1112 transportation: Egypt and some could have been used for moving large amounts of stones or other items Elephants also could have been used to help pull rafts across rivers An early method of transportation in the Sahara region was the chariot Many pictures of chariots appear on wall paintings and on pots They tend to indicate the prevalence of chariots along several established trade routes One runs from Essaouira in Morocco through the deserts of modern-day Mauritania to Timbuktu Another from the region around Edjele in southeastern Algeria also goes through to Mauritania and, halfway through, connects with another route that comes from the Al-Kufrah group of oases in southeastern Libya Although these chariots are similar in all places—with horses pulling a chariot, often with semicircular sides, on which a person is standing—there have been doubts cast by historians about whether a chariot was a common method of transportation or merely a military vehicle or something for public entertainment, as in chariot racing Many people traveling together had to travel by foot From the description of many North African towns of the period, it appears that people heading from one town to another would gather in the morning at a particular gate or market so they could cross the farmland or desert in a large company to inhibit assault or robbery Bandits, violent peoples, and other problems often made traveling by foot hazardous, and it appears that there was little land contact between many of the sub-Saharan civilizations in the ancient world This can be clearly seen through the transmission of technology such as the use of iron The use of iron outside Egypt started in Nubia and progressed over many centuries down the east coast of Africa, missing many of the powerful inland kingdoms such as that of the Buganda in modern-day Uganda As a result, knowledge of the technology traveled from Nubia to the coast of southern Africa far more quickly than the comparatively shorter distance to the kingdom of Buganda EGYPT BY AMR KAMEL Written and pictorial sources from as early as the Predynastic Period (ca 5500–3100 b.c.e.) of Egypt record land and water transportation Besides its obvious importance in everyday activities, transportation was deeply rooted in Egyptian religious ritual and beliefs, notably the solar cycle: The sun god, Ra, who was born in the east, sailed during the day across the “celestial wasters” (the sky) in his “day boat” before descending at sunset in the west into the hereafter and the womb of his mother, Nut Then he sailed from west to east in his “night boat,” to be reborn again at dawn Approaching the hereafter was a favorite theme of the Egyptians, who in their tomb art often represented this final journey as a boat ride that took the mummy from the Nile’s east bank (the living world) to the west bank (the realm of the dead—the “Beautiful West,” as Egyptian texts called it), where the gate to the hereafter waited to be entered Three factors especially affected the development of transportation throughout the history of ancient Egypt: trade, warfare, and mining and quarrying activities The creation of an extensive network of routes and highways spanning the whole country facilitated not only the transportation of goods but also the movement of military forces, specifically along Egypt’s southern frontier with Nubia and its northeastern one with the Near East These routes included fortifications and way stations, which also formed part of a communications system As for mining and quarrying, a government office established as early as the Third Dynasty (ca 2649–ca 2575 b.c.e.) and known as Masters of the Roads was responsible for coordinating and maintaining the land routes through the desert to quarries and mines These roads required water stations and wells at regular intervals Besides these overland routes Egypt maintained a sea road into the eastern Mediterranean From the inland port of Memphis large cargo ships descended a branch of the Nile to the sea, carrying trade goods or, in wartime, military supplies to Syria and Palestine Because of the dominant influence of the Nile, water transportation played a much greater role in Egypt than in some other ancient civilizations The Nile was the principal communication artery and provided the easiest and cheapest means of transportation When population centers or other important areas lay distant from the Nile, the Egyptians linked them to the river by digging canals Weni, a Sixth Dynasty (ca 2323–ca 2150 b.c.e.) administrator of the southern province (modern-day Aswān), mentioned a canal he built at the first cataract of the Nile to ease the movement of boats past these rapids Presumably this was the same canal later cleaned by Sesostris III (r ca 1878–ca 1841? b.c.e.) to facilitate his military campaign into Nubia Necho II (r 610–595 b.c.e.) dug a canal to connect the Nile with the Red Sea This waterway was later maintained and deepened by the Persians and by the Ptolemaic pharaohs of the Greco-Roman Period (323 b.c.e.–395 c.e.) The Greek historian Herodotus remarked that two large ships could navigate the canal side by side The ancient Egyptians used boats and barges to carry people all along the Nile (or simply to ferry them across it) and to transport grain, cattle, and many other kinds of cargo Water transportation linked the royal capital with all other cities and villages along length of the river It aided in collecting grain or taxes from these places and transporting them to the central storehouses River transport also figured prominently in religious festivals During the famous Valley Feast, for example, statues of the god Amon; his consort, Mut; and their son, Knonsu, were carried in an elaborate boat procession from the Karnak temple down the river to Deir el-Bahri on the west bank to visit their ancestors Art from private tombs at Thebes as well as textual evidence show that this festival was also an occasion for the public to cross the Nile and visit their relatives’ tombs on the west bank An echo of this custom still exists in present-day Egypt, where people celebrate certain feast days in cemeteries in which their relatives are buried