Although many boats on the Nile were conducting of-
fi cial government business, apparently there were other craft
operating for private profi t. Texts from the New Kingdom (ca.
1550–1070 c.e.) mention lump-sum payments given to cap-
tains of these vessels as freight fees, part of which were por-
tioned out among the crew at the captain’s discretion. Literary
sources regularly portray ferrymen as greedy and their fees as
exorbitant. Even the goddess Isis had to give the ferryman
Nemty a golden ring to see her son Horus in his competitions
with his uncle Seth. In the Book of the Dead ferrymen make
all sorts of excuses to the deceased about the unreadiness of
their boats to cross the celestial river, presumably to extort
higher pay. Th e New Kingdom writer Amenemope described
the character of the evil person in a telling comparison: “He
acts like the ferryman in knitting words: He goes forth and
comes back arguing.” Most of the mummies found in Egypt
from the Greco-Roman Period gripped golden coins in their
hands to pay the ferrymen in the hereaft er.
Th e primary mode of land travel throughout ancient
Egypt was by foot; even high government offi cials and armies
normally traveled that way, as a set of model fi gures from the
tomb of Mesheti at Assiut from the Eleventh Dynasty (ca.
2040–ca. 1991 b.c.e.) reveals. Art from temples and tombs
shows ancient Egyptians walking in funerals, in holy proces-
sions during festivals, and the like, in which the distance in-
volved was relatively short, but for many centuries there was
no alternative to walking for long land journeys as well.
Donkeys have been the principal beasts of burden in
Egypt from prehistory to the present. Art at Deir el-Medina
shows donkeys carrying water, wood, grain, straw, hay, dung,
and in one case an off ering to a goddess up steep paths from
the riverbank. No depictions survive from ancient Egypt of
people riding donkeys as their descendants do in modern-
day Egypt, although one scene preserved on an Old King-
dom (ca. 2575–2134 b.c.e.) tomb at Saqqara shows the tomb’s
owner supervising his farm activities while riding in a litter
borne by donkeys.
Several texts describe caravans of donkeys used for long-
distance overland transport. Th e biography of Harkhuf, a
Sixth Dynasty caravan leader, reports that he returned from
one of his many trips to Nubia with 300 donkeys laden with
all sorts of trade goods. Sabni, Harkhuf ’s contemporary, men-
tions using 100 donkeys in his mission to the south to recover
the body of his father, who had been murdered there.
Wheeled vehicles apparently originated in Sumer during
the early fourth millennium b.c.e. and were later adopted by the
Egyptians. Th e earliest example, from the New Kingdom, is a
gold model of a four-wheeled wagon carrying a boat. Although
it is unclear whether the model is realistic or merely symbolic,
heavy wagons must obviously have existed in order for it to be
made at all. Scenes of Ramses II (r. ca. 1290–ca. 1224 b.c.e.) at
the battle of Kadesh show an ox-drawn wagon, presumably be-
ing used to transport supplies needed on the battlefi eld.
Horses and the light horse-drawn chariots were intro-
duced to Egypt from the ancient Near East around 1700 b.c.e.as a means of transportation and quickly became invaluable
military resources. New Kingdom texts and pictures indi-
cate that kings and nobles used horses for riding and to draw
chariots for travel and in hunting expeditions in the desert.
However, horseback riding apparently was not greatly favored
by the Egyptians.
Th e animal that many people automatically associate
with desert transportation, the camel, was a relative latecomer
to Egypt. Domesticated centuries earlier in the Near East, the
single-humped camel or dromedary came into widespread
use in Egypt during the Greco-Roman Period. Able to carry
about fi ve times as much as a donkey and to travel for ex-
tended periods without water, camels became invaluable for
the long-distance transport of both riders and trade goods
across the Egyptian deserts.THE MIDDLE EAST
BY KIRK H. BEETZ
In the ancient Near East early roads consisted of trails
pounded fl at by the feet of travelers over the course of cen-
turies. Here, as elsewhere in the prehistoric world, for many
thousands of years transportation simply meant people walk-
ing, carrying on their backs such loads as they could bear.
Th e fi rst pack animal (meaning an animal used to carry loads
on its back) in the region was the donkey, which was domes-
ticated in Africa or the Near East sometime before 3500 b.c.e.
Oxen, domesticated in the same general timeframe as don-
keys, were used mainly as draft animals, pulling plows and
towing carts in farm fi elds. Although they were very strong,
oxen were too slow to be of much use for long-distance haul-
ing. Th e fi rst Near Eastern vehicles for carrying cargo were
probably sledges. A sledge is essentially a framework of wood
on which loads are dragged across the ground. Early sledges
were soon improved by adding runners, which signifi cantly
reduced the resistance met in pulling them. It is likely that the
fi rst wheeled vehicle was a modifi ed sledge.
Th e peoples of Mesopotamia were not the only inventors
of wheels: Wheeled toys have been found at ancient sites in the
Americas. Th e Mesopotamian insight was to use wheels for
transportation. Th e old notion that the idea for the wheel came
from using logs as rollers for moving heavy objects, with the
logs eventually wearing thin in the middle where the weight
rolled over them, leaving wider “wheels” at the sides, is proba-
bly mistaken, because wheels cut horizontally out of tree trunks
quickly fall apart. Solid wheels needed to be made from planks
cut vertically from tree trunks. Th e actual inspiration for the
wheel as transportation may have been the potter’s wheel.
Th e fi rst known depiction of a wheeled vehicle comes
from the Sumerian city of Uruk (in what is now southern
Iraq) and dates to around 3500 b.c.e. It shows a sledgelike
body fi tted with solid wheels. Th e wheels were made of three
boards laid side by side and held together by two boards that
crossed them on the inside of the wheel. Th ey were fi xed to
axles, and the axle and wheels rotated as one unit. Th is madetransportation: The Middle East 11130895-1194_Soc&Culturev4(s-z).i1113 1113 10/10/07 2:31:08 PM