rs, pilots, and passengers. Such were the vessels for
cruising or pleasure; the merchant ships resembled them, but they were
of heavier build, of greater tonnage, and had a higher freeboard. They
had no hold; the merchandise had to remain piled up on deck, leaving
only just enough room for the working of the vessel. They nevertheless
succeeded in making lengthy voyages, and in transporting troops into the
enemy's territory from the mouths of the Nile to the southern coast of
Syria. Inveterate prejudice alone could prevent us from admitting that
the Egyptians of the Memphite period went to the ports of Asia and to
the Haui-nibu by sea. Some, at all events, of the wood required for
building* and for joiner's work of a civil or funereal character, such
as pine, cypress or cedar, was brought from the forests of Lebanon or
those of Amanus.

* Cedar-wood must have been continually imported into Egypt.
It is mentioned in the Pyramid texts; in the tomb of Ti, and
in the other tombs of Saqqara or Gizeh, workmen are
represented making furniture of it. Chips of wood from the
coffins of the VIth dynasty, detached in ancient times and
found in several mastabas at Saqqara, have been pronounced
to be, some cedar of Lebanon, others a species of pine which
still grows in Cilicia and in the north of Syria.

[Illustration: 219.jpg PASSENGER VESSEL UNDER SAIL]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Emil Brugsch-
Bey; the picture is taken from one of the walls of the tomb
of Api, discovered at Saqqara, and now preserved in the
Gizeh Museum (VIth dynasty). The man standing at the bow is
the fore-pilot, whose duty it is to take soundings of the
channel, and to indicate the direction of the vessel to the
pilot aft, who works the rudder-oars.

Beads of amber are still found near Abydos in the tombs of the oldest
necropolis, and we may well ask how many hands they had passed through
before reaching the banks of the Nile from the shores of the Baltic.*
The tin used to alloy copper for making bronze,** and perhaps bronze
itself, entered doubtless by the same route as the amber.

* I have picked up in the tombs of the VIth dynasty at Kom-
es-Sultan, and in the part of the necropolis of Abydos
containing the tombs of the XIth and XIIth dynasties, a
number of amber beads, most of which were very small.
Mariette, who had found some on the s