Solar Boat of Khufu

The Solar Ship of Khufu

Five boats opposes are known from Khufu pyramid complex. In 1954, two of these were broken  by Kamal  El-Mallakh  to  the  south  of  the  pyramid,  oriented  east-west  and parallel  to  its  south  face.  A  full-size,  dismantled  wooden  boat  was  found  in  the southeastern pit. The boat, over 43m long and with five oars on every side, is now restored and showed in a museum in the same location. Waseda University is now taken in a project to reexamine and maintain a second boat discovered in the southwestern pit in 1987.

The other three boat pits are situated to the east of the pyramid, cut in the fundamentals of the plateau. Two lie to the north and southeastern of the mortuary temple, and the third one is paradiusallel to the causeway, several meters in front of the entrance to the mortuary temple. Some  scholars  believe  the 2 boats  on  the  south  side  of  the  pyramid  were  employed  as funerary boats. A bright stain found on the gangplank of the reassembled boat and on the leash from the pit might show that the boat was in reality used on the Nile. These marks, yet, may be the result of humidity in the boat pit, sooner than water. The five boat burials may have been strictly symbolic, associated with the crazes of the king as Horus and as the son of Re, and perhaps with the cult of Hathor, who was one of the triad of deities worshipped at Giza.