Khufu ship
Sign in to saveIntact vessel from Ancient Egypt
Key facts
- Type
- Solar barque
- Material
- Lebanon cedar
- Length
- 43.4 metres (142 ft)
- Width
- 5.9 metres (19 ft)
- Created
- c. 2500 BC
- Discovered
- 1954, Giza pyramid complex
- Discovered by
- Kamal el-Mallakh
- Present location
- Grand Egyptian Museum , Giza , Egypt
- Culture
- Ancient Egypt
via Wikipedia infobox
~7 min read
Encyclopedic overview
The Khufu ship is an intact full-size solar barque from ancient Egypt. It was sealed into a pit alongside the Great Pyramid of pharaoh Khufu around 2500 BC, during the Fourth Dynasty of the ancient Egyptian Old Kingdom. Like other buried Ancient Egyptian ships, it was part of the extensive grave goods intended for use in the afterlife. The Khufu ship is one of the oldest, largest, best preserved vessels from antiquity. It is 43.4 metres (142 ft) long, 5.9 metres (19 ft) wide, and 1.78 meters (5.83 ft) deep, and is the world's oldest intact ship. It has been described as "a masterpiece of woodcraft" that could sail today if put into a lake or a river.
The ship was preserved in the Giza Solar boat museum, but was moved to the Grand Egyptian Museum in August 2021.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Khufu ship” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.