First Soul Boat

When the "soul ship" of Pharaoh Cheops was found last year, buried at the foot of his mighty pyramid, the find was announced to the world with the greatest possible hullabaloo. This week, at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, British Egyptologist Walter Bryan Emery quietly told about finding a similar ship at least 400 years older. It dates from the First Dynasty, 5,000 years ago, when civilization was new in the valley of the Nile.

The ship was found last month, in a brick tomb of its own, near the pyramids in the necropolis at Sakkara. It is less than half as long as the ship of Cheops (whose pyramid is also the biggest), and its wood is badly decayed. But it has all the main features of later soul ships. On its deck is a cabin to shelter the soul of the dead Pharaoh. Pottery vessels hold food and drink for his royal feasts, and plates and eating utensils are ready for his use. The ship's keel is accurately pointed parallel to the equator, so that it will sail in the right direction when it starts to follow the sun on its journeys around the earth. Later Egyptians were careless about this detail of astronavigation, but not the pious First Dynasty forefathers.

Neolithic Egypt. Dr. Emery is not the kind of Egyptologist whose chief interest is finding spectacular treasures for exhibition. His digging at Sakkara, which he has been doing since 1935, is aimed at solving a fascinating problem: What was the origin of Egypt's civilization?

Most ancient civilizations start from simple beginnings, e.g., those of Mesopotamia. In the lowest levels of their long-inhabited sites are found the crude implements of near-savages. Then, little by little, the culture improves. The people build better homes and temples; they learn higher crafts. At last they develop a written language and begin recording their history for archaeologists to read. Some of the new culture elements come from foreign contacts, but the origin of each imported item can generally be traced.

This was not the situation in First Dynasty Egypt. Before about 3200 B.C., the valley of the Nile had a neolithic culture. It was fairly high-grade, but by no means civilized. Then came a change as sudden as if supernatural culture-bringers had landed in a flying saucer. Without transitional stages, so far as diggers can determine, the Egyptians were building great palaces of brick and stone. They had effective copper tools, including wood saws and the finest needles. They worked with fine artistry in wood, ivory, leather, textiles, metals, precious stones. They had a fully formed written language and papyrus to write it on. Their religion formed the principal features that would dominate Egypt for 3,000 years. They had skillful agriculture, a centralized government and a leisured ruling class.

Lost Homeland. Where did this civilization come from? Few Egyptologists believe that the crude inhabitants of the Nile Valley developed it themselves within a few years. Most specialists think it was imported, probably by conquerors, but they do not know from where. One theory suggests Sumeria, whose cultural development may have begun a little ahead of Egypt's. But only a few items in First Dynasty Egypt look as if they came from Sumeria.

The most attractive theory is that highly civilized people came to Egypt from a culture center that has not yet been discovered. It may lie hidden almost anywhere in the Middle East, large parts of which have never been explored by trained archaeologists. It may even lie under the sands of the Sahara Desert, whose climate was probably more moist five or six thousand years ago.

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