This kind of boats were used to transport a kind of catafalco, a platform decorated with drapes that held the coffin with the dead person’s mummy, to the necropolis and there were two kinds of them: of the earth and fluvial. The purpose of the fluvial ones were to cross the river that separated the city of the living from the city of the dead. The journey began from a “purifying dock” that had a “T” shape where particular funeral rituals were performed on the mummy. In many cases, the transportation was across the sand and so the boat was only symbolic and hitched to ox, or it had wheels.
A priest precede the vehicle, to purify the air and was followed by the family and the mourners.
Even Osiride, the god of the dead, had his own boat called Neshemet to which the funeral texts refer to.