitious place altogether, 'says Oxford University Egyptologist John Baines. However, a series of remarkable discoveries on a desolate stretch of Egypt's Red Sea coast has settled the debate. 'These finds remove all doubt that you reach Punt by sea. Baines says. The Egyptians must have had considerable seagoing experience.'

B The archaeologists behind these discoveries are Kathryn Bard of Boston University, USA, and Rodolfo Fattovich of Orientale University, Italy. From 2002 they spent several weeks each year examining a dried-up lagoon known in Egypt as Mersa Gawasis, and the coastal cliffs nearby They were searching for signs of a harbour that might have sheltered merchant ships like those depicted in the wall carvings. Finally, in December 2004, Bard was clearing what she thought was the back wall of a rock shelter when she put her hand through the sand into an open space, and uncovered a hemispherical cave about 5 metres across and 2 metres high. The cave's entrance was carved into an exact rectangle and was clearly not a natural formation. Inside, the archaeologists found shattered storage jars, broken boxes made from cedar planks, and five grinding stones. A pottery fragment inscribed with the name of Amenemhat III, a pharaoh who ruled Egypt around 1800 BC, helped the team pinpoint the cave's age.

C Not long afterwards, Bard and Fattovich came across a larger cave, reinforced with old wooden timbers and stone anchors, the first conclusive evidence of large-scale Egyptian seafaring ever discovered. Over the next few years, they uncovered the hidden remnants of an ancient boat-building and seafaring community. Many of the artefacts found were full of holes-the work of tiny marine animals known as shipworms. In addition to eight caves, Bard and Fattovich found remains of five mud-brick ramps that might have been used to ease ships into the water. One cave contained hundreds of metres of rope, expertly coiled and stacked.

D Material connecting Mersa Gawasis to Punt accumulated both inside and outside the caves. A few hundred metres from the cliffs lie piles of crumbled stone and conch shells -most probable the remains of altars. Among these are stones carved with inscriptions that specifically mention missions to Punt. As if that weren't enough, among the remnants found outside one cave were two planks marked with directions for assembling a ship. One of them bore an inscription still partly legible after 3, 800 years: Year 8 under his majesty the king of Upper and Lower Egypt......given life forever.... of wonderful things of Punt.'

E While the Mersa Gawasis artefacts have answered some questions, they have raised others. For instance, how did the expeditions to Punt actually work, and how did the Egyptians construct vessels that could make a round-trip voyage of over 3, 000 kilometres? Cheryl Ward, a maritime archaeologist at Coastal Carolina University in South Carolina, USA, has gone some way to answering these questions. She spent three years building a full-scale reconstruction of a ship that would have docked in the lagoon of Mersa Gawasis. Ward has determined that unlike modern vessels, the Egyptian ship was essentially one giant hull. The Egyptian ships were also unique in that they were held together with fittings that needed no metal fasteners, and could be taken apart and put back together again. From the very beginning, the Egyptians were building boats that could be disassembled, and that makes them different from anyone else, 'Ward says.

F For all the skill and craftsmanship evident in the Mersa Gawasis caves, ancient Egypt's ocean voyages were most likely an exception to the usual modes of trade, born out of a necessity to obtain precious materials, such as incense and aromatic resins. For most of Egypt's history these goods had moved along established routes across the eastern desert and through modern-day Sudan. But around the time Mersa Gawasis came into use, it seems a hostile new kingdom to the south cut Egypt off from its supply of exotic materials. "If they could have gone overland, it would have been much easier than bringing timbers from Lebanon, building ships on the upper Nile, taking them apart and carrying them across the desert Bard says. They weren't stupid-no one wants to do things the hard way. But geopolitically, they had no other choice'. Fattovich suggests that there were probably only 15 to 20 expeditions over some 400 years, about one every two decades. After that Mersa Gawasis fell out of use, probably because either there was no longer enough water in the lagoon to float ships, or overland links improved, or alternative sites were found. The last sailors to use the lagoon sealed up their equipment and shelters behind mud bricks and sand to await expeditions that never came.

Book Review: The Discovery of Slowness

A The English explorer and writer John Franklin (1786-1847) joined the Navy at the age of 14, and fought at the battle of Trafalgar. When peace came, he turned his attention to Arctic exploration, and in particular to solving the conundrum of the Northwest Passage, a mythical clear-water route through the ice which would, if it existed, link the Pacific Ocean on America's West Coast with the Atlantic on its East. The first expedition Franklin led to the Arctic was an arduous overland journey lasting from 1819 to 1822, in which he and his twenty-strong team covered 8880 kilometres on foot. Their expedition was a triumph of surveying - they managed to chart hundreds of kilometres of previously unknown coastline - but food ran out on their journey back to civilisation, and the men were forced to eat their belts and their boots (which they boiled up to make leather soup).

B There followed a career as a travel writer and public speaker ('the man who ate his boots' was Franklin's tag-line). Then in 1845, Franklin set off back to the Arctic with two ships - the Erebus and the Terror - and 129 men. Nothing was heard of them for 140 years, although more than 30 expeditions were dispatched in search of them. Eventually it was discovered that Franklin and all his team had perished after their ships were trapped in the ice.

C In his personal correspondence and published memoirs, Franklin comes across as a man dedicated to the external duties of war and exploration, who kept introspection and self-analysis to a minimum. His blandness makes him an amenably malleable subject for a novelist, and Sten Nadolny has taken full advantage of this in his book. Most important, Nadolny has endowed John Franklin with a defining trait for which there is no historical evidence: Langsamkeit ('slowness', or 'calmness').

D Slowness influences not only Franklin's behaviour, but also his vision, his thought and his speech. The opening scene of The Discovery of Slowness depicts Franklin as a young boy, failing to catch a ball because his reaction time is too slow. Despite the bullying of his peers, Franklin resolves not to fall into step with 'their way of doing things'. For Nadolny, Franklin's fascination with the Arctic stems from his desire to find an environment suited to his peculiar slowness. He describes Franklin as a boy dreaming of the 'time without hours and days' which exists in the far north, a place 'where nobody would find him too slow'.

E Ice is a slow mover. The compressed blue ice inside an Alpine crevasse will have fallen as snow several decades earlier. Polar pack ice takes at least two years to form. The film of crystals which first appears on the surface of the sea thickens into a silkily pliant layer called nilas; this in turn consolidates into young ice, which then deepens during several seasons to become pack. Ice demands a corresponding patience from those who venture onto it. The explorers who have thrived at high latitudes and at high altitudes haven't usually been men of great speed. They have tended instead to demonstrate unusual self-possession, a considerable capacity for boredom, and a talent for the uncomplaining endurance of suffering.

F These were all qualities which the historical Franklin possessed in abundance, and so as Nadolny's exaggeration of them isn't unreasonable. Even as an adult, Franklin's slowness of thought means that he is unable to speak fluently, so he learns by heart 'entire fleets of words and batteries of responses', and speaks a languid, bric-a-braces language. In the Navy, his method of thinking first and acting later initially provokes mockery from his fellow sailors. But Franklin persists in doing things his way, and gradually earns the respect of those around him. To a commodore who tells him to speed up his report of an engagement, he replies: 'When I tell something, sir, I use my own rhythm.' A lieutenant says approvingly of him: 'Because Franklin is so slow, he never loses time.'

G Nadolny also brings his central metaphor of slowness to bear on the novel's language. The chapters describing Franklin's early years are a medley of separate fragments, rhetorical questions, associative jumps and exclamation marks. In the later sections recounting Franklin's first Arctic expedition, Nadolny brilliantly sets the narrative pace to the rhythms of the frozen landscape, and to the 'slowness which is bred by hunger'.

H Since it was first published in Germany in 1983, The Discovery of Slowness has sold more than a million copies and been translated into 15 languages. It has been adopted as a manual and manifesto by European pressure groups and institutions representing causes as diverse as sustainable development, management science and motoring policy, even becoming involved in the debate about speed limits on German roads. The various groups that have taken the novel up have one thing in common: a dislike of the high-speed culture of Postmodernity. Nadolny's Franklin appeals to them because he is immune to 'the compulsion to be constantly occupied', and to the idea that 'someone was better if he could do the same thing fast'. It's easy to see where the attraction lies for those in management. The novel is crammed with quotations about time-efficiency, punctiliousness and profitability: 'What did too late mean? They hadn't waited for it long enough, that's what it meant.'