A woman rides the family donkey

Joseph and Mary travel towards Bethlehem by donkey

"desert ships" they are used to make long journeys through the dry regions of the Middle East.  They even make their riders "seasick" because they walk with a slow, rocking motion.

A camel can carry as much as 400 pounds on his back if it is loaded on a special saddle balanced carefully around his hump

Camels have two broad toes and flat padded soles that help them to walk on the sand of the desert.  Because they do not have split hooves, God forbade the ancient Israelites to use them for food.

Two-humped Bactrian camels appear on the Assyrian Black Obelisk.  Thee creatures did not appear in the Holy Land until Solomon's time.  Before this, trading caravans relied on the one-humped Arabian camel.

This detail of an evocative painting by Edward Lear shows a desert caravan stopping by Mount Sinai.  It gives a good idea of what long-distance caravan traffic must have been like in ancient times.

"Caravans" were busy, noisy groups of people and animals traveling together.  They offered some protection from the roving bands of robbers waiting along the roadside for their victims.

A pottery model of a covered wagon from Hamman in Syria shows the type of vehicle that was used to transport goods in the late 3rd millennium BC.  Wagons like this might have been used by travelling metalworkers, peddling their wares from town to town.

This 8th century BC Assyrian relief shows Phoenician merchant ships hauling logs along the Syrian coast.  These ships were called hippoi, meaning horses, as they had horse figureheads.

This Roman merchant ship, known as a corbita, has two masts, and sails made of oblong blocks of cloth sewn together and reinforced with leather patches at the corners.  Such vessels were used for long-distance shipping rather than for coastal use.

Merchant ship of Solomon's Fleet