Free The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World by Lincoln Paine Page A

Nile.
    Upper and Lower Egypt constituted distinct cultural regions and of thetowns noted above all but Memphis and Buto were located in the former. By about 3000 BCE , Upper Egypt appears to have been technologically superior, and the ruling elites at Hierakonpolis,Naqada, and Abydos showed the traits of divine kingship and centralized control that would characterize pharaonic rule in a united Egypt. Administrative authority was necessary to guarantee the stability of a society dependent entirely on the Nile for its existence. Although the river’s annual inundations followed predictable patterns and in normal times nourished farmers’ croplands, the flood was sometimes insufficient and stockpiling grain in times of plenty was a hedge against years of drought and famine. Communication within Egypt depended mostly on the river, too, in part because lands adjacent to the river were either underwater or otherwise impassable for several months each year. Likewise, crossing the innumerableirrigation canals radiating out from the Nile would have entailed the use of endless ferries or bridges. Not until the period of Roman rule in the first century BCE were substantial road-building projects undertaken.
    Below Elephantine the Nile is an almost ideal cradle of navigation. On its predictable, northward-flowing current, paddling or rowing toward the Mediterranean is easy. Although the gradient of the river between the First Cataract and the sea is only about 1:13,000—that is, it drops only one meter in every thirteen kilometers—paddling or rowing against the current was challenging, especially when the river was in flood between June and September. However, the prevailing wind is northerly, blowing from the Mediterranean against the current, so that voyagers returning upstream could do so with a following wind. This advantage was amplified after the invention of the sail, and it is hardly surprising that the Egyptian word “to sail” also means “to sail southwards, go upstream.” When it first occurred to Nile boatmen to harness the wind cannot be determined, but the oldest known picture of a sail anywhere in the world is found on a vase of the LateGerzean Culture at Naqada, dated to about 3300–3100 BCE .
    Shortly after this, early in the First Dynasty, the rulers of Upper Egypt moved their capital north to Memphis, which became known by the epithet “Balance of the Two Lands,” namely Upper and Lower Egypt. So the invention of the sail and the emergence of a unified Egyptian state seem to have been nearly contemporary events, and it is reasonable to speculate that the development of the sail gave the people of Upper Egypt a technological edge that enabled them to bring Lower Egypt within their political and economic sphere. Were this the case, it would not be the last time that nautical advantage had such decisive results. A centralized government requires above all a means of connecting the outer limits of its dominion to itself. Without the development ofriver craft capable of traveling back and forth reliably andeconomically, commerce between Upper and Lower Egypt would have been intermittent and probably limited to small quantities of high-value prestige goods, as was the case in the pre-dynastic period. The development of vessels that could head north on the current propelled by paddles (or oars, after about 3000 BCE ) and return south under sail removed a major barrier to unifying the Nile valley between the First Cataract and the Mediterranean. Adoption of the sail ensured ease of communication throughout the land, the mobility of government officials and military forces, and the movement of raw materials from agricultural produce to wood and stone, as well as manufactured goods. Reliable transportation, in turn, ensured the well-being of the people subject to the pharaoh’s rule—that is, everyone.

Ships and Shipbuilding
    The great diversity of Egyptian vessel types is evident from writings, renderings in tomb