Egyptian Felucca and Bejr Models - Copyright by Forester (Pamela Case) on April 3, 2005

This package contains three models: a high resolution model of an Egyptian Felucca, and low- and medium-resolution models of the town of Bejr.

This felucca is approximately twenty-feet in length, and is an accurate scale model of a real felucca.

The felucca evolved from the ancient Egyptian river barge and has been sailed on the Nile for thousands of years. (You may have seen ancient Egyptian pictures of the "barges" used by the gods to carry the dead to the afterlife.) 

If you look closely at the hull shape, you will see that it is a little flatter than a normal ocean sailing hull, and the rudder is much shorter than that of a typical Western sailboat. 

The felucca sail characterizes the boat: typically it is a very large quad sail that appears to be triangular, like a lanteen, from a distance. The sail is fastened to the boat by a boom at the top, but most often has no boom at the bottom. It is controlled by one line of "running rigging" at the short clew foot near the mast, and by another line of running rigging at the long foot near the stern. The short clew foot line is most often tied off to a ring on the boat's gunnel, while the sail is actually controlled by running rigging (a block or "pulley") and rings tied to the stern.

Another characteristic of the felucca is its "standing rigging" (the permanent lines and blocks that tie the mast to the hull). Felluca standing rigging consists simply of two shroud lines immediately on either side of the mast. This design for standing rigging appears to be directly descended from the first masts and sails developed thousands of years ago for the ancient river barges. 

The standing rigging design creates a problem - the felucca sail must be warped ("moved") from one side of the boat to the other by carrying the body of the sail cloth around the front of the mast and then spreading it out on the other side. If the boat needs to run "downwind" (the wind is blowing directly behind the boat), the sail body and upper boom are carried forward (again, by hand) to a position in front of the mast and standing rigging, and then spread out from there. You may have seen pictures of the felucca with the sail puffed out in front of the mast, and controlled simply by  a long straight line running back to the stern of the boat.

To add to the labor, the felluca sail is raised and lowered each day by climbing the mast. Typically, the sailor or a small "felluca boy" climbs the mast, and then raises or lowers the boom and the sail, and ties them off at the top.

Fellucas come in all sizes, and carry cargo and passengers. They are no longer confined to the Nile. You see them in every coast and river in the Arab world and throughout the Indian Ocean because they are cheap to build, and they are efficient sailors.

There is a dearth of town scenery for river and ocean scenes in Bryce and Vue. To remedy this, I've included the town of "Bejr" in this package. "Bejr" is an old stone town that could exist anywhere in the Arab world or the Indian Ocean. Bejr has stone quays for ships and boats to dock - stone quays were invented by the Ancient Egyptians. Bejr is a relatively small town, but it does have a central street large enough for a market place. Colorful awnings provide shade for the merchants 

There are two versions of the town in this package. One is low resolution. This is the version to place in the distance. The second version is "medium resolution" - this is the version to use as a backdrop for ocean or river scenes.  In both cases, you should find it easy to set Bejr down into your terrain a little ways. Position it far enough into the water so that the water comes midway up the height of the quays.

The low resolution version has doors but no windows. The medium resolution version has both doors and windows with little hollow spaces behind them. These allow you to place lights in the windows or doors, should you wish to make a "night scene." The lights will cast accurate shadows when placed inside these openings.

Incidentally, Bejr is scaled to coincide with any of the standard Poser 4 figures, often known as "Poser dork." You can place Poser figures in Bejr for your scene.

A seamless texture called "Oldstone.jpg" is used for the town. If your view needs to be close-up, simply multiply the number of times this texture is applied to each of the buildings. You can use any texture that you like, of course. The "Oldstone.jpg" texture is mapped to each building using "cubic UV mapping." This means that you should be able to simply replace the "Oldstone.jpg" file with another seamless texture of your choice. But you do need to apply the texture building-by-building.


Contents of the package file.

          Name                Type           Modified                Size
          Bejr_LoRes.3ds      3DS File       4/3/2005 11:18 AM  1,119,580
          Bejr_MediumRes.3ds  3DS File       4/3/2005 11:19 AM  1,313,475
          felucca_0.3ds       3DS File       4/3/2005 12:18 PM  1,371,068
          bartop.jpg          Image File     4/3/2005 11:08 AM    180,633
          bartopYs.jpg        Image File     4/3/2005 11:08 AM    174,429
          BlueSail.jpg        Image File     4/3/2005 11:08 AM     47,474
          Oldstone.jpg        Image File     4/3/2005 11:19 AM     27,552
          SailB.jpg           Image File     4/3/2005 11:08 AM     65,947
          
          License.txt              Renderosity      10/26/2003 11:15 PM
          Felucca_Readme.txt   This document    
          

All of this product's content was created by Forester. The material files are copyrighted independently of the Felucca and Bejr town models and may be used only for application to these models. If you have any content-related or technical questions about this product, contact Forester at forester@mountainflight.us