Fourth Dynasty Royal Ship

Passenger ships and royal ships of the 4th Dynasty were under sail and paddle power. The deck planking near the sides of the ship were removed and the paddlers sat on the deck beams. The hedgehog on the prow remains a mystery to scholars. We know nothing of the symbolic importance of the hedgehog in Egypt, and all explanation is pure conjecture. A common thought among Egyptologists is that a live or dead hedgehog was strapped to the prow of ships in the pre-Dynastic era to " dispell the terrors of the river " and that early Dynastic shipbuilders carved a wooden hedgehog on the prow to be in keeping with this idea and to honor the pre-Dynastic peoples they had displaced.