This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Wiley Blackwell in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology (IJNA), appearing online on 26 October 2010 and in print in Volume 40, Issue 2, in September 2011. The published version is available online at doi: 10.1111/j.1095- 9270.2010.00295.x. Please use the IJNA version in any citations: Cooper, J.P. 2011. ‘Humbler Craft: Rafts of the Egyptian Nile, 17th-20th Centuries AD’, International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 40(2): 344-360 Humbler Craft: Rafts of the Egyptian Nile, 17th-20th Centuries AD John P. Cooper The MARES Project, Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter, Stocker Road, Exeter, EX4 4ND, UK,
[email protected] Abstract Written accounts and images created by foreign travellers on the Egyptian Nile over the past four centuries indicate the widespread use of rafts and floats for both local and long-distance Nile travel. Many of the materials employed are poor survivors in archaeological deposits, or are otherwise easily overlooked as components of river-craft: moreover, several of these raft types were built for a single season or journey, then dismantled. Well- preserved wooden boats belonging to the pharaonic élite have commanded the attention of maritime archaeologists of the Nile. But these traveller accounts alert us to a class of vessels not yet recognized in archaeological deposits, and which point to a humbler quotidian experience of Nile navigation than the royal ships of antiquity. Key words: Egypt, Nile, Boat, Raft, Navigation, Landscape. Introduction When it comes to the watercraft of the Egyptian Nile, scholarly and popular attention has so far been drawn powerfully towards high-status, wooden- hulled vessels of the Pharaonic period.