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Model Boat with Figures



Key Ideas:

Model Boat with Figures
Model Boat with Figures
2133-1786 B.C.
Polychromed wood
The William Hood Dunwoody Fund

Key Ideas
Story
Background
Discussion Questions
Egypt
  • The ancient Egyptians believed absolutely in an afterlife of eternal happiness, which they could achieve by leading blameless lives on earth and through the fulfillment of complex funerary rituals after their deaths.

  • The ka (eternal spirit) of a deceased person had to be conveyed to the city of Abydos, where the passage between the world of the living and the world of the dead was located. A model boat, placed in the tomb as a substitute for a real boat, could transport the ka magically.

  • This model boat shows us a typical boat used in daily life on the Nile, as well as the oarsmen who rowed it.
Key Ideas Story Background Discussion Questions
 
 

 

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