Representations of boats in Egypt during the Predynastic and Early Dynastic periods: New perspectives on an old subject

The boat is ubiquitous in Predynastic sources and it was the subject of several studies. Whether real boats or miniature models (made in clay, ivory or wood), depictions painted on vases or engraved on rock, the thematic of navigation holds a privileged place in the documentation of the 4th millennium B.C. Areas to which it refers are multiple: expression of power, politics and economics, but also daily life and funerary practices.This paper aims to present some preliminary observations resulting from the study of several boat models kept in the collections of the Petrie Museum (UCL, London), the Ashmolean Museum of Oxford and the Archaeological and Anthropological Museum of Cambridge. This category of source is definitely the one which is the less known. Generally considered to be an offering to the dead, allowing him to travel in the other world, or even to be mere toys, boat models are most generally badly published and badly dated. Moreover, they show a high variety of shapes and general manufacture. All of this prevents to provide concrete information about their production and role(s).This communication is divided in three parts: first, I would like to stress the possibility that these models are not the result of random productions but are specific objects with a specific role and that it is possible to precise their chronology based on different factors. It seems that several groups can be identified and that comparisons with depictions of boats, for example in rock art but also on some Naqadian objects, can be made. Then, I will briefly examine the information they bring us about naval architecture. Finally, I will propose a repartition map of these objects, with both a geographical and chronological perspective.