It was the “suicidal” journey of Pharaoh Khufu’s solar vessel

The funeral boat of Cheops, in which this pharaoh made his journey to the afterlife at his death, now rests in his new home, the great Egyptian museum yet to be inaugurated, after a last trip, a technical transfer and labeled as “suicidal” by those responsible given their 4,600 years.

The ship had been painstakingly dismantled and buried under sand and protective layers of limestone and gypsum for 46 centuries on the south side of the great pyramid of Cheops, on the Giza plateau, near Cairo, and the archaeologists of the time had difficulty thirteen years assemble the more than 1,200 parts that make it up.

The boat received the name of Khufu’s solar boat because this type of funeral vehicle was made in imitation of the mythological boat used by Ra, the Egyptian sun god, to cross the sky towards sunset, illuminating the world on its passage.

For archaeologists, however, it is not clear whether Khufu’s boat was built in such a way that the pharaoh will use it in his new life once dead or to transport his grave goods to the Great Pyramid.

CHANGE OF MUSEUM

To view the vessel, from 42 meters long and 5.6 meters high At its highest point in the middle, an ad hoc museum was built on the site of the find.

But the Egyptian government has finally decided to wake it up from its placid rest of nearly half a century and move it to its new and megalomaniac tourism project: the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM).

As the assistant of the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities for Antiquities Affairs of the GEM, Al Tayeb Abbas explained in a conference on Tuesday, the pyramid museum was timely at the time, but there were several aspects which, despite the opinions of many experts, have underlined the relevance of their change of location.

One of them, according to Abbas, is that the light that entered in the old museum “this had a negative effect” on the archaeological piece and could deteriorate what Egypt considers “the organic wooden relic the largest and oldest in the history of mankind”.

Likewise, Abbas added, this building, which also contrasts visually with the sand and stone landscape of the magnificent Giza Pyramids Esplanade, had some accessibility issues, “for people with disabilities, for example.”

The change of museum was therefore a great challenge which required an enormous technological deployment for the funeral vessel of Cheops to cover the few kilometers which separate the pyramids from the GEM.

A RISKY MISSION

The general supervisor of the GEM project, Major General Atef Moftah, told the conference that, when deciding how to carry out the transfer, several possibilities were raised, from the complete dismantling of the boat again to the carry it in a balloon.

One of the dilemmas was whether to eliminate part of the museum where he was to remove it, although they ultimately decided to keep it in what Moftah himself considers “a suicide mission that could have been taken. end badly because the building was unstable“.

For transport, they dismantled some parts of the ship, such as the twelve oars, the bow, stern and captain’s cabin, in a process that lasted a month and a half, and retained the main body in what the military defined as a “cage”, although it was more shaped of a container.

Use technology with remote control They put this “cage”, weighing 70 tons, on rails which brought it to the GEM for a trip of nine kilometers in which temporary metal bridges and a 400-meter ramp had to be specifically constructed.

In total, the whole process took 48 hours.

Now, Khufu’s solar boat is waiting in its “cage” to be seated and reassembled to be on display as one of the flagship pieces of the new GEM, which is slated to open later this year.

But the boat will have an exceptional companion in which it will be the largest archaeological museum in the world, with an area of ​​480,000 square meters and with the exhibition of more than 100,000 pieces.

Al Tayeb Abbas announced that next to her he will be exhibited a second ship belonging to Cheops which was found in another hole under the sand next to the first one.

Like this one, it has been disassembled and now its 1,700 pieces will be assembled at GEM in full view of those who visit it.

“We will have two ships, so the visitor to GEM can see the process of rebuilding the second ship, which will be a unique experience,” Abbas said.

EFE Agency.

GML