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Seagoing Ships and Seamanship in the Bronze Age Levant by Shelley Wachsmann |
During the Bronze Age, the ancient societies that ringed the Mediterranean, once mostly separate andisolate, began to reach across the great expanse of sea to conduct trade, marking an age of immensecultural growth and technological development. These intersocietal lines of communication and pathsfor commerce relied on rigorous open-water travel. And, as a potential superhighway, the Mediterraneandemanded much in the way of seafaring knowledge and innovative ship design if it were to besuccessfully navigated.
In Seagoing Ships and Seamanship in the Bronze Age Levant Shelley Wachsmann presents aone-of-a-kind, comprehensive examination of how the early eastern Mediterranean cultures took to thesea—and how they evolved as a result. The author surveys the blue-water ships of the Egyptians,Syro-Canaanites, Cypriots, Early Bronze Age Aegeans, Minoans, Mycenaeans, and Sea Peoples anddiscusses known Bronze Age shipwrecks. Relying on archaeological, ethnological, iconographic, andtextual evidence, Wachsmann delivers a fascinating and intricate rendering of virtually every aspect ofearly sea travel—from ship construction and propulsion to war on the open water, piracy, and lawspertaining to conduct at sea.
This broad study is further enhanced by contributions from other renowned scholars. J. Hoftijzer and W. H. van Soldt offer new and illuminating translations of Ugaritic and Akkadian documents that referto seafaring. John R. Lenz delves into the Homeric Greek lexicon to search out possible references tothe birdlike shapes that adorned early ships’ stem and stern. Frederick Hocker provides a usefulappendix and glossary of nautical terms, and George F. Bass’s foreword frames the study’s scholarlysignificance and discusses its place in the nautical archaeological canon.
This book brings together for the first time the entire corpus of evidence pertaining to Bronze Ageseafaring and will be of special value to archaeologists, maritime historians, philologists, andBronze Age textual scholars. Offering an abundance of line drawings and photographs and writtenin a style that makes the material easily accessible to the layperson, Wachsmann’s study is certain tobecome a standard reference for anyone interested in the dawn of sea travel.
SHELLEY WACHSMANN is Meadows Assistant Professor of Biblical Archaeology at the Institute ofNautical Archaeology, Texas A&M University. He is the author of several books on ancient seafaringand trade, including The Sea of Galilee Boat, and has published numerous articles in archaeological journals.
Seagoing Ships and Seamanship in the Bronze Age Levant
ISBN 0-89096-709-1 $80.00s cloth
LC 96-49815. 8 1/2x11. 448 pp. 170 b&w photos.
509 line drawings. 5 apps. Bib. Index.
Classical Studies. Nautical Archaeology.
Publication Date: September 1997.
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