Kamal el-Mallakh, one of Egypt’s most renowned archaeologists, discovered Khufu’s ship in 1954 in a closed pit near the Great Pyramid, the oldest and largest pyramid on the Giza plateau. The vessel had fallen apart by the time el-Mallakh found it, but the wood remained well preserved because it had been tightly sealed in a 171-foot chamber, notes the National.Per PBS’ “Building Pharaoh’s Ship” portal, the archaeologist spent some 20 months excavating the boat’s 1,224 fragments. Restorers only pieced the vessel back together after roughly a decade of researching ancient Egyptian shipbuilding techniques, wrote Tim Wyatt for the Independent in...
