Over the years, valuable artifacts have been discovered in Egypt, including ancient tombs filled with treasures that were placed there to aid the pharaohs in their journey to the afterlife. These treasures have attracted the attention of explorers, but some particularly remarkable artifacts are often overlooked. One such example is the solar boat.
This boat was discovered at the foot of the Great Pyramid, where archaeologists discovered the Kufu boat — an impressive ancient ship that had been buried under massive layers of limestone for more than 4,000 years. This boat was built for Pharaoh Kufu (also known as Khufu), the famous king of ancient Egypt, and is now preserved at the Giza Solar Boat Museum, a museum built right at the site where the boat was discovered in 1985. With modern preservation technology, this boat has been preserved intact, and is recognized as the largest, oldest and best preserved ancient boat in human history.
The Kufu boat is 44 meters long, 6 meters wide, and is described as a masterpiece of ancient boat building art. The most special thing about this boat is that it was not designed to move on water, but to “move” in the air. It is made mainly of Lebanese cedar and uses a special construction technique, connecting the pieces of wood without using nails, but instead using joints.
When the boat was discovered, archaeologists found it disassembled into small pieces, arranged in a logical order at the foot of the pyramid. After 45 years, the boat was reconstructed from 1,224 wooden pieces thanks to the efforts of Ahmed YF Mustafa, head of the conservation department of the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities. Before undertaking the reconstruction, Ahmed carefully studied the carvings on tomb walls and small boat models found in tombs, as well as visited ancient boat workshops in Cairo and Alexandria.
Many scholars now believe that this solar boat was a ceremonial boat, used to carry Pharaoh Kufu and the sun god Ra across the sky. However, there are signs that this boat was used in Kufu’s real life, which raises many questions for researchers: did the boat ever really “fly”? If the boat was indeed designed for the Pharaoh’s afterlife, why was it buried and broken into pieces at the foot of the Great Pyramid? Was the boat capable of flying, as some theorize that the ancient Egyptians possessed advanced technology?
Kamal el-Malak, a researcher, was the first to predict the existence of the boat and discovered the pit containing the boat in 1954, after studying the area for 14 years. Initially, archaeologists dismissed his theory of the boat’s existence, but when the real boat was discovered in another pit, researchers began to believe his predictions. Kamal believes that something special was stolen from the first pit, possibly something that enabled the boat to function, but this remains a mystery.
In addition, on the Giza Plateau, where the boat was found, many interesting theories about ancient technology and strange constructions have emerged. One of the controversial evidences is the granite boulders exposed on the east side of the Khufu Pyramid, showing the original size of the blocks and traces of erosion on them. This supports the hypothesis that these stones were not the original monoliths but were renovated and preserved at a later period. Scholars today still have no satisfactory explanation for these traces, and many believe that this preservation was an effort to protect the ancient monument from the ravages of time.
In addition, there is a hypothesis that these stones could have been moved and placed in their current position through the use of flooding on the Nile, which explains the enormous weight that the stones had to bear, as well as the cracks on the stones in the Great Chamber of the Pyramid. Furthermore, the researchers suggest that the Kufu boat may have been assembled and preserved in a special situation related to these preserved stones.
Along with these discoveries, there have been other surprising discoveries, such as strange metal fragments or objects found in various regions of the world, including 47 pieces of metal believed to be orichalcum, a legendary metal mentioned in ancient Egyptian and Greek texts, especially in connection with the legendary city of Atlantis. These orichalcum pieces were discovered in a shipwreck off the coast of Sicily, where archaeologists have found other items of great value, raising the question of whether this is evidence of the existence of an advanced lost civilization?
All of these discoveries not only open the door to a mysterious past, but also hint at an ancient civilization with technology and capabilities far beyond what we know today.
