Egypt's Ancient Fleet: Lost for Thousands of Years, Discovered in Cave

Originally posted by SLAYER69
reply to post by Kandinsky

 

Awesome.

Thanks for the links and info. I'm sure Punt is the most well known destination. I question where else may they have sailed off to?

well its a good question, but without proof we can only guess at what they may have been prepared to do. After their seeing their building projects, they hardly come across as a race that are laid back. I reckon they would dare to go as far as their vessel will take them. With plenty of slaves, I am sure they would push things to the limit.One theory a marine biologist once told me, it that it seems that way back in time before our see maps showed up. The was a sea faring race that followed the route of the killer whale, which was the same route the tune use even today. He believed they built small ports to round up the fish and that way have plenty of food in oceans all around the world. Those ports would be round, one thing is for sure the Egyptians with there knowledge would easily know how to build these.

his theory was that rather than this being Atlantis, it was more like a series of ports where the large ships could stock up. these would be spread all over the world and of different sized depending on what was needed in the area. It was supposed to be like a maze where you could funnel the tuna in to keep them alive. Worth considering? and since then the earth changes have destroyed everything and that's why we have trouble understanding how they managed to move around. Each journey is taken with a step, but if the stepping stones are removed all of a sudden it seems like an impossible journey.

Fascinating and interesting as always!
Well done again!

It's interesting this find gives credence to the debate regarding Egyptian sea-fairing ability, considering the greater part of historical paradigm likes to illustrate the Egyptians as primarily river-navigating and trading where cities located on the coast of the Mediterranean, or situated close in the delta were contact points with the outside world with cultures that had ocean going technology.

I was going to bring up the controversial topic of mummies testing positive for coca and tobacco, but, member hounddoghowlie beat me to it.

I favor the prehistoric transatlantic and world trade hypothesis, though it's not accepted paradigm, as part of human nature is to explore and push boundaries.
If Columbus and Lief Eric did it, as well as whatever culture(s) seeded the Americas and Caribbean Islands with what we term and accept as indigenous peoples (however long ago that was), then, I'm certain there's probability, especially considering the state of architectural sophistication of the Egyptians, for periodic and even ongoing contact between the old world and new.

Currently, just recently there was another attempt by a woman to set a swimming record to swim unaided from Cuba to Florida. These attempts has so far failed, but, it says something about the human pioneering spirit and the lengths we'll go to see what's over the horizon, just how far we can go, and what limits we can expand on.

Egypt coalesced into a nation around 3150BC and ruled successfully up until 30AD when it was conquered by and became a province of Rome.
That's over 3000 years of Egyptian Dynasty, and it would seem far fetched that this nation did not birth a few daring explorers over that time.

EDIT: Just finished reading entirety of the source article, and it's amazing how over 3000 workers were put to work for each expedition to Punt, first building the puzzle piece parts of the boats, then hauling them across the desert to the Red Sea, reassembling the boats and launching. The article describes each venture to Punt equivalent to a launch to the Moon today, where all supplies, trading goods, rations and everything that went into each expedition was carried over the desert to the Red Sea.

The same Archaeologists in this article are now looking forward to finding Punt, which they think is located about 1000 miles South from the site in the article, along the Red Sea.

No grounds are supported for Atlantic Ocean travel as I hoped, but, indications given from a 68' replica ship built to test out the sailing characteristics indicated the ships quite sound and capable of oceanic voyages as well as being 3x faster than modern day sailing vessels.

Shadowed by a support boat for safety, Ward and a crew of 24—including her two sons—sailed their 66-foot reconstruction, called Min of the Desert, on the Red Sea for two weeks, setting out from Safaga, a modern port not far from Mersa Gawasis. The team had low expectations; the professional long-distance sailor who captained the two-week-long voyage likened the wide, flat-bottomed craft to “a giant wooden salad bowl” the first time he saw it.

Yet once under way, the ship proved agile and fast. During an unexpected storm, it weathered 10-foot waves and winds over 20 knots, and the two massive steering oars trailing the ship’s hull helped keep it on course. “In stormy weather it just surfed,” Ward recalls, hefting the plank in her hands. At one point, the ship hit 9 knots, or about 10 miles an hour, with most of its sails furled. That’s about three times as fast as an average modern sailboat, not too shabby for a craft carved with stone and copper tools.

That's pretty interesting. 3 times faster than modern sailboats? Perhaps the Ancient Egyptians can still teach us a thing or two.

Great info, as always. Thank you.

“Some people have argued that Punt was inland and not on the sea

I wish we have a way to find out in what kind of waters was that the boat navigating. In case it was sea waters, we could be talking about an expedition more than a commercial fleet.

reply to post by SLAYER69


Maybe those rumours of Egyptians landing on Australian shores are less rumours and more fact.

Keeping an opening mind, as always.

Thankyou again SLAYER69


Edit: Oooh, you posted the Australian glyphs post by SLAYER69

reply to post by SLAYER69


We know so little and tend to think what we do know is the full story, instead of the tiny sliver of knowledge it really is. There is pretty clear proof the Egyptians (and Phoneticians) made ocean voyages. Carvings on cliffs in Brazil are glyphs. Recent finds in the outback of Australia are said to reveal a details story written on cave walls about a great journey from Egypt that left them stranded. The leader was a cousin to the Pharaoh. There are carvings of exotic animals like kangaroos in Egypt.

Oh, to not have lost the Great Library in Alexandria.

Originally posted by Kandinsky
reply to post by SLAYER69

 

Going off recall, there's a great paper by Cheryl Ward on Egyptian boat-building that's worth keeping. It doesn't focus entirely on ocean or sea-going vessels, but it does show the state of their capabilities. The article seems unaware that we've known of boats in caves for years.

Also, in their own records, much celebration and bragging-rights were given to the expeditions to Punt - a river journey. I'll have to have a look and see what became of what I thought was *proof* that Punt was in modern-day Eritrea - down the Nile. The article guys read like Punt's a mystery and we never knew about Egyptian boat-building.

I enjoyed seeing the image in your OP - that's a new one to me.

The land of Nubia was upstream of the Nile, where Egypt's gold came from and where 'black' Africa started (or ended, whatever way you want to look at it).

Originally posted by SLAYER69
The question then becomes just how early did they first set out and how far did they travel?

I've long believed that they could have been the first explorers of the Earth. With the knowledge they obviously had, it seems to show an incredible scientific curiosity. I think it's impossible for a highly curious people to look out over an ocean and not want to explore it. They obviously did eventually, but I don't think they are given credit for just how thorough and distant those journeys were.

There is also far too much evidence of their influence in so many other cultures too. While some believe that each culture was visited separately and influenced by an unknown life-form, it's just as plausible to me that one civilization was the first to make that leap and then became those wise beings visiting others and influencing their cultures.

This is a little off the subject but here is a interesting article on a oopart in New Mexico.

10 Commandments in New Mexico.

And here is an article that theorizes that Israelites and Phoenicians may have been all over the the Americas. And the source of much of Solomon's wealth may have come from Peru.

Ancient Israelites in America.

Just a thought for your thread.

The europeans had maps, coumbus,cortez, cook ect its highly likley the egyptians did map the world by sea and the brits stole their maps along with all their other artifacts.

reply to post by SLAYER69


Slayer, awesome find brother, awesome find!

Makes me wish I too was an archaeologist! How much fun would it be finding and excavating artifacts after thousands of years?!

Of course they were sea travelers! Dang, if they can build a pyramid they can travel via sea and make ships! The ancient Egyptians were smart.... That's so evident!

I've heard the pyramids referred to as conundrums in stone. I would extend that to the whole of the Egyptian civilization. I have no doubt much has been found in the way of Egyptian artifacts the public has little knowledge of. Not because they are necessarily being hidden, but because so much has been found, and more gets added frequently. It's like a huge jigsaw puzzle with so many pieces we just flat don't know where to put yet.

And sometimes a new piece pops up that makes us say wait...what? I thought that piece fit over here. Damn.

Personally, I think the Egyptians likely sailed to places we wouldn't dare imagine yet. The America's being just one of those. Conclusive evidence may be slow in coming, but I believe it will be found, and pieced together in time.

The Egyptians seemed to be lovers of knowledge and learning. Isn't that what has pushed us into space as fast as we could get there. Why wouldn't that same "spirit" and "curiosity" push them to expand their boundaries of exploration as fast and far as they could go?

Originally posted by SLAYER69
Or the supposed Ancient Australian connection??

Linky

I am sure they traveled the World. I believe that many civilizations were in touch with each other.

S&F

The Egyptians as well as the Minoans and the Phonecians were excellent seafarers. I see no reason why they couldn't have sailed much further than believed.

I have often wondered if the ancient Egyptians had any contact with the civilization that existed in the indus valley. I'm not aware of any evidence that would indicate this. However it is a certianty that these two civilizations existed at the same time. With the recent find of the ancient city off the coast of India, it would seem that there must have been some kind of contact.link to find

There have been rumors of findings of artifacts of Egyptian, Phonecian and even ancient Hebrew people in the new world. Some of these have been proven fakes, but others have not been explained.Possible hebrew find in tennessee

ten commandments in the southwest cut in stone

Egyptians in the grand canyon?

grand canyon

los lunas stone

There are other references to ancient civilized man being in America. If I speculate that people from the stone age were able to get to the americas ....and there is some evidence that they did, Then why could the egyptians, Thousands of years later and with better technology, not have sailed the world, and had contact with, and traded with the other civilizations which were in existence at the time?

Ancient man was far more capable than he is given credit for. Often we hear supposed scientists say that such primitive civililizations could not possibly have acheived the feats that there seems to be evidence for. This is a product of closed minded thinking. I believe that scientists can not always be taken at face value. They have the arrogent views of modern man. Modern man has lost touch with the natural world and the survival mindset which was prevelant in those times. I believe that it is a fact that the ancestors of the Australlian aborigines arrived on the shores of Australlia 50,000 years ago. As there is no evidence of there being a land bridge in existence They surely had to travel by Sea to get there. Seafarers 50,000 years ago.

Civilizations have a great need for resources and , I believe , will travel where they need to in order to find those resources. I believe that ancient man, as well as modern man, have a need to explore their world and the risk takers among them will always try to go where "No man has gone before".

Here is an article from 2006, where ships were found:

www.livescience.com...

The massive complex, made up of six manmade caves, is located at Wadi Gawasis, a small desert bluff on the Red Sea near the modern city of Port Safaga. According to Cheryl Ward, Florida State University archaeologist and part of the excavation team, the age of the finds is remarkable.

Old news. They have actually found nearly complete ships.

I think the Egyptians were capable of traveling farther than is generally accepted. Take a look at this Nova episode, they rebuild one of their ships and it is quite sea worthy. Well worth the time if you haven't seen it.

www.pbs.org...

reply to post by SLAYER69

Fantastic and interesting thread many thanks for such an enjoyable read.Love this stuff.

And more evidence that ancient Egyptians were sea faring people:

news.discovery.com...

The first boat, entombed in a pit sealed by 41 stone blocks, was discovered in 1954. As with the newly excavated boat, it was completely dismantled. Made of 1,224 components and about 142 feet long, Khufu's first ship was fully reconstructed in 1971 and the model now stands resurrected in a specially built museum near the Great Pyramid.

Once again, old news.

Benoît Lecomte in 1998 swam across the atlantic in 78 days, he swam...

I have no problem believing that ancient civilizations traveled the seas much farther than we admit.

I remember reading somewhere that the Banana is proof of an ancient civilization that traded broadly around the world, in that the Banana is on almost every continent.

Someone was moving it around the world long before we admit to their being civs capable of such long distant trade.

Originally posted by Kandinsky
reply to post by hounddoghowlie

 

but ya know what they say it was just contamination.

They say that because no other examples have been found that had coc aine traces which makes Balabova's findings unique. The exact tests were done again on mummies directly exhumed (in situ) and they came up blank. The nicotine levels can be explained by dietary nicotine from aubergine-type plants.

So going off down the road of what-ifs means it was likely to be a contaminated sample or something that registered as coke and wasn't.

i hate to disagree with you, so please see this.

for some reason the video won't post, search youtube with for the title "The Mystery Of The Cocaine Mummy" it should be the first vid, it's 50mins long.
also if you don't want to watch the video here is a transcript of it.
The Mystery of the Cocaine Mummies

this from the transcprit.

NARRATOR: And if that wasn't enough, it turned out that the results from the Munich mummies were not the only evidence from the dead. The anthropologists who originally ordered the tests didn't continue the project. But Balabanova, alongside her normal research into the metabolism of drugs started requesting samples of other ancient human remains from universities. And it was then that she got more results from Egypt.
She tested tissue from 134 naturally preserved bodies from an excavated cemetery in the Sudan, once part of the Egyptian empire. Although from a later period, the bodies were still many centuries before Columbus discovered the Americas. About a third of them tested positive for nicotine and coc aine.
Balabanova was mystified by the presence of coc aine in Africa but thought she might have a way of explaining the nicotine.
As well as Egypt and the Sudan, she tested bodies from China, Germany and Austria, spanning a period from 3700BC to 1100AD. A percentage of bodies from all these other regions also contained nicotine.
[Graph showing presence of nicotine: Percentage of bodies with positive result - Egypt:89% Sudan:90% China:62.5% Germany:34% Austria 100%]

DR SVETLA BALABANOVA - Institute of Forensic Medicine, Ulm: "I continued to work on it because I wanted to be sure of my results, and after 3000 samples I, was absolutely certain that the tobacco plant was known in Europe and Africa long before Columbus."

The nicotine levels can be explained by dietary nicotine from aubergine-type plants.

this might explain a few, so why do the rest of mummies tested show this.also this doesn't account for the coc aine.
did you see this, this is also mentioned in the wiki from my first post.

She tested tissue from 134 naturally preserved bodies from an excavated cemetery in the Sudan, once part of the Egyptian empire. Although from a later period, the bodies were still many centuries before Columbus discovered the Americas. About a third of them tested positive for nicotine and coc aine.

about one third, from a different time, in a different area. controlled at one time by egypt.


now they try and say that there might have been other plants that contain nicotine, or that maybe vanished species of tobacco. and like i said it was contaminated any thing other than to admit that the egyptians might have had contact with with the americas

i mean come on two substances, that are known to come from one area, found thousands of miles away in another area, in different mummies from different time periods, preserved different ways. one natural, one done by embalmers. why not peruse it. you can read all through the transcript or any other sources on the subject, they are falling all over themselves trying to say that it doesn't mean any thing and that there are other explanations for the substances to be there.

ya know it they found a glyph that, said that "ramses was here", and could prove by dateing or any other method that he had his scribes write it on his behalf, some where in the americas, they still would say, it can't be

all because it doesn't fit here mainstream view.

the Mysterious Land of Punt...

is likely the Somali coast.... according to NOVA & PBS and perhaps even Nat. Geo.


there lots of in depth resources in the search function...

(Interestingly, the very tip of the Horn of Africa, a semi-autonomous region within modern-day Somalia, goes by the name Puntland.)..

see: www.pbs.org...


it was only later in the Egyptian dynasty rule that the Egyptian expeditions had to travel to Punt via the Red Sea
they had earlier expeditioned by land route...but enemy territory made the sea route more practical in the time of

The female pharaoh Hatshepsut....
(she) told us more about Punt than anyone else in ancient times. But even she is silent on its exact location.

next off, i thought the pharoh inbreeding caused the pharohs to have early deaths, like when they were 25 yrs old they were long-lived gods