Free Republic

Cairo (AFP) - The Egyptian Museum in Cairo is showcasing for the first time the earliest writing from ancient Egypt found on papyrus, detailing work on the Great Pyramid of Giza, antiquities officials said Thursday. The papyri were discovered near Wadi el-Jarf port, 25 kilometres (15 miles) south of the Gulf of Suez town of Zafarana, the antiquities ministry said. The find by a French-Egyptian team unearths papers telling of the daily lives of port workers who transported huge limestone blocks to Cairo during King Khufu's rule to build the Great Pyramid, intended to be his burial structure. One document...

Astonishingly, the papyri were written by men who participated in the building of the Great Pyramid, the tomb of the Pharaoh Khufu, the first and largest of the three colossal pyramids at Giza just outside modern Cairo. Among the papyri was the journal of a previously unknown official named Merer, who led a crew of some 200 men who traveled from one end of Egypt to the other picking up and delivering goods of one kind or another. Merer, who accounted for his time in half-day increments, mentions stopping at Tura, a town along the Nile famous for its limestone...

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Dating back to the days of the Pharaoh Khufu, or Cheops in the Fourth Dynasty, the harbor dates back 4,500 years. The Great Pyramid of Giza serves as the tomb of Khufu, who died around 2566 B.C. The harbor was built on the Red Sea shore in the Wadi al-Jarf area, 112 miles south of Suez. The harbor was discovered by a French-Egyptian mission from the French Institute for Archaeological Studies. The site "predates by more than 1,000 years any other port structure known in the world," according to the mission's director, Pierre...