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Pharaoh Khufu's Second Solar Boat to Be RestoredCamera Allows Visitors to See Egyptian Ruler's Barque Buried in Pit
Technology permits tourists to see a solar boat of Pharaoh Khufu buried near Egypt's Great Pyramid before its imminent excavation, conservation and reassembly.
The Associated Press reported on July 19, 2008 that visitors to the site of Khufu's second solar boat could view live images of the subterranean barque transmitted from a camera in its limestone pit to a television monitor. Beginning in November, archaeologists will assist Professor Sakuji Yoshimura, an Egyptologist at Japan's Waseda University, in the excavation of some 600 timber beams and planks from the pharaoh's vessel. Zahi Hawass, Director of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, has assured the public of the ship's restoration and reassembly for future display. This second boat is smaller and less well-preserved than the one discovered nearby in 1954. KhufuThe Egyptian Museum's ivory Statuette of Pharaoh Khufu (Dynasty IV) (ca. 2551-2528 B.C.) is thought to be the only complete sculpture of the Old Kingdom's second ruler, the builder of the Great Pyramid and its funerary complex at Giza. Its body was discovered by British Egyptologist Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie in 1903 in a temple at Abydos during an excavation. The head was found at the same location three weeks later. The pharaoh is also known from two fragmentary likenesses in New York's Brooklyn Museum and Munich's Staatliche Sammlung für Ägyptische Kunst. The diminutive Cairo sculpture, three inches in height, depicts Khufu seated on a throne. The chair is inscribed on two sides with his name surrounded by a serekh or rectangular frame. The ruler's facial expression is austere and realistic. Khufu wears the Red Crown of Lower Egypt and a shendyt or royal pleated kilt. The pharaoh's right hand grasps and holds over his shoulder the ceremonial flail, symbolic of the sovereign's authority. The First Solar Boat's DiscoveryArchitect and archaeologist Kamal el-Mallakh discovered the first of Khufu's solar boats, undisturbed in a bedrock pit on the Great Pyramid's south side, on May 26, 1954. The disassembled vessel, made from Lebanese cedar and Egyptian acacia wood and accompanied by six pairs of oars, hemp rigging ropes and matting, was remarkably preserved due to the find's airtight state. Its reconstruction completed in 1968, the full-size ship, measuring 43.3 meters long and 5.9 meters wide, is distinguished by a large central cabin. Its stem and stern are shaped like reeds of papyrus, a plant that grows abundantly on the Nile River's shores. The vessel has been on public view since 1982 in a museum near its underground chamber on the Giza Plateau. Interpretations of the Pharaoh's BarqueThe ritual solar barge's precise function is unknown. It resembles the boat described in ancient Egyptian art and the religious Pyramid Texts that was intended to transport the resurrected pharaoh's ka (soul) with the sun god Re across the sky. Some scholars have suggested that marks on the wood, caused by the repeated contraction of wet ropes when drying, are signs that the vessel actually ferried the deceased ruler's body from Memphis, Egypt's first capital, to his funerary temple and pyramid at Giza for mummification and interment. Conversely, Zahi Hawass points out that the close proximity of the solar barge's original location to the Great Pyramid, wood shavings found in the pit where it was stored and the lack of a mast strongly demonstrate that the boat served a purely spiritual role. Hawass also believes that solar symbols inside the second boat's limestone chamber indicate that those responsible for the barque's disassembly and burial believed that the pharaoh's soul would emerge from one of his pyramid's air shafts and make its heavenly ascent on the boats by day and by night. Sources:
The copyright of the article Pharaoh Khufu's Second Solar Boat to Be Restored in Art Conservation/Repatriation is owned by Stan Parchin. Permission to republish Pharaoh Khufu's Second Solar Boat to Be Restored in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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