But already by the close of the Third Dynasty, Professor Flinders Petrie says, the Egyptian shipbuilders were using quite large supplies of wood for their craft. In one year alone, Senofern constructed sixty ships and imported forty ships of cedar. When we consider that the Nile was the great national highway of Egypt, it was but natural that shipbuilding should be one of the most important trades. There were, first, the light skiffs which could be easily carried from place to place. There were also the larger freight-carriers which sailed the Nile and the open sea; and lastly, there were the houseboats, a kind of modern dahabeeah. The small skiffs were made of reeds for lightness, and coated with pitch. They were punted along the shallows with a pole, or paddled. They could carry only a couple of people, and were practically ferry-boats or dinghies. But the larger boats were built of wood, and probably sometimes of acacia. The masts were of fir which was imported from Syria, the sails being occasionally of papyrus, but probably also of linen. The lotus plant played a conspicuous part in Egyptian shipbuilding. We see the smaller craft being strengthened by the stalks of this plant, bundles of which are depicted being carried down to the yard on the backs of the shipwright’s men. The tail-piece, even of the biggest sea-going craft, is shown to be in the shape of a lotus bud or flower. That they knew how to build ships of great tonnage at these dockyards is evident from the fact that Sesostris had a sacred barge constructed that was 280 cubits long. And it was doubtless owing to the great length of the Nile sailing ships, and their consequent inability to turn quickly, that we find it unusual for the Egyptian ships to have only a single steering oar; very frequently there was one each side at the quarter. More than this it is difficult to state regarding the manner in which they employed their ships. There is indeed very much that we should like to know, and we cannot be too thankful that modern exploration has actually revealed so many pictorial representations. The Egyptians were not instinctively seamen as the Phœnicians and the Vikings, and if there had been no Nile it is probable that the sea and its coast might have meant even less to them than was actually the case. Nor was it any different with the Assyrians, whose kings feared the sea for a long time. They never ventured on its surface without being absolutely compelled. At a later stage, when their victories brought them to the shores of the Mediterranean, they were constrained to admire its beauty, and presently even took a certain amount of pleasure in sailing on its bosom, but nothing would tempt them far from land or to make a voyage.