It is certain, however, that these boats are ordinary
little river craft, the usual Nile _felukas_ and _gyassas_ of the time;
they are depicted together with emblems of the desert and cultivated
land,-ostriches, antelopes, hills, and palm-trees,-and the thoroughly
inland and Upper Egyptian character of the whole design springs to the
eye. There can be no doubt whatever that the predynastic boats were not
seagoing galleys.
It was probably not till the time of the pyramid-builders that
connection between the Greek Mediterraneans and the Nilotes was
re-established. Thence-forward it increased, and in the time of the
XIIth Dynasty, when the labyrinth of Amenemhat III was built, there
seems to have been some kind of more or less regular communication
between the two countries.
It is certain that artistic ideas were exchanged between them at this
period. How communication was carried on we do not know, but it was
probably rather by way of Cyprus and the Syrian coast than directly
across the open sea. We shall revert to this point when we come to
describe the connection between Crete and Egypt in the time of the
XVIIIth Dynasty, when Cretan ambassadors visited the Egyptian court and
were depicted in tomb paintings at Thebes. Between the time of the XIIth
Dynasty and that of the XVIIIth this connection seems to have been very
considerably strengthened; for at Knossos have been found an Egyptian
statuette of an Egyptian named Abnub, who from his name must have lived
about the end of the XIIIth Dynasty, and the top of an alabastron with
the royal name of Khian, one of the Hyksos kings.
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