Posted on 07/28/2008 10:43:47 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
The 4,500-year-old vessel is the sister ship of a similar boat removed in pieces from another pit in 1954 and painstakingly reconstructed. Experts believe the boats were meant to ferry the pharaoh who built the Great Pyramid in the afterlife.
Starting Saturday, tourists were allowed to view images of the inside of the second boat pit from a camera inserted through a hole in the chamber's limestone ceiling. The video image, transmitted onto a small TV monitor at the site, showed layers of crisscrossing beams and planks on the floor of the dark pit...
Experts will begin removing around 600 pieces of timber in November, said professor Sakuji Yoshimura of Japan's Waseda University, who is helping lead the restoration effort with the antiquities council.
The discovery of the boat pits more than 50 years ago by workmen clearing a large mound of wind-blown debris from the south side of the Great Pyramid is considered one of the most significant finds on the plateau. They are the oldest vessels to have survived from antiquity.
The reconstructed ship is on display in a museum built above the pit where it was discovered. It is a narrow vessel measuring 142 feet with a rectangular deckhouse and long, interlocking oars that soar overhead.
The cedar timbers of its curved hull are lashed together with hemp rope in a technique used until recent times by traditional shipbuilders along the Red Sea, Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean.
The unexcavated boat, made from Lebanese cedar and Egyptian acacia trees, is thought to be of similar design, but smaller and less well preserved.
(Excerpt) Read more at middle-east-online.com ...
Sakuji Yoshimura also mentioned here:
Spy Pics Reveal Ancient Settlements (Syria - 130,000 YA)
Couier Mail | 8-3-2006
Posted on 08/03/2006 5:49:23 PM PDT by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1677399/posts
Call to tap hidden water under desert
Gulf News | July 01, 2007 | Emmanuelle Landais
Posted on 07/02/2007 9:23:15 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1859671/posts
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