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Perched to the south of the Great Pyramid, across the road from another cluster of mastabas, is a humidity-controlled pavilion (daily: winter 9am-4pm; summer 9am-5pm; GBPE20, students GBPE10; cameras GBPE10, video camera GBPE100) containing a 43-metre-long boat from one of the five boat pits sunk around Khufu's Pyramid. (Another boat has been located by X-rays and video cameras, but for the present remains unexcavated.) When the pit's limestone roofing blocks were removed in 1954, a faint odour of cedarwood arose. Restorer Hagg Ahmed Yussef subsequently spent fourteen years rebuilding a graceful craft from 1200 pieces of wood, originally held together by sycamore pegs and halfa-grass ropes. Archeologists term these vessels "solar boats" (or barques), but their purpose remains uncertain - carrying the pharaoh through the underworld (as shown in XVII-IX Dynasty tombs at Thebes) or accompanying the sun-god on his daily journey across the heavens are two of the many hypotheses
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