As in the case with the wagons, carvings on water transport are found in various kinds of roman art and spread all over the roman empire. In the “Land Transportation II”-post I ended up showing a scene from the Column of Marcus Aurelius in Rome, where land and Transport-scene from Marcus-col, Romewater transportation is joined together, here in a pontoon-bridge. Therefor this post starts with the same type of “joined scene”, also from the Column of M. Aurelius, but this time a boat is transported on a wagon over land (see photo right). The scene is some kind of victory-scene, where trophies are gathered and carried in a boat, and therefor it is not really a scene showing water-transportation.

Scenes of real water-transport are visible in the roman art and carvings, though. In Rome some sarcophagi show scenes of ships, both on full sail and in harbour-areas, and some ofSarcophagus with ships, Copenhagen these even show some nice details in ship-construction. Here, a good example on that type is a sarcophagus in Copenhagen (see photo right) showing three different ships on the front.

In the provinces ships are also seen in the burial-art, e.g. in the Trier-Moselle-region. The large monument in Igel, show scenes which refer to river-transport (see drawing right), Drawing of rivertransport, Igel, Germanysince they clearly show small ships without mast or sail and some men pulling the ships up-stream. The Igel-monument is close to the river Moselle, and the carvings are therefor likely to show scenes from the roman transport on the rivers in Winetransporting ship, Trier, GermanyGaul. From another burial-monument by Trier are some sculptures of ships with wine-barrels (see photo left). These are reconstructed as having been some kind of top-figures on the monument, but now the ships are on display individually in the Trier Landesmuseum. These ships are made as sculpture in the round, but I think they are relevant to put in this context as yet another type of Transportation-Carvings.