'It was not till the Cretan culture had passed its zenith
and was already decadent that it reached Cyprus.'[**] That the Homeric
Greeks were by no means daring navigators does not necessarily
imply that an island race, whose whole tradition throughout its
history was of sea-power, should have been equally timid. When
it is remembered in what type of vessel the Northmen risked the
Atlantic passage, one would be slow to believe that even in immediately
post-Neolithic times the Cretans could not have evolved a type of
boat as adequate to the run between Crete and the Nile mouths as
the 'long serpents' were to face the Atlantic rollers.
[Footnote *: 'Egypt and Western Asia,' p. 129.]
[Footnote **: H. R. Hall, Proceedings of the Society of Biblical
Archaeology, vol. xxxi., part v., p. 227.]
But however the case may stand with regard to the pre-dynastic
period, there can be no question that by the end of the Third Dynasty
even Egypt had developed a marine not inadequate to the requirements
of the Cretan passage. We know that Sneferu, the last King of the
Third Dynasty, sent a fleet of forty ships to the Syrian coast
for cedar-wood, and that in his reign a vessel was built of the
very respectable length of 170 feet. Coming farther down, we know
also that Sahura of the Fifth Dynasty sent a fleet down the Red
Sea as far as Punt or Somaliland.
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