Preliminary Observations on Some Naqadian Boat Models. A Glimpse of a Discrete Ideological Process in Pre-pharaonic Arts

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 Predynastic 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.