First, let us take the shape of the Egyptian ship, from which the Greeks and Romans eventually obtained their shipbuilding ideas. The high poop and the rockered bow with its bold sweep aft have, it is not too much to assert, influenced the whole world’s shipping ever since. True, the ancient galleys of the Greeks and Romans possess a straighter keel and a pointed bow. But this was done for a purpose. These galleys were fighting ships; and as the ram had to be placed forward in such a manner that keel, stempost, and strut-frames centred their combined force at the extreme point, the shape of the bow could not follow that of the Egyptians. The keel, too, was flat and straight, because it was the custom of the Greeks and Romans to haul their galleys ashore nearly every night. Again, we must bear in mind that the Roman or Greek war vessel was primarily a rowing boat and not a sailing ship, and that mast and sail were always lowered before going into battle. Yet, for all that, the Greek vases bearing pictures of war galleys still show the Egyptian stern. But when we come to consider the Greek and Roman merchant ships, we find the Egyptian stern and a modified Egyptian bow unmistakably present. And we must remember that the merchant ships were primarily sailing ships and only used their oars as auxiliaries. Throughout the ages many of these general lines of the Egyptian ships have been followed. We see them appearing in the prehistoric ships of Norway, in the Viking ships of old, and in the ships of the Baltic to-day. We see this conservatism in the ships of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, in the caravels and caracks and galleons of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. We see it down to about the time of the _Royal George_ in 1746; and even since then, when the great sweep from bow up to the extreme height of the poop-deck was modified until it practically disappeared, yet we find traces of it in the forecastle and raised quarter-deck of the modern sailing ship. And to continue the argument one step further, I suppose if you could by sending a current of electricity through one of the Egyptian naval architects, now lying as a mummy in one of our museums, bring him to life, so that you might take him to see the yachts racing during Cowes Week, he would not hesitate to say that such ships as _White Heather II._ and the newest _Shamrock_ were based on the designs he had made for his masters under the Twelfth Dynasty. If the reader will take the trouble of comparing the Rifeh model (Figs. 5 and 6) with the lines of the latest British yachts now being built under the new universal rule, and then recollect how many years have passed in the interim, he will not cease to wonder that the same “overhang” at bow and stern is as prevalent on the Solent as it was on the Nile. Whatever else these facts may prove, they certainly show what a high state of civilisation the Egyptian had attained; more, perhaps, than we realise at present.