Japan’s JICA director general inspects reconstructing Khufu’s solar boat

CAIRO – 11 July 2018: Director General of Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in Europe and the Middle East, Masataka Takeshita, and JICA Chief Representative in Egypt, Yoshifumi Omura, inspected on Wednesday the project of reconstructing Khufu’s solar boat.


Director General of Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in Europe and the Middle East, Masataka Takeshita, and JICA Chief Representative in Egypt, Yoshifumi Omura, inspected on Wednesday the project of reconstructing Khufu’s solar boat-Ministry of Antiquities' official Facebook page

During the visit, Takeshita was accompanied by Director-General of the restoration project Eissa Zidan, the project's main Supervisor Mamdouh Taha, and Head of the restoration team Hiromasa Kurokochi.

In this regard, Zidan remarked that the visit included the inspection of the first phase of the restoration and lifting works carried out at the site’s laboratory on the wooden pieces inside the hole.

According to Zidan, Takeshita was pleased with the project's achievements and the scientific methods used in the restoration and lifting processes, expressing his hope to see the re-assembled boat at the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM).

In the same context, Takeshita visited the temporary exhibition where 870 wooden pieces out of the 1,264 pieces of the whole boat are showed after being restored and lifted.

Director General of Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in Europe and the Middle East, Masataka Takeshita, and JICA Chief Representative in Egypt, Yoshifumi Omura, inspected on Wednesday the project of reconstructing Khufu’s solar boat-Ministry of Antiquities' official Facebook page

The project of Khufu’s boat restoration is an Egyptian Japanese project implemented by the Ministry of Antiquities and Higashi Nippon International University; it is also considered one of the most important projects supported by JICA.

Since its discovery in 1954 by Egyptian archaeologists Kamal al-Mallakh and Zaki Nour while carrying out routine cleaning procedures on the southern side of the Great Pyramid, dozens of workers and Egyptologists have been removing the wooden beams of the pharaoh’s second solar boat, which has been buried for 4,500 years.

In 2009, a Japanese scientific and archaeological team from Waseda University headed by Sakuji Yoshimura offered to remove the boat from the hole, restore and reassemble it and put it on show to the public.