[51] Breasted, _A History of Egypt_, pp. 96-7.
The art of boat-building spread far and wide from the area of origin. Until recently the Chinese were building junks of the same type as they did four or five hundred years earlier. These junks have been compared by more than one writer to the deep-sea boats of the Egyptian Empire period. The Papuans make "dug-outs" and carve eyes on the prows as did the ancient Egyptians and as do the Maltese, Chinese, &c., in our own day. Even when only partly hollowed, the Papuan boats have perfect balance in the water as soon as they are launched.[52] The Polynesians performed religious ceremonies when cutting down trees and constructing boats.[53] In their incantations, &c., the lore of boat-building was enshrined and handed down. The Polynesian boat was dedicated to the _mo-o_ (dragon-god). We still retain a relic of an ancient religious ceremony when a bottle of wine is broken on the bows of a vessel just as it is being launched.
[52] Wollaston, _Pygmies and Papuans (The Stone Age To-day in Dutch New Guinea)_, London, 1912, pp. 53 et seq.
[53] Westervelt, _Legends of Old Honolulu_, pp. 97 _et seq._
After the Egyptians were able to secure supplies of cedar wood from the Atlas Mountains or Lebanon, by drifting rafts of lashed trees along the coast line, they made dug-out vessels of various shapes, as can be seen in the tomb pictures of the Old Kingdom period. These dug-outs were apparently modelled on the earlier papyri and skin boats. A ship with a square sail spread to the wind is depicted on an Ancient Egyptian two-handed jar in the British Museum, which is of pre-dynastic age and may date to anything like 4000 or 5000 B.C. At that remote period the art of navigation was already well advanced, no doubt on account of the experience gained on the calm waters of the Nile.
[Illustration: (_a_) Sketch of a boat from Victoria Nyanza, after the drawing in Sir Henry Stanley's _Darkest Africa_. Only the handles of the oars are shown. In outline the positions of some of the oarsmen are roughly represented.
(_b_) Crude drawing of a similar boat carved upon the rocks in Sweden during the Early Bronze Age, after Montelius. By comparison with (_a_) it will be seen that the vertical projections were probably intended to represent the oarsmen.