What was sailing on the Nile River like in ancient Egypt?

Answer 1

Sailing on the Nile River in Egypt had boats made of papyrus bundles (common marsh plants along the sides of the Nile). Someone by the name of Herodotus was the first travel writer in ancient Egypt in about the fifth century BC Although, the water deep in the sea was unusually shallow.

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The Ancient Egyptians had wooden boats/barges with sails to travel on the river nile and out into the red sea. One of these barges (a funerary barge called the Khufu ship) was buried at the foot of the pyramids at Giza and has therefore come down to modern times. It measures 43.6 m (143 ft) long and 5.9 m (19.5 ft) wide and the striking thing about this boat is the size of the planks used to make it, we simply do not have trees that big in our modern world anymore. They do not get long enough to grow that big.