Ancient Harbours

Extract

Shipbuilding and harbour engineering are two of the oldest branches of our profession as Civil Engineers. It is well established that before 3300 B.C. the Egyptians built sea-going ships and that they made voyages to far lands to procure iron, lead, silver and other materials; and it is recorded on the Palermo stone that about 3000 B.C. king Seneferu built sixty great ships to go to the Syrian coast to bring cedar-wood for his works. In the British Museum is a stone statue of Bedja, son of Ankhu, one of the great shipbuilders of his days. The terminus of these voyages was on the Canopic branch of the Nile, where was situated A-ur or the Great Door, which Mr P. E. Newberry calls ‘an ancient Alexandria of a period earlier than 3000 B.c.’ Little is known about this harbour, except that Narmer, one of the earliest kings of the First Dynasty, considered it of great importance and decided to conquer the petty kingdom of Harpoon, to which it belonged. It was an inland port and probably had the disadvantages of that type, especially as it lay on the banks of an arm of the delta. The actual site of the port is not known, but I refer to it because it is the earliest harbour of which I have found mention and because it marks the beginning of the harbour of Alexandria, which, I think, has the longest history of any harbour in the world. I propose to devote some of my article to a study of the great schemes adopted on the Alexandrian site over a period of nearly 5000 years (FIG. I). There have been four distinct harbour building periods—the harbour of A-ur, about 3000 B.c.; the great harbour of Pharos, soon after 2000 B.c.; the harbour of Alexander the Great, begun in 332 B.c.; and the modern harbour, which dates from A.D. 1870.