Designation for the ship in which the gods travelled. Just as the people of Egypt preferred to travel in a boat on the Nile, the most important highway, so too did the sun god Re travel across the heavens in a boat. Depictions in the tombs in the Valley of the Kings, forming part of the Amduat and other funerary compositions, show the nocturnal journey of the god and his followers through the underworld in a bark. The dead king was also thought to travel through the hereafter; it is assumed that the so-called solar barks, found near Old Kingdom tombs, were designed to transport the king through the underworld. The best known is the boat belonging to Khufu, now restored and open to the public where it was found, next to his pyramid at Giza. In addition, there was also another type: the bark used to transport the (statue of a) god in Egypt. This type resembled an ordinary Nile boat, but was decorated with an aegis at the prow or at both ends, and instead of a cabin had a shrine enclosing the statue. In most cases these barks also had carrying poles which rested on the shoulders of the priests carrying the bark. They were stored in the back of the temple of the god in question, close to or even in the holy of holies, where they rested on special stands. Sometimes the temple contained a separate bark shrine or, as in the temples of Karnak and Luxor, a row of three shrines intended for the three barks belonging to the temple triad. The podia on which the barks rested were usually decorated with representations of the king supporting the sky; this conveyed the idea that the bark was in the heavens just like the bark of Re which used to travel across the sky. In addition to the portable bark, there was also the type that could sail on water and often took the form of a festival ship. Depictions on temple walls of this type of bark usually show several flagpoles in front of the shrine. Transporting the gods in barks usually happened during processions, sometimes within the temple walls but also outside, for example to the west bank of Thebes or even further, for example, Hathor travelled by bark from Dendera to Edfu to visit Horus there.