The Sun Boats

   On March 6,1954 the Egyptian archaeologist Kamal AI Mallakh accompanied by an Antiquities Department mission discovered the sun boats.

   Observing two vaulted pits near the south face of the great pyramid of Cheops, digging started and this important discovery of a huge wooden boat came to light.

   The sun boat of the Pharoah Cheops (2590 - 2568 BC) is made of cedar wood brought from Lebanon and assembled without the use of a single nail. The planks of wood are held together by fibre ropes that are still intact. The boat is about 42 metres (1 3 8ft) long and more than 5 metres (1 6ft) wide.

   The sun boat is not the only one. There are three other large pits on the eastern side of the pyramid. One of them was opened and contained a boat similar to the first.

   The exact function of the sun boats is not known. However they were presumably intended to carry the soul of the dead pharoah in its eternal afterlife j oumey to the sun god Re.

   The first discovered sun boat is conserved in a museum specially built near the place where it was originally found.