The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World (159 page)

1. An Egyptian faience plate decorated with a papyrus raft being poled on the Nile. The longitudinal papyrus bundles are held together by lashings. Dating from 1400–1200 bce, this plate was found in a tomb at Enkomi, on Famagusta Bay in eastern Cyprus, which testifies to the interconnectedness of the eastern Mediterranean more than three thousand years ago. Courtesy of the British Museum, London.

2. A detail from a Late Minoan (thirteenth-century bce) mural in the West House at Akrotiri on the island of Thera (Santorini) in the Cyclades. The ships, their crews, and the dolphins cavorting around them are rendered in an animated style quite unlike anything in art of the same period from Egypt or the Near East. Photograph by Erich Lessing; courtesy of the National Archaeological Museum, Athens, Greece/Art Resource, New York.

3. A black-figure
kylix
(wine cup) illustrated with a pirate’s bireme bearing down on a sailing merchantman under shortened sail. This was made at Athens in the last quarter of the sixth century bce, just before the Persian Wars that would catapult Athens to the forefront of the Greek city-states. Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum, London.