Dig days: Egypt's top 10 archaeological discoveries: Khufu's boat By Zahi Hawass Any two lists of the top 10 archaeological discoveries in Egypt would be different in only one or two items. Atlantic Productions is making a film for the Discovery Channel based on just such a list, and asked me to be its host and introduce these finds to the public. I felt honoured that two of the discoveries included on the list were my own. It was my first time working with this fantastic team, and I really enjoyed it. They did their homework, and Ben, the director, was very quick and smart. We spent the entire first day of filming at Giza, beginning with an interview in front of the Great Pyramid. We looked at two discoveries on the plateau. The first was the boat of King Khufu which was found by Kamel El-Mallakh in May of 1954. The discovery was made by accident after King Faisal of Saudi Arabia visited the site, and asked for the south side of the Great Pyramid to be cleaned. The Antiquities Department began their work under the direction of El-Mallakh, an architect who worked at Giza on the conservation and restoration of the site. He appointed "Reis" Garas Yani as overseer of the workmen. One day, El-Mallakh was having lunch with our famous writer Anis Mansour at the Excelsior restaurant in downtown Cairo. The phone rang, and the waiter came to tell El-Mallakh. On the other end was Reis Garas, who told him that a boat had been found buried next to the pyramid. Knowing that the chief inspector of the site was sick that day, Anis Mansour and El-Mallakh drove in an old car to the site. On the way, the car caught fire, which Mansour said must have been the curse of the Pharaohs. El-Mallakh went to the pyramid to see the new discovery. Every excavator makes mistakes, and El-Mallakh opened a hole not only in the first pit but also in the second. A few years ago, we decided to see what we could do about the second pit, which is still sealed, and found that insects were running all over the boat because of the hole El-Mallakh made. The ancient Egyptians were very clever, because they had managed to seal the pit almost completely with blocks of limestone covered with plaster to prevent air or anything else to enter. When the boat-pit was investigated, 13 layers of dismantled pieces of wood were found inside. The curse began to show itself again. El-Mallakh wrote many stories about the discovery, and many were published in the New York Times. The head of the Antiquities Department became jealous, and asked that El-Mallakh be punished by having 15 days of his salary docked. El-Mallakh resigned, and became a writer for the Al-Akhbar newspaper. The curse continued as El-Mallakh said without evidence that it was a "solar boat", and others who hated him said that it was in fact a funerary boat. One interesting story that has been told about the discovery has it that Mohamed Hussein Heikal, our famous political writer, convinced Gamal Abdel-Nasser and his fellow revolutionaries to visit the discovery. During the visit, it is reported that Nasser said to El-Mallakh, "I came because of you and not because of this nonsense." When I met Mona Abdel-Nasser, she told me that her father used to take her to visit archaeological sites, and she remembered that they had visited Luxor many times with President Tito. It seems that people wanted to take revenge on Nasser by making him seem not to be interested in our history. Nasser later went to see Zakaria Ghoneim's discovery at Saqqara of the "Unfinished Pyramid" of Sekhemkhet. Inside the burial chamber, an intact, sealed calcite sarcophagus had been found. This sarcophagus was opened in the presence of Nasser and the press and, to everyone's surprise, was found to be empty! The miracle of Khufu's boat was not only in its discovery, but also in the incredible restoration work done by Haj Ahmed Youssef, which has preserved it as the most remarkable discovery of that period. Youssef dedicated his life to restoring the boat, and lived in a rest house near Giza. He always had a love-hate relationship with El-Mallakh.
