Gurob Egypt |
The Little Ship
The importance of this small boat was realized by Shelley Wachsmann (Texas A&M University) who recognized several intriguing features of the model and its findspot. Normally during the New Kingdom, ship models are found only in royal tombs; tomb 611 was clearly not of that nature. This was not a model of a royal ship. Wachsmann noted that the shape of the vessel most closely mirrors that of galleys depicted both in Late Bronze Age Greek pottery and on Late Kingdom wall decorations in Egypt (in the latter case, of the so-called Sea People ships). Since all those depictions are monochrome, the color on the Gurob boat thus offers an intriguing insight into ancient painting preferences.Further, Wachsmann notes that the model bears a typical Helladic bird-head decoration topping the stempost while holes along the top of the hull indicate the possible use of stanchions, especially when compared to similar carved and painted representations. Among the fragments were four wheels and other pieces that might indicate a wagon-like support structure, which tantalizingly suggest European prototypes. Ancient textual evidence for the Sherden living in and around Gurob perhaps suggest that the ship model represents a galley of that Sea People.
Photograph showing the four wheels found among the fragments in the tomb; |
Photograph showing one side of the steering oar (quarter rudder) found among the fragments in the tomb; |
That the little model may represent a Sea Peoples ship offers a unique glimpse into the watercraft used by these elusive travelers who seemed to have disrupted shipping and governments during the end of the Bronze Age (c.1200 BCE). Further research by Wachsmann has demonstrated a link to ancient Greek religious rituals and their links to Egypt as well as insight into ancient seafaring. The virtual reality models and the digital supplement were designed from the outset to be integral parts of Wachsmann's book, The Gurob Shyp-Cart Model and Its Mediterranean Context (published by Texas A&M Press in 2013).
Testing Theories
As his research began, Wachsmann called upon us to help him investigate the model more completely, test various theories about its original form and color, try to understand how all the many little pieces might have originally been attached or otherwise used, and provide other researchers with a new ability to examine this remarkable artifact. He recognized the advantages of working in the digital realm with interactive computer graphics. With fragmentary and fragile objects like the Gurob ship, it is highly unlikely that the Petrie Museum would allow anyone to handle and “experiment” with the many pieces and possible configurations while trying to determine the original form of the vessel. Also, since the object is stored in a museum quite distant from Wachsmann's university, obtaining repeated permissions and constantly traveling to view the pieces and ponder the uses of its various supplemental fragments was out of the question.Virtual reality allows us to investigate and change things in ways not possible or not practical in the real world. The constant back-and-forth dialogue between Wachsmann and us throughout the various phases of the 3D modeling process yielded an efficient and effective means of evaluation.
Our work had three steps:
- re-creating the as-found model from the existing pieces
- re-creating two as-built versions of the ship model, extrapolated from the surviving pieces
- refining the final 3D models as we learn more about how the original form may have looked by virtually moving the fragments around (in the computer models) and comparing the results with contemporary images of similar vessels.
Reference
Page Created: March 13, 2012
Page Updated: July 4, 2013
URL:
Page Author: The Institute for the Visualization of History