Sun ship

The title of this article is ambiguous. For the building of the same name, see Sun Ship (building) .

Depiction of a solar boat in ancient Egypt

Representations of the movement of the sun on a watercraft are referred to as sun ship or sun barge . Sunships can be found in depictions from ancient Egypt and in the iconography of the Nordic Bronze Age . The meaning of the sun ship is comparable to that of the sun chariot .

The sun barge in ancient Egypt

The sun god Re in his sun boat

The barque was an important means of transport in ancient Egypt and also had a representative and cultural significance. After the re-cult was introduced in the 5th dynasty , the sun god, according to the Egyptians' belief , drove a sun barge over the celestial arc during the day and crossed the waters of the underworld at night .

The sun barge of Egyptian mythology is the heavenly royal barge of Re (Ra), or , depicted in numerous sun sanctuaries : Re changes every evening from the sun to the night barge, with which he travels through the underworldly waters to the place of the rise. Hathor too , Bearer of the sun disk, often in the form of the cow, is said to have been on the sun ship.

The Abydos solar boats are around 2740 BC. Tombs in the form of sunships built near Abydos .

The sun ship in the Nordic Bronze Age

Ship with sun near the rock carvings by Allinge-Sandvig

Typical bronze razor with sun ship decoration

The sun ship is a common theme in the iconography of the Nordic Bronze Age . Ships are the most common symbols next to the horse and the sun. The sun ship is z. B. found in rock carvings and on ornate razors . Depending on its orientation, it depicts the sun's journey through the sky during the day (from left to right) or through the underworld at night (from right to left). In some representations, the sun ship alternates with the horse or other animals like the snake or the fish and gets the sun from them.

Flemming Kaul states that a well-traveled elite of the Bronze Age, Nordic society had knowledge of the Egyptian religion and could have taken over the sun ship from there. Elements from other foreign cultures could also have deliberately selected and integrated into the religion of the Nordic Bronze Age.

literature

• Flemming Kaul: The Myth of the Sun's Journey. Representations on bronze objects from the late Bronze Age. In: Gold and Cult of the Bronze Age. (Exhibition catalog). Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg 2003. ISBN 3-926982-95-0

Web links

Commons : Sun Ships and Sun Boats  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Rolf E. Maass: Flemming Kaul from the Danish National Museum in Copenhagen in a lecture on the topic: The ship in the sun cult of the north . Article of April 20, 2007. In: Kulturexpress.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Flemming Kaul: The myth of the sun's journey. Representations on bronze objects from the late Bronze Age. In: Gold and Cult of the Bronze Age. (Exhibition catalog). Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg 2003, pp. 3–9.
2. ↑ Flemming Kaul: The myth of the sun's journey. Representations on bronze objects from the late Bronze Age. In: Gold and Cult of the Bronze Age. (Exhibition catalog). Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg 2003, p. 14f.