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The Boat of the Dead in the Bronze Age

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

L. V. Grinsell
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Extract

In many parts of the world and at many periods the practice has prevailed of depositing boats, or models or other representations of them, with the dead, either as a means of facilitating his supposed voyage to another world, or as a symbol of his maritime activities during his lifetime.

That the former is generally the correct explanation of the custom there can be no doubt. This is shown by the evidence of the belief in a voyage to a future world, and the customs to which it has given rise, among living primitive peoples in the Pacific Islands and elsewhere, so well collected and presented by the late Sir J. G. Frazer. It is shown also by traditions such as that of our own king Arthur's journey by barge to ‘the island valley of Avilion, where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow’ It is shown also by the ancient Greek and Roman custom of placing a coin in the mouth of the dead to pay Charon's fee for ferrying him across the Styx.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 15 , Issue 60 , December 1941 , pp. 360 - 370
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1941

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References

1 Garnered Sheaves, pp. 17, 20 ; Fear of the Dead, 1, 183–7; Belief in Immortality, 1, 244, 462.

2 Tennyson, Passing of Arthur; cf. Malory, Morte d’Arthur, ed. H. O. Sommer (1891), 1, 849.

3 British Museum Quarterly, Dec. 1939 ; ANTIQUITY, March 1940 ; Antiquaries Journal, April 1940.

4 C. L. Woolley, Ur of the Ckaldees (1929), 50–52 ; Ur Excavations 11, Royal Cemetery (1934). 71, 226–7.

5 Models of Ships and Boats (1913), 11.

6 ibid, XXI, XXII.

7 The Book of the Dead (British Museum, 1933), p. 40.

8 The classic paper by R. Paribeni is in Monumenti Antichi dei Lincei (1908), XIX, pp. 5–86 ; good English accounts appear in Evans, Palace of Minos, passim, esp. 1, 437–41 ; M. P. Nilsson, Minoan-Mycenaean Religion (1927), 368–387 ; A. B. Cook, Zeus (1925), 11, 516–25. A well-executed facsimile of the sarcophagus is in the Ashmolean Museum.

9 A. J. Evans, Prehistoric Tombs of Knossos (1906), 25–7.

10 Homeric Tumuli, in Proc. Cambridge Phil. Soc. (1866), XI, 272–3.

11 The Sacred Boat, by Dr M. D. W. Jeffreys (unpublished paper for the loan of which I am indebted to Prof. Canney).

12 Montelius, Civil.primitive en Italie, 1, ii, 366 ; 11, i, pl. 143 ; Monumenti Antichi, v.

13 Works searched included Bosch Gimpera, Etnologia de la Peninsula Iberica, 1932, and earlier works by Cartailhac, Aberg, and Pericot y Garcia.

14 Péquart and Le Rouzic, Corpus des Signes Gravés, 1927, pl. 44–51, p. 66.

15 loc. cit. pl. 11, 12, 62–4, and pp. 61–66.

16 British Museum Quarterly, 1937–8, XII, p. 150; Hawkes, Foundations, 1940, p. 366.

17 T. Wright, Celt, Roman and Saxon, 4th edn., 1885, p. 373.

18 Early Man in N.E. Yorks, 1930, 73–5 ; Arch. Yorks., 1933, p. 65.

19 Ancient Wiltshire, 1, 124–5.

20 Proc. Prehistoric Soc, 1941, shortly to appear.

21 Excavations, 11, pi. 87.

22 Curwen, Arch. Sussex (1937), 162 ; S.A.C., LXXV, 265 (66 sw. no. 1).

23 Ant. Jour., XIX, 90 ; Childe, Prehistoric Communities (1940), 130.

24 Childe, Prehistory of Scotland (1935), pl. XI, p. 115.

25 Breuil and Burkitt, Rock-Paintings of Southern Andalusia (1929), p. 9.

26 American Anthropologist, 1923, XXV, 387–96.

27 See e.g. Bosch Gimpera, ‘ Relations Préhistoriques entre l’Irlande et l’Ouest de la Péninsule Ibérique ‘, Préhistoire, 1933, 11.

28 See E. C. R. Armstrong, Cat. of Irish Gold Ornaments, 1920, pp. 26–9, 95–7.

29 The original account, De Monumento Kizcikensi, by Sven Lagerbring, 1780, is extremely rare in Britain, but there is a copy in the Bodleian. Lagerbring’s drawing of the boat slab is hardly recognizable as a boat. A. E. Holmberg, Skandinaviens Hàll- risfningar, 1848, discusses Kivik at length (pp. 139–45) and illustrates the boat slab (Tab. 44). In British Archaic Sculpturings, 1867, Sir J. Y. Simpson illustrates the com plete set of slabs fairly well but his interpretation differs in some details from that now generally accepted (pp. 84–90, pi. 32). Good modern accounts are in J. Brondsted, Danmarks Oldtid, 11, 105, 115, passim ; O. Almgren, Hãllristningar och Kultbruk, 1927, chap, iv, and in Fornvannen, 1938, pp. 3–5, which contains a photograph of the barrow. The incised slabs are in the National Historical Museum, Stockholm.

30 For Villfara and Grevinge see Sir J. Y. Simpson, loc. cit. pi. 31, pp. 82, 90 ; a better illustration of Grevinge is in Holmberg, Skandinaviens Hãllristningar, 1848, Tab. A-B, fig. 24, described in pp. 79–80. For Nors see Shetelig, Falk and Gordon, Scandinavian Archaeology (1937), 155–6 ; Br0ndsted, Danmarks Oldtid, 11, 173–4.

31 Bergens Museums Aarbok, 1912, no. 4.

32 e.g. one from Halland is figured in Almgren, Sveriges Fasta, 1934, fig. 85.

33 See H. R. Hall, Civilisation of Greece in the Bronze Age, passim.

34 Les Temps Préhistoriques en Suède, 1895, pp. 62–3, 132 ; cf. E. de Lange in Bergens Museums Aarbok, 1912, no. 4, p. 36.

35 Shetelig, Falk and Gordon, Scand. Archaeology (1937), 131–2.

36 Hawkes, in Annual of British School at Athens, 1940, XXXVII, 141–59.

37 For maps of probable amber routes see de Navarro in Geog. Jour., 1925, LXVI ; Bosch Gimpera, Etnologia de la Peninsula Iberica, fig. 204.

38 Montelius, Temps Préhistoriques en Suède (1895), 132.

39 Scandinavian Archaeology (1937), 132.

40 Hãllristningar och Kultbruk (1927), 327.

41 The Bronze Age (1930), 52.

42 Chiide, Prehistoric Communities (1940), 125, 130.