Hawass Interview: Saqqara, Giza and more
The museum at Saqqara has been upgraded with the addition of a cafeteria. Other restorations occurring at Saqqara were mentioned such as the Serapeum, the South Tomb and of course Djoser’s Step Pyramid.
The recent laser survey of the pyramid has been conducted to record the position and condition of all the stones and will aid greatly in these restoration efforts. The Japanese Team are now collating that data which will also be published on the Supreme Council of Antiquities new website. The restoration work on the Step Pyramid will involve replacing some of the mortar between the stones.
Meanwhile at Giza preparations for the Grand Egyptian Museum continue. The conservation rooms have been completed and construction of the museum itself will begin in October. The Cairo Museum’s basement is being worked on and an ‘Open Museum’ and other renovations are planned.
On the subject of the recently opened solar boat pit Zahi said:
“You know this boat was found in 1954. But since it was found the problem was that in 1987 they opened a hole, the National Geographic came here to drill that hole to see what it looked like in the sealed pit. When they drilled the hole and inserted the camera they found there were insects and water in there. Then I brought the Japanese in 1992, and the Japanese killed the insects and built the museum above that pit. Now we have a project that consists of the following:
1. We did put a camera in there with a TV screen and 8 seats where people can pay 20 LE and they can see, for the first time, what’s underneath the pit, the boat in situ;
2. We will start in this coming year, in a few months from now, the Japanese team will take this boat and restore it, and reconstruct the boat;
3. The existing boat with this second one, we are building in the Grand Museum 2 Museums for the boats.”
When Hawass was asked about the plans to continue exploration of the narrow shafts that run from the Queen’s chamber north and south walls, he replied:
“I meet now with people from Singapore, and scientists from Manchester University, and also from Hong Kong, and we built a kind of a tunnel in the desert, similar to the one in the Great Pyramid, and they made 3 times experiments. And next month we have the final experiment. After that, we’ll choose the team to continue the work….We will hope that it’s the beginning of next year, maximum.”
Currently the pyramid of Menkaure is closed as part of the rotational cleaning system. Soon it will be opened to the public and again and Khafre’s pyramid will close to be cleaned.
Khufu’s pyramid has been removed from the rotational cleaning schedule - since the number of visitors has been reduced to 300 a day, there is no need to close the pyramid for cleaning.
Read the article in full at Guardians
Tags: boat, Giza, hawass, Khufu, Saqqara, technology
