CAIRO, Egypt(AP)
Archaeologists and scholars will excavate hundreds of fragments
of an ancient Egyptian wooden boat entombed in an underground
chamber next to Giza's Great pyramid. They will then try to
reassemble the craft.
The 4,500-year-old vessel is the sister ship of a similar boat
removed in pieces in 1954 from another pit 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 from
inside the second boat pit from a camera inserted through the a
hole in the chamber's limestone ceiling.
Professor Sakuji Yoshimura of Japan's Waseda University says
the excavation of around 600 pieces of timber will begin in
November.
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