Armchair Travel: Sailing Back in Time on a Treasure Hunt

Today you can sail aboard a ship that looks like a fat skyscraper floating on its side in the ocean.  Just book a cruise on the newly launched Oasis of The Seas.  (Click here for the recent story about this behemoth of the ocean by San Francisco Chronicle Travel Editor Spud Hilton).  But what if it was the 15th century B.C. and you were sailing for treasure, not pleasure?

I turned on the TV the other night while cooking dinner, spun the dial (using my "clicker", of course) and landed on the channel for one of the San Francisco Bay Area's PBS stations, KQED, right in the middle of a brand new Nova broadcast:  Building Pharoah's Ship.  Did the Egyptian woman known as Pharaoh Hatshepsut actually mount an expedition to a place Punt?  And where in the world was Punt, if indeed it existed?  Did the Egyptians possess the skill to build a vessel that could successfully make the voyage and return with the booty?  Archeologists and shipwrights tried to answer these questions by building a ship of the times by using a 4,600 old vessel found in 1954 buried by the pyramids as a model

(This fascinating episode of Nova premiered on January 12th, and will be repeated on KQED at 10 pm on Saturday, January 16th.  Check your local TV listings for broadcast dates and times for PBS stations in your area.)