Beside the pyramid of Khufu there are five boat pits. Actually seven pits have been found but two of these belong to the queens’ pyramids being located between satellite pyramids GI-b & GI-c. The two most well known boat pits are on the south side of the pyramid while two more are located in a similar arrangement on the east side of the pyramid. The last pit is located on the north side of the pyramid’s causeway.
Boat pit on the east side of Khufu's pyramid
Here are the other boat pits around Khufu’s pyamid:
Podcast of the Khufu Boats:
An interview by Rossella Lorenzi with maritime archaeologist Cheryl Ward and SCA chief Dr. Zahi Hawass on the subject of Khufu’s boats. Archaeorama Podcast: Khufu’s Boats
Books to download on the Khufu boats:
The Boat Beneath the Pyramid. King Cheops Royal Ship, by Nancy Jenkins, 198
The Cheops Boat, Part 1, by Mohammed Zaki Nour, Zaky Iskander, Mohammad Salah Osman, Ahmad Youssof Moustafa, Cairo, 1960. Books on Khufu’s first boat
You can also download the journal, “Funerary Boats and Boat Pits of the Old Kingdom.” Abusir and Saqqara in the Year 2001 by Hartwig Altenmuller. The Boat Beneath the Pyramid
Photo of Unas Boat Pit:
Other pyramids also have boat and a previous ‘Friday Photo’ featured the boat pit of Unas photographed from a similar angle. Unas Boat Pit
The report mentions that pottery sherds, torn cloth and bone fragments were found in the burial chamber:
“Experts are now examining what is left of Behenu’s mortal remains including what is believed to be her jawbone, which should reveal her age.
The excavation has stopped for the winter but the team leader believes they’ll find a gold mine of information about the queen when they excavate a funerary temple adjoining her pyramid next year.”
I suppose this must mean they’ve emptied the sand from the sarcophagus since this video was made.
Today they’ve released the batch of photos from the fourth day of the re-wrapping and you can see all of the photos from all four days on their Flickr stream.
Curator Ed Bleiberg and Conservators compare documentation to final form.
Work is underway at Giza to complete the Grand Egyptian Museum by 2012
This week we return once again to the Giza plateau with this recent observation. Talking Pyramids reader and explorer Leszek Zadlo snapped this photo of some large earth moving trucks on the south-west corner of the plateau. They appear to be working in the area of the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), the construction of which is currently underway.
Over eight years after personally laying the foundation stone, Culture Minister Farouk Hosni signed the contract last month for phase 3 of the GEM’s construction. According to Hosni, this phase would be completed in 26 months, in time for the opening of the museum around June 2012.
“It will be the biggest cultural project in the world…a cultural high dam that fulfills Egyptians’ dreams and belongs to the whole world.”
Following on from Thursday’s post I’d like to focus a bit more on the Pyramid Texts found in Queen Behenu’s recently discovered burial chamber.
Offering texts on the north wall of the Unas sarcophagus chamber. Photo by Helmut Satzinger.
I’ve been investigating the particular way in which the Pyramid Texts are arranged in Behenu’s pyramid. Confining the analysis to just the one section of the north wall of Behenu’s sarcophagus chamber I began translating the middle section as it is the easiest to see.
Astronaut Soichi Noguchi is currently flying through space aboard the International Space Station and he is using Twitter to communicate with us Earthlings. He goes by the name: @Astro_Soichi
He has just posted a photo of the pyramids at Dahshur. The Red pyramid and the Bent pyramid can easily be seen from space:
YES, you can see pyramid from space :-) Late afternoon in Egypt.
YES, you can see pyramid from space Late afternoon in Egypt.
The Pyramid Texts were first discovered in 1880 inside the Pyamid of Unas by Gaston Maspero. Unas was the first pyramid to be inscribed with the famous corpus of texts and of the inscribed pyramids, Unas is considered to contain the most complete form of the texts. Maspero published the texts from the pyramids of Unas, Teti, Pepi I, Merenre, and Pepi II before the discovery of the other five tombs. Actually, it was only the texts of Unas that were published in their entirety as the other four pyramids had not been completely cleared of rubble at that time and were only partially recorded.
Some of the blue colouring that remains on the hieroglyphs in the pyramid of Unas
There are ten pyramids in all that have parts of the Pyramid Texts inscribed on their walls, the other five being excavated by French expeditions in the early 20th century. The ten pyramids in chronological order are:
Unas (Dynasty V, ca. 2352-2323 B.C.)
Teti (Dynasty VI, ca. 2323-2291 B.C.)
Pepi I (Dynasty VI, ca. 2289-2255 B.C.)
Ankhesenpepi II, wife of Pepi I
Merenre (Dynasty VI, ca. 225-2246 B.C.)
Pepi II (Dynasty VI, ca. 2246-2152 B.C.)
Neith,wife of Pepi II
Iput II, wife of Pepi II
Wedjebetni, wife of Pepi II
Ibi (Dynasty VII, ca. 2109-2107 B.C.)
It wasn’t until 2001 that the pyramid of Ankhesenpepi was cleared and found to contain Pyramid Texts. Each additional pyramid discovered containing the texts adds to our knowledge and understanding of these enigmatic utterances.
Late afternoon in Egypt.
