ReViews: Ancient Galley Model Illuminates Maritime History and Enigmatic Sea Peoples

This book deals with a boat model, dated to 1380–1250 B.C.E., retrieved by Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie during 1920 in Gurob, near Fayum in Egypt. Petrie named it “frags of painted wooden boat on wheels.” Wachsmann dates it to the Egyptian 19th Dynasty (i.e., Late Helladic IIIB–C period). It is now in the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology in London and supposedly represents a small Helladic watercraft used by a “Sea People.” The author suggests seminal and innovative ideas on the cultural and technical meanings of the model. He explores data from the microscopic aspects of the model to modern ethnographic observations. Information concerning ancient Nilotic, cuneiform, Hellenic and pre-Hellenic societies are integrated into the book’s five chapters.

Chapter 1 delves into the history of the model and its technical aspects using rich pictorial material. Chapter 2 covers previously published iconographic evidence concerning the Sea Peoples and Helladic watercraft. Wachsmann uses evidence of people, haircuts, dresses, armor and weapons to characterize groups of Sea People watercraft.