three feet apart. Now there was room for Abdullah as well, and the work was in full swing. We had to go down to the Arab quarter and recruit more assistants. Abdullah interpreted to the best of his ability, in his Chad Arabic.
"Bot," cried all the Egyptians. That was their word for reed. And then everything went like a conveyor belt. Two men hung onto the end of long wooden levers, pushing the rebellious papyrus bundles under the surface of the water in the brick basin. Two others sliced off all the rotten root ends and carried the fully soaked reed bundles up to assistants who were waiting to pass the stalks one by one to the three men from Chad. They forced them with all their strength into the bristling bundle of what was to become our boat, until the rope rings were stuffed as taut as barrel hoops. Abdullah was self-appointed foreman and worked and gave orders at breakneck speed. At first the Egyptian assistants looked down a little on the three raven-black men from Central Africa. They had seen nothing blacker even in their own baker's ovens. But Abdullah put them all in their places with his sharp tongue and brilliant mind, and soon the other two had also won general admiration for their stoic calm, sense of humor and practical intelligence. Two rascally watchmen with turbans and old muskets, an excellent cook and a laughing child of the sun as messboy all helped to make up an agreeable camp, framed by a symbolic rope barrier that encircled tents, papyrus heap and build-ingsite. Already English, Arabic, Italian, Buduma, Norwegian, Swedish and French were in daily use around the same long table in the mess tent, and yet, even now, the international crew for the expedition was not present.
On the third day the clash between tradition and scholarship began. By now the reed roll was so long that it was time to narrow it off into a point behind, but this the Buduma brothers flatly refused to do. They wanted to extend it without altering the diameter and then slice it off like a sausage, as they had always done on their own lake. No kaday could have a bow at both ends! With Abdullah as interpreter, Landstrom, Corio and I tried to explain that this was to be a papyrus boat of the special design that the ancient Egyptians used, and their boats were pointed at both ends. But the generally cheerful Mussa turned and went off to bed. Omar tried to make us understand that although it was right to begin a papyrus roll with
four reeds and make it thicker and thicker, it was not possible to make the thick end thinner and thinner and finish with only four reeds. With that he, too, trudged off across the sand and we were left disconsolate with all our Egyptian helpers.
Before the sun rose next morning the two brothers had slipped down to the buildingsite and by the time the rest of us were up they had already done what they wanted to do. We ran down in the desperate hope of stopping them. Then we stood staring at the boat and at each other. Landstrom had made a construction drawing that showed seven separate rolls curved to a point front and back and then lashed side by side to give the boat Viddth. But the two brothers had already begun the second roll by weaving it directly into and together with the first in a compact, firm whole. Not only were the ropes woven together in parallel chains across the boat, but a handful of papyrus reed from one roll was regularly woven diagonally into the rope rings of the neighboring roll, so that they formed an inseparable whole. The technique was so superior to anything a non-initiate could have thought out that the scholars could only capitulate. A thousand years of practice swept away the theories of a single lifetime and the result was a compact amalgam of papyrus pontoons, of which only the very first had a full moon cross section, while the rolls on either side had the graduated cross sections of waxing and waning moons.
On the seventh day a sandstorm came ripping across the Sahara. The sand stabbed against the tents like petrified rain and the pyramids slowly disappeared from view. With stinging eyes and crunching teeth we had to hammer the long tent pegs deeper into the sand and stretched a tarpaulin over the papyrus heaps because the dry, light reeds were beginning to fly through the air toward the pyramids. The reeds, bristling like hedgehog quills from the unfinished stern section of the two rolls, snapped like straw in the storm, while the finished section was as compact and robust as a tree trunk. The storm grew more violent and the sand dashed itself against the camp like hot hail for three days. On the fourth day the wind died down and we went to work as drizzle began to fall over the desert. Jars of water were collected from the basin and poured over the pointed bow of the boat, which now consisted of three interwoven cylinders, and when the bow was sufficiently pliable all the men were set to work bend-
ing it np into the high and elegant curve of the Pharaohs' ships. But at the other end the bundles were still as straight and bristling as giant shaving brushes. Mussa and Omar would not yield. Then we took the three men from Chad on the adventure of their lives, to a big store in Cairo, where they traveled up and down the escalators and were allowed to choose a gift each. They gleefully chose wrist-watches, and Abdullah promised to teach them to tell the time. That same afternoon an extravagantly happy Mussa discovered that it was possible after all to cut oflf enough papyrus to create a sharp point at the stern, bend it upward and then patch on more reeds in a makeshift way so as to get the general Egyptian shape we wanted. We were all relieved. As the improvised stern curved into the air the construction assumed tJhe form of a real ancient Egyptian vessel and when the picturesque boat began to look like a crescent moon against the pyramids of the sun, it aroused enthusiasm among scholars and laymen alike. None of us imagined that this improvised afterthought of a stern was later to prove an Achilles' heel.
Four rolls were gradually assembled on both sides of the longest central roll and then a second, similar layer of nine rolls was secured on top of the first. In addition an extra roll was placed along each side of the deck as a bulwark. The three central rolls were thicker, so that they projected eight inches below the rest, like a sort of broad keel.
In April the sun began to blaze down on the Sahara with an intensity that could be recorded in terms of work rate and water consumption. The boatbuilding in the sheltered valley behind the pyramids began to figure in the local press and television. The papyrus boat was constantly being confused with Pharaoh Cheops' cedar ship which Ahmed Joseph was reconstructing a few hundred yards away. Dragomans and tourist guides who were out of work because of the crisis in the Middle East, hit on the idea of conducting such tourists as they could find to look at a genuine Egyptian papyrus ship. Tourists from every continent, and photographers and journalists who had poured into the country to report the Suez hostilities found their way by camel and on horseback, or trudging on foot, to the papyrus boat. It had now become the latest local attraction. While rope barriers were trampled down and disappeared, the guards struggled to hold back the mass of people from the fragile boat, over which
the keenest onlookers scrambled in their eagerness to pose for photographs and without thought for the bone-dry reeds that snapped under their boot heels. The camels actually ate of the boat. Papyrus scraps and whole reeds as souvenirs, with or without autographs, disappeared in all directions and Abdullah was so busy being nice to everyone who wanted his autograph that he forgot to oversee the work. Mussa and Omar stood with rolls of rope in their hands, flirting with beauties from Nigeria, Russia and Japan. We tried to work at night with lamps and flares, but the danger of fire from sparks and kerosene was so overwhelming that we had to stop. We really had built ourselves a paper boat. One match, and the whole thing would go up in a sea of flame and collapse a few seconds later in a little pile of ashes on the sand. We were panic-stricken over all the tourists who smoked and leaned with their cigarettes close to the side of the vessel. We hung up large signs in English and Arabic, "Smoking forbidden," and told the day-watchman that he must point out the placard to everyone who came. Soon afterward we found the old man himself sitting with his ancient rifle right under the papyrus bow, peacefully puffing at a home-rolled cigarette. I pointed furiously to the placard over his head, but he smiled back, unimpressed, and explained that he could not read.
The
cabin was woven by an old basketmaker dovra in Cairo. It was of flexible wickerwork, with floor, walls and roof all one piece. This basket cabin where we were to live was twelve feet long and eight and one half feet wide, with a curved roof under which we could stand with bent head at the highest point, and a door opening three feet square in the middle of one long wall. Ceiling and long walls were continued three feet beyond one of the short walls, as an open storage alcove for the baskets of provisions.
During the work we had to make repeated trips to the old tombs to study details of the fresco paintings. The pictures of long wooden ships always showed a thick cable running from bow to stern high above the deck. It was kept up by two forked posts located fore and aft. The purpose of this arrangement was to keep both boat ends tensioned and thereby prevent the vessel from collapsing fore or aft and thus breaking amidships. Evidently the papyrus boats could be allowed more flexibility lengthwise, because they lacked this tension cable. On the other hand, they had a short cable running diag-
onally from the in-curled tip of the stern down to the afterdeck, making the stern look like a harp with a single string. I spent hours pondering the function of that string, convinced that it must have a practical purpose, though all the scholars and even the practical men from Chad said that its only function was to preserve the in-curved shape of the stern. Of course. But why, why this in-turned whorl? Just a matter of beauty, everyone said. None of us could work out a better reason, but this was reason enough for us to copy the old pictures on this point as well. The bowstring stayed there for many days, but one fine morning it had gone. Our friends from Chad had removed it; it hampered them in their work and was not needed any more because the curl on the stem now stayed immovably in place by itself. We asked them to tie the rope on again at once, but yielded to the logical argument that if the curl began to straighten out we could simply tie the bowstring on again ourselves whenever it was needed. It was not needed now.
Whereas the wooden boats had their giant cable strung between two forked posts, the paintings and reliefs showed that papyrus boats had a thick twisted cable made fast round the edge of the whole deck to hold the vessel together lengthwise, increase rigidity and give a grip to all the mast stays, which, of course, could not be lashed directly to the thin reeds.
As we wandered through subterranean chambers, corridors and colonnades, wall paintings three to four thousand years old helped us to relive the life of those days on the water, with the help of the artists' hfelike reproduction of every detail, often in low relief, covered with durable colors. We had to try to gain an insight into the forgotten life of former mariners through the ancient series of drawings, for no living man had experienced what we were now attempting. Often it was difficult to distinguish between pictures of wooden boats and papyrus boats, because the wooden boats generally followed the papyrus boat in shape. But the tomb paintings sometimes showed workers actually collecting reeds in the papyrus marshes and carrying the bundles on their backs to boatbuilders, who tied the reeds into a watercraft with coils of rope fed to them by small apprentices.
On board various papyrus boats were depicted baskets filled with fruit, bread and other pastries, jars, sacks, cases, bird coops.
This is how Bjorn Landstrom imagined Ra. Right, detail of the mast foot.
monkeys, live calves, fishermen, hunters, traders, warriors, and cruising royalty. Here vi^ere whole funeral corteges, with gods and bird-men. Here were naked fishermen working with nets, fish traps or hook and line. Here were flotillas of embattled papyrus boats. Here were warriors harpooning hippos from the papyrus deck and bird hunters catching feathered species among the reeds. Here were women sitting on the cargo, nursing their children. Here was Pharaoh himself, with his queen, on a ship's throne at a groaning table, with a steward ready to fill his cup. Some paintings depict Pharaoh symbolically, as a giant straddling the length of the boat; others show in detail twenty pairs of oarsmen in a papyrus or papyriform vessel with the bipod mast, with rigging so big that half a dozen seamen were climbing yardarms and stays and hauling on the halyards, and with a sail system so advanced that it testifies to a fully developed art of seamanship five thousand years ago. The finest papyrus ships are represented with ornamental animal heads at the ends and beautifully carved, painted and gilded cabin poles, sun roof, rudder-oars and other ship's fittings, all on a level with the ancient Egyptian skill and taste in architecture and everyday articles on dry land.
The Pharaohs had enough stone to build pyramids as large as mountains. They had enough papyrus too, so there was nothing to prevent them from building reed boats as large as floating islands. The papyrus boat we were to make was only a modest fifth of the Sphinx's length. We felt small when we came out of the underworld of mummies and stood between the paws of this stone monster. It made us realize what giant structures ancient men could have made out of light reeds. The teeth of time devour papyrus, but not stone. If we had only had the wall paintings of that subterranean world to go by, no one in our modern age would have believed that a sphinx and pyramids of such superhuman dimensions could have been made thousands of years before Columbus. However much we like to regard ourselves as the generation that has finally sloughed off the animal skin, the pyramids are there to remind us to tread warily. It is no proof of intelligence to underestimate the level of others because they came into this world before we did. We are harvesting the fruits of their labors. They roamed about the world equipped with the same senses and inclinations. Their relics proclaim that intelligence, inventiveness, organization, dynamism, curiosity, taste, aspiration, and
IN THE WORLD OF THE PYRAMID-BUILDERS l^l
all the other impulses behind men's actions, good and bad, place ancient man and modern man side by side. It is only the calendar and the technology we have built up together that reveal the passage of five thousand years.
When the last bulwark of papyrus began to take shape on each side of the deck I had to fly off for a visit to Morocco. It was necessary to prepare for the arrival of our boat and our ultimate departure from the ancient port of Safi, which none of us had seen. Soon after my return to Egypt the last papyrus stems were put in place. Two hundred and eighty thousand reeds had been used. The building was finished. Six reeds were left lying on the ground.
On April 28, the anniversary of the start of the Kon-Tiki expedition twenty-two years before, the papyrus boat was ready to be towed away. The area behind the pyramids was swarming with people. The Tourist Ministry had set up chairs beneath a canvas canopy, and the governor of Giza took his place with Ministers and foreign ambassadors. Today others were doing the work and Abdullah, Mussa and Omar had put on their finest garb and taken their places among the audience. Broad-chested and squat, with raised neck and curved tail, the papyrus boat looked like a big, golden hen brooding on round logs in the sand in front of the pyramids. We had built it lying free on top of a large wooden sledge, and four long cables were stretched out in the sand in front of this support. Busy men were laying out a slipway of telephone poles on which the sledge could be towed over the sand dunes. For assistance in this task the president of the Papyrus Institute in Cairo took me to the Egyptian Institute of Gymnastics, where we convinced the director that we had set up a splendid training program for rope-hauling out in the Giza sands. We would provide transport, how many men could the school supply?
The school could supply five hundred physical training students, and here they were, arrayed in white shorts, v^th their gymnastics instructor organizing them in long rows along the ropes. Two men stood on the boat issuing directions, and one stood in front on the sledge, giving start and stop signals with a conductor's baton. There was something biblical about the scene. Perhaps it was because the old-fashioned boat, lying there, solid and home-made, with the basket cabin on its deck and the pyramids in the background, made one think of Noah's ark lying abandoned in a desolated world after all
the animals had left it. Or perhaps it was because Moses had come here to the
pyramids, he who began his days drifting alone in a papyrus basket by the banks of the Nile. But what is certain is that when the man on the sledge raised his stick five hundred young Egyptians threw themselves into the traces until the desert resounded with rhythmic roars; the timber began to creak and the big papyrus ship moved slowly forward against the background of the pyramids fixed in their ancient places. Not a few of the onlookers shivered, suddenly aware of ghosts walking under the broiling sun.
Ola ho-o-o-opl came the rhythmic shouts from the Egyptian throats, while timber squeaked and whimpered and stone grated, while the sun blazed down on the pyramids as it had always done, and played on the muscles of a thousand arms and a thousand legs conducted by the same baton, proving that men can move mountains without machines—if only they pull together.
The little desert valley seemed forlorn and strange when the tents were left alone vidth the pyramids and the papyrus boat no longer provided a focal point, having moved out of the picture toward the asphalt road to Sahara City. There the wooden sledge with our Noah's ark was hoisted onto a large trailer used in the building of the Aswan Dam. And while cheering gymnasts were thanked for their hard work, the oldest and youngest means of transport in Egypt rolled together along the asphalt road by the palm-covered shores of the Nile, to its mouth in the port of Alexandria.
Here we felt at once that the dry and brittle desert ship was beginning to absorb vitality and toughness from the moist sea air. The papyrus became as resilient as rubber. The mummy-ship awoke to new life on its first meeting with the ocean.
The Ra Expeditions Page 17