According to international reports, the scroll of ancient papyrus was found in the Egyptian seaport Wadi Al-Jarf by a team of archaeologists and sheds light into the role boats played in the pyramid’s construction.
Said to be the only first-hand account of the construction of the Great Pyramid, it describes in detail how 2.5-tonne blocks of limestone-casing stones were shipped downstream from the Egyptian city of Tura to Giza.
{{image2-a:r-w:250}}The ancient scroll also details how thousands of skilled workers transported 170,000 tonnes of limestone along the Nile in wooden boats held together by ropes, through a specially constructed system of canals to an inland port just metres from the base of the pyramid.
It is believed the workers transformed Giza’s landscape by diverting water from the Nile and channelling it to the pyramid through man-made canals.
Archaeologist Mark Lehner told The Daily Mail he had uncovered the evidence of a lost waterway beneath Giza that was central to the construction of the 1567m tall Great Pyramid.
“We’ve outlined the central canal basin which we think was the primary delivery area to the foot of the Giza Plateau,” Lehner stated.
Although it had been long accepted that the granite from the pyramid’s internal chambers was quarried in Aswan, approximately 857km south of Giza, and the limestone casing stones came from Tura, 12km away, archaeologists had disagreed over how they were transported.
This finding follows previous reports of other recent important discoveries, including a 3000-year-old Egyptian quartzite statue, and tombs at an ancient Aswan sandstone quarry site.
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