orial effect than of accuracy of detail. Fortunately the carvings of
the ancient Egyptians were an exception to the above rule. Thanks to
their practice of recording and illustrating their history in one of the
most imperishable of materials we know more of their ships and maritime
expeditions than we do of those of any other people of antiquity. If
their draughtsmen were as conscientious in delineating their boats as
they were in their drawings of animals and buildings, we may accept the
illustrations of Egyptian vessels which have survived into our epoch as
being correct in their main features. The researches now being
systematically carried out in the Valley of the Nile add, year by year,
to our knowledge, and already we know enough to enable us to assert that
ship building is one of the oldest of human industries, and that there
probably existed a sea borne commerce in the Mediterranean long before
the building of the Pyramids.

Though the Phoenicians were the principal maritime people of antiquity
in the Mediterranean, we know next to nothing of their vessels. The same
may be said of the Greeks of the Archaic period. There is, however,
ground for hope that, with the progress of research, more may be
discovered concerning the earliest types of Greek vessels; for example,
during the past year, a vase of about the eighth century B.C. was found,
and on it is a representation of a bireme of the Archaic period of quite
exceptional interest. As the greater part of this handbook was already
in type when the vase was acquired by the British Museum, it has only
been possible to reproduce the representation in the Appendix. The
drawings of Greek merchant-ships and galleys on sixth and fifth-century
vases are merely pictures, which tell us but little that we really want
to know. If it had not been for the discovery, this century, that a
drain at the Piraeus was partly constructed of marble slabs, on which
were engraved the inventories of the Athenian dockyards, we should know
but little of the Greek triremes of as late a period as the third
century B.C. We do not possess a single illustration of a Greek or Roman
trireme, excepting only a small one from Trajan's Column, which must not
be taken too seriously, as it is obviously pictorial, and was made a
century and a half after many-banked ships had gone out of fashion.

In the first eight centuries of our era records and illustrations of
ships continue to be extremely meagre. O