Travelling Boat being Rowed
A 4,000-year-old wooden boat model with rowers, a cabin and a lowered mast: a boat for the afterlife journey from the tomb of Meketre. Full commentary ↓
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Travelling Boat being Rowed is a textile by an unknown maker (ca. 1981–1975 B.C.) in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. It measures l. 117 cm (46 1/16 in).
In the pictureOn a long wooden boat painted yellow, a dozen or so rowers sit in two rows pulling their oars. In the middle is a cabin with a white awning, and a mast lies flat on top of it. Standing figures are at the bow and the stern, and the large oar at the back serves as a rudder. The figures have reddish-brown skin and wear white kilts.
BackgroundThis boat comes from the tomb of Meketre, a high official at Thebes, around the 20th century B.C. In 1920 an excavation team from the Metropolitan Museum of Art found twenty-four wooden models in a hidden chamber of the tomb: boats, a garden, a bakery, a slaughterhouse, a weaving workshop and more, an entire household shrunk down for the dead man to use in the afterlife. A boat with its sail lowered and its oars out shows travel downstream on the Nile, that is, northward.
Puzzle tipThe photograph is wide, so the pieces come out wide and short. The yellow hull, the white cabin and the red steering oar separate clearly by color and are easy to gather, and the gray background is filled in last. The small faces of the rowers and the angles of the oars are clues to position.
- Period
- Middle Kingdom
- Dynasty
- Dynasty 12
- Medium
- Wood, paint, plaster, linen twine and cloth
- Dimensions
- l. 117 cm (46 1/16 in)
- Credit line
- Rogers Fund and Edward S. Harkness Gift, 1920
Source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art ↗
In these collections: Sea and Waterside Masterpiece Puzzles
Stories about this work
- An Afterlife Fleet in Five Pieces from a Hidden Chamber in Meketre's Tomb
In 1920, excavators opened a hidden chamber in a 4,000-year-old tomb and found model boats with their colors intact. Five pieces from Meketre's afterlife fleet.
