For the development of the art of shipbuilding, few countries could be found as suitable as Egypt. Surrounded on the East by the Red Sea, and by the Mediterranean on the North, it had the additional blessing of a long navigable river running through its midst. Of inestimable value to any country as this is, the equable and dry climate of Egypt, the peacefulness of the waters of the Nile, the absence of storms and the rarity of calms combined with the fact that, at any rate, during the whiter and early spring months, the gentle north wind blew up the river with the regularity of a trade wind, so enabling the ships to sail against the stream without the aid of oars—these were just the conditions that many another nation might have longed for. Very different, indeed, were the circumstances which had to be wrestled with in the case of the first shipbuilders and sailormen of Northern Europe. It is but natural, therefore, that the Egyptians became great sailors and builders: we should have been surprised had the reverse been the case. In earlier times our sources of Egyptian history were limited almost entirely to what could be derived from ancient Greek and Roman writers. Nor was this of anything but a vague and unreliable character. Happily within our own time this has been supplemented, to an enormous degree, by Egyptian exploration. The first beginnings of this are found in the scientific study of Egyptian monuments, which began about the middle of the nineteenth century. The foundation for the interpretation of hieroglyphic inscriptions was laid in the Rosetta Stone, now fortunately in the British Museum. Discovered at the close of the eighteenth century, its bilingual writing in Egyptian and Greek paved the way for future scholars. Englishmen, German, French and American students have since engaged in the fascinating pursuit of systematically and with scrupulous care, excavating the temples and palaces of the older civilisation that lived on the banks of the Nile thousands of years before the Incarnation. Encouraged alike by the settled state of political affairs in Egypt, and by the support granted in the interests of research by the Egyptian and European Governments, the excavation and preservation of these unique monuments have gone steadily on from year to year. It is from the annual reports of these exploration societies, as well as from the explorers themselves, that we are able to present the details of the Egyptian sailing ships.