https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/mar/17/nile-shipwreck-herodotus-arc... https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/b2c1cb/nile_shipwreck_discovery_... Herodotus, Book II, 96. The boats in which they carry cargo are made of the acacia, which is in form most like to the lotus of Cyrene, and its sap is gum. Of this tree they cut logs of two cubits length and lay them like courses of bricks, and build the boat by making these two‑cubit logs fast to long and close‑set stakes; and having so built they set crossbeams athwart and on the logs. They use no ribs. They caulk the seams within with byblus. There is one rudder, passing through a hole in the boat's keel. The mast is of acacia-wood and the sails of byblus. These boats cannot move upstream unless a brisk breeze continue; they are towed from the bank; but downstream they are thus managed: they have a raft made of tamarisk wood, fastened together with matting of reeds, and a pierced stone of about two talents' weight; the raft is let go to float down ahead of the boat, made fast to it by a rope, and the stone is made fast also by a rope to the after part of the boat. So, driven by the current, the raft floats swiftly and tows the "baris" (which is the name of these boats) , and the stone dragging behind on the river bottom keeps the boat's course straight. There are many of these boats; some are of many thousand talents' burden. http://projects.arch.ox.ac.uk/OCMA-publications.html Ship 17: a baris from Thonis-Heracleion (Ships and boats of the Canopic Region 1; Oxford Centre for Maritime Archaeology Monograph 10) Alexander Belov A detailed analysis of the construction of ship 17, a Late Period vessel discovered by Franck Goddio and a team from the Institut Européen d’Archéologie Sous-Marine during underwater excavations at Thonis-Heracleion, a sunken city in Aboukir bay, Egypt. Drawing upon Herodotus’ description of boat-building, the author concludes that ship 17 is a baris-boat and highlights its specifically Egyptian method of assembly. ISBN: 9781905905362