La batellerie égyptienne: Archéologie, histoire, ethnographie

188 PHOENIX La batellerie  egyptienne: Arch eologie, histoire, ethnographie. Ed. Patrice Pomey. Alexandria: Centre d’Études Alexandrines (Études Alexandrines 34). 2015. Pp. 335, 174 illustrations. For scholars interested in the history of Mediterranean ships and shipping and for specialists researching questions related to Egyptian inland water transport (batellerie)— and given that region’s hydrology there are few questions that do not at least touch on the topic—this well edited, richly illustrated, and attractively produced volume will prove a reasonable investment. The volume as a whole will be of less interest to many readers of this journal. The topic of Egyptian batellerie is peripheral to the research of many classicists and Greek and Roman historians. While maritime transport stood at the heart of ancient connectivity, inland water transport was of less importance in ancient Greece and systems of river and lake transport in other regions like Gaul were generally subject to unrelated developments. Furthermore, the project’s chronological scope (from pharaonic Egypt to the present day) and methodological range (from traditional philology to experimental archaeology) have resulted in contributions that are unusually diverse. And finally, the volume’s fourteen chapters, twelve in French and the other two in English, have their genesis in papers presented at a 2010 conference at the Centre d’Études Alexandrines and collectively they reflect an unevenness in terms of quality and significance that is characteristic of academic conferences. Nevertheless, a number of contributions are certain to prove useful to classicists and ancient historians. Mohamed M. Abd el-Maguid (15–34) offers an overview of Nile transport in the pharaonic period and Mahmoud Sief el-Din Gomaa (35–86) provides the same for the Nile together with canals and lakes as communication networks in the Graeco-Roman period. As with all the chapters in the volume their utility is augmented by the up-to-date bibliographies that accompany each chapter. We might place in a similar category Marianne Bergmann and Michael Heinzelmann’s (87–98) paper summarizing the evidence for the site of Schedia and demonstrating how preliminary results of five excavation seasons between 2003 and 2009 can shed light on the site’s important role in the Hellenistic and Roman periods as a river port and customs station at the crucial juncture where the canal from Alexandria joined the Nile’s Canopic branch. Patrice Pomey’s (151–172) discussion of the Palestrina mosaic is devoted primarily to offering an original discussion of how the nine boats illustrated in the mosaic represent “un véritable catalogue de la batellerie nilotique à l’époque gréco-romaine” (169). Given that four of the nine crafts are a small, simple type made of papyrus and that the documentary evidence suggests considerable diversity in types of crafts, the notion of a “catalogue” perhaps overstates the case. Nevertheless, Pomey plausibly associates three of the remaining boats with types attested in textual sources for Graeco-Roman Egypt (thalamus, kybaia, and baris). He likewise identifies a fourth as a type of coracle attested iconographically in Egypt already in the predynastic period and still known to Strabo as a paktôn. Tempting too, if less certain, is his suggestion that a flooded fence structure close to the coracle depicts a kind of fishing weir. Lucien Basch (173–178) suggests that the curved, mortised planks comprising a wooden door from the temple to Sobek at Theadelphia in the Fayum were reused from a ship of the early Ptolemaic period. Pascale Ballet and Patrice Pomey illustrate and discuss the possible practical and religious significance of two groups of terracottas— chiefly lamps—from Graeco-Roman Egypt that take the form of boats and seem to de- BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 189 pict shipping on the Nile. In one group a divinity (most often Harpocrates) accompanies the craft while in the other group (which is perhaps more interesting) ships, comprised of two distinct types and sometimes loaded with cargoes, appear alone. In terms of significance, Pascal Arnaud’s masterful study of the papyrological evidence for freight shipping on the Nile (“La batellerie de fret nilogique d’après la documentation papyrologique [300 avant j.-c.–400 après j.-c.],” 99–150) stands...

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