LIVE: First Look at Khufu's Second Boat After Reassembly at GEM

[Glenn Meyer]

https://cairoscene.com/ArtsAndCulture/LIVE-First-Look-at-Khufu-s-Second-Boat-After-Reassembly-at-GEM

LIVE: First Look at Khufu's Second Boat After Reassembly at GEM

Discovered in 1954 in a sealed pit south of the Great Pyramid, alongside the famed first Solar Boat, the Second Khufu Boat had remained buried for more than 4,600 years.

Cairo Scene

Dec 23, 2025

Visitors to the Grand Egyptian Museum are getting a first-ever look at one of ancient Egypt’s most extraordinary artefacts: King Khufu’s Second Boat, newly reassembled following a decades-long archaeological and conservation project carried out through Egyptian–Japanese cooperation. Today marks its inauguration, beginning a three-to-five-year live restoration and reassembly process conducted in front of visitors, an unprecedented first in Egypt’s museum history.

The reveal was inaugurated by Minister of Tourism and Antiquities Sherif Fathy, earlier today, marking a milestone in one of the most ambitious restoration efforts in modern Egyptology. Unlike previous conservation projects conducted behind closed doors, the reassembly of the Second Khufu Boat is taking place inside the museum itself, allowing visitors to witness history being put back together, plank by plank.Discovered in 1954 in a sealed pit south of the Great Pyramid, alongside the famed first Solar Boat, the Second Khufu Boat had remained buried for more than 4,600 years. Carefully dismantled in antiquity and stored in 13 layers, its wooden components were extracted, studied, and conserved individually over years of meticulous work. Each piece was stabilised, documented, and restored before being transferred to the Grand Egyptian Museum.

For the first time, the boat’s reassembly is unfolding live in front of the public, with conservators, skilled labourers, and officials - including the minister himself and the Grand Egyptian Museum’s CEO Ahmed Ghoneim - taking part in the process.Measuring approximately 42 meters in length, the boat is believed to have played a symbolic role in King Khufu’s funerary rituals, reflecting ancient Egyptian beliefs surrounding the king’s journey with the sun god Ra into the afterlife. Its construction reveals advanced shipbuilding techniques of the Old Kingdom, as well as differences in design and function from the first Khufu Boat.

The project stands as a model of international scientific collaboration, bringing together Egyptian expertise and Japanese conservation technologies. Once fully assembled, the Second Khufu Boat will take its place as a centrepiece of the Grand Egyptian Museum, offering new insight into ancient engineering, belief systems, and one of Egypt’s most iconic rulers, now revealed, for the first time, in full view of the public.

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