Abstract

This passage from the most important of all our textual sources on Ancient-Egyptian shipbuilding has been discussed by me in my newly published Commentary. There I followed the traditional view whereby is translated as ‘thwarts’’, is taken to describe thwarts passing from one gunwale to the other in such a way that each end was placed ‘on top of the gunwale, and the sentence is understood to refer to caulking with papyrus. J. S. Morrison has in recent years on several occasions offered a radically different translation under the influence of the Fourth-Dynasty boats interred beside the Great Pyramid of Gîza . His criticism of the old rendering seizes upon three points