Ancient Egyptian Papyrus Reed Boats (Tankwas of Ethiopia)

Papyrus boats, are often represented on the terracottas, paintings, and mosaics of ancient Egypt. The papyrus plant, however, disappeared from the Egyptian countryside centuries ago, and one must travel to Ethiopia to see papyrus boat building, locally known as tankwas.
The papyrus reed grows on the banks of Lake Tana, a lake that lies at 1850 meters above sea level and through which the Blue Nile flows, by more than 4000 km far from the river's mouth.
The local inhabitants use the long stems of this plant to build their boats. Bundles of dried papyrus, laid end to end with a slight overlap, are lashed to an untrimmed pole of eucalyptus wood that acts as a sort of keel. The boat has a short life span of some three months and costs the equivalent of 3 euros. Its length depends on the end use: from 1 meter for those built for children, up to 12 meters for the largest that are used to transport cargoes of wood, or as ferries carrying a dozen passengers from one bank of the Nile to the other.
Hundreds of these tankwas crisscross Lake Tana, as they have for millennia, representing an essential part of commercial exchange and reflecting a sustainable and respectful exploitation of the local ecology.
The sewn construction method was a natural progression from reed boatbuilding, which dates from some thousands of years before the sewn method was developed.