Khufu Sun Boat

More than fifty years ago, boat pits were found next to the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. Entombed in the pits were ancient wooden boats that experts believe were intended to ferry Khufu, the pharaoh who built the Great Pyramid, into the afterlife. Soon, archaeologists will excavate the fragments of the second of these boats and try to reassemble it. In doing so, experts hope to learn more about the boat, which is one of the oldest vessels to have survived from antiquity.

The 4500 year old vessel is the sister ship of a similar boat that was removed in pieces from a pit in 1954. That boat was painstakingly reconstructed and is now on display in a museum built above the pit. The unexcavated boat is thought to be of a similar design to its sister ship, a narrow craft measuring 142 feet, with a rectangular deckhouse and long, interlocking oars that soar overhead. The cedar timbers of the boat's curved hull are lashed together with rope. While the unexcavated boat is believed to be smaller and less well preserved than the reconstructed ship, the two boats are considered to be among the most significant finds on the Giza Plateau.

Excavation of the second boat will begin in November, said professor Sakuji Yoshimura of Japan's Waseda University, who is helping to lead restoration efforts. He said that 600 pieces of timber from Lebanese cedar and Egyptian acacia trees are expected to be removed from the pit, and once the pieces of wood have been extricated, Yoshimura and Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities will begin reconstructing the boat.

John Darnell, an Egyptologist at Yale University, said that new research into the second boat could fill in some blanks about the significance of the two ancient vessels and could help to resolve a debate over their true purpose, which has remained somewhat enigmatic. Experts have been unable to determine whether the boats ever actually plied Nile River waterways or were of purely spiritual, figurative import.

"In Egypt, almost everything real had its counterpart meaning or significance in the spiritual world. But there's a lot of debate as to whether these vessels ever were used or not," Darnell explained.

Some experts believe that the boats were used in the water. It is possible, they say, that these were the funerary boats used to bring the pharaoh Khufu's embalmed remains up the Nile from the ancient capital of Memphis for burial in the Great Pyramid, his mausoleum. As evidence, they point to rope marks on the wood, which could have been caused by a rope becoming wet and then shrinking as it dried.

Hetepsekhemwy Monuments

The first pharaoh of the 2nd Dynasty. Hotepsekhemwy reigned for over 30 years sometime roughly 2890 B.C., but modern scholars know very little about him.

Hetepsekhemwy tomb at Saqqara:

The subterraneous structure conceived to be the oldest second Dynasty royal grave at Saqqara is placed at what is now known as the Unas cemetery. Depart of its galleries are even placed underneath the Unas Pyramid and it's storming that 5th Dynasty tomb-builders didn't accidentaly bumble upon it.

Hotepsekhemwy's tomb under the pyramid of Unas in Saqqara

Seal beliefs discovered inside the bodily structure and showing the Horus names of Hotepsekhemwi and his heir Reneb can mean one of 2 things either the tomb was constructed for and used by Hotepsekhemwi and Reneb left his cachet impressions when he entombed his predecessor, and bestowed the demanded funerary offerings or it was designated for Hotepsekhemwi but is was arrogated by Reneb.

The latter of these 2 hypotheses seems to be the littlest likely, so it is generally agreed that this tomb consisted to Hotepsekhemwi.

With its north-south axis crossing a length of about 120 meters and its width of about fifty metres, it's also improbable that the tomb was made for a non-royal person: the biggest non-royal tombs of the betimes Dynastic Period or the Old Kingdom are substantially smaller. And opposed to the Archaic graves in Saqqara-North, no individual names seem to have been found in that tomb.

Tomb of Hotepsekhemwy

The enamor to the tomb is placed northerly, a feature that would be coarse to the royal graves of the Old Kingdom. From the enamor, a long 4 metre high enactment, built in an open deep covered with huge blocks of stone, comes deeper into the Saqqara rock. A few metres into this enactment, a doorway affords upon a corridor to the west. A little further down, a 2nd door gives accession to a corridor to the east. On each face of both corridors are 7 long and constrict rooms that are construed as magazines.

Barely before the cardinal corridor discontinues to deign, a large portcullis slab, built of granite, was designated to block the further passage. Afterward that, the corridor continues horizontally and was barred by 3 more portcullises. More cartridges open onto the east and the west of this corridor. After almost 35 meters, the cap of the corridor is depressed to some two meters and the corridor gets subterraneous.

To the east and Occident of the central corridor, astonish of magazines carries on to unfold, until at length, at about 110 metres from the entrance, the burial chamber was discovered ... empty.

If these tomb always had a superstructure, nothing rests of it. But it's very likely that the superstructure was absented for the building of the pyramid and dead room tomb of Unas, some five hundred years later, if they even endured that long.