The newly appointed Japanese
ambassador to Egypt visits the restoration project of Khufu’s second solar boat
as the first archaeological site in his long tour list. Written By/ Nevine
El-Aref.
Masaki Noke, the newly appointed
Japanese ambassador to Egypt, visited on Thursday the restoration project of
Khufu’s second solar boat in Giza Plateau.
Ambassador Noke viewed the
techninque which the Egyptian and Japanese archaeologists are using to lift up
the boat’s wooden beams from its original location inside the pit to the
surface, before transporting it to the site laboratory for restoration and
consolidation.
Eissa Zidan, the head of the
Restoration Department of the project, told Ahram Online that the Japanese
archaelogist Sakuji Yoshimura, the head of the restoration team, explained to
Ambassador Noke that "restoring the second solar boat of king Khufu was
his dream to come true.'
Yoshimura said "the Japanese
government, through the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), had
helped him realise his dream by supporting and financing the project."
The JICA will continue its support
of the project until the restoration and reconstruction of the boat is
completed and the boat is readied to be on show at the Grand Egyptian Museum,
which is scheduled to open in 2020.
Zidan told Ahram Online that the
restoration team has so far succeeded in removing 866 pieces from the pit, and
restored 840 pieces and transported around 700 pieces to the GEM’s restoration
centre.
The first phase of the project began
over 20 years ago. In 1992, a Japanese scientific and archaeological team from
Waseda University, in collaboration with the Japanese government, provided a
grant of $10 million to remove the boat from its original pit, restore and
reassemble it, and put it on show to the public.
The team first cleaned the pit of
insects then Japanese technicians inserted a camera through a hole in the
chamber's limestone to assess the boat's condition inside the pit and the
possibility of its restoration.
The team’s inspection showed that
the second boat was in a much better state of preservation than the first one
discovered in 1954. Khufu's first solar boat was discovered by the late
architect and archaeologist Kamal El-Malakh, together with Zaki Nour, during
routine cleaning on the south side of the Great Pyramid.
The first boat was removed piece by
piece under the supervision of master restorer Ahmed Youssef, who spent more
than 20 years restoring and reassembling the boat. The second boat remained
sealed in its pit until 1987, when it was examined by the American National
Geographic Society via remote camera.
After the space inside the pit was
photographed and air measurements were taken, the pit was resealed. It was
initially believed that the pit had been so well sealed thus the air inside
must have been preserved since ancient Egyptian times. Sadly, though, Yoshimura
pointed out that this was not the case, explaining that air had leaked into the
pit from outside and mixed with the air inside and this had allowed insects to
thrive and negatively affect some wooden beams.
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