A lost item from the Great Pyramid of Giza, one of only three objects ever recovered in the last remaining wonder of the ancient world, was found by chance discovery at the University of Aberdeen.
Curatorial assistant Abeer Eladany, originally from Egypt, was viewing items in the university’s Asia collection when she came across a cigar box with her country’s flag on it.
Inside, she found several wooden splinters that she subsequently identified as a piece of wood from the Great Pyramid that has been missing for over a century.
“The university’s collections are enormous – they amount to hundreds of thousands of items – so searching for them was like finding a needle in a haystack. I couldn’t believe it when I realized what was in this innocent-looking cigar can, ”she said.
The wooden fragment is one of three objects discovered in 1872 by engineer Waynman Dixon in the Pyramid’s Queen Chamber.
Known as the ‘Dixon Relics’, two – a ball and a hook – are housed in the British Museum, while some have speculated that the lost piece of cedar was part of a line of measurement that could provide clues to the pyramid’s construction .
The fragment is believed to have been bequeathed to the university by Dixon’s friend, James Grant, but was never classified and could not be found despite an extensive search.
The relic’s discovery has also raised new questions, as radiocarbon dating has shown that the wood can be dated to the period 3341-3094 BCE. – some 500 years earlier than historical records dating the Great Pyramid to the reign of Pharaoh Khufu in 2580. -2560BC.
Neil Curtis, director of museums and special collections at the university, said: “Finding the missing Dixon Relic was a surprise, but the radiocarbon dating was quite a revelation too.
“It’s even older than we imagined. This could be because the date refers to the age of the wood, perhaps from the center of a long-lived tree. Alternatively, it could be because of the rarity of trees in ancient Egypt, which meant that wood was scarce, treasured, and recycled or maintained for many years.
“It is now up to scholars to debate its use and whether it was deliberately deposed, as happened later during the New Kingdom, when Pharaohs tried to emphasize continuity with the past by having antiquities buried with them.”
The cedar fragment originally belonged to a much larger piece of wood, last seen during a 1993 reconnaissance of the pyramid’s interior by a robotic camera in hidden and now inaccessible cavities.
Eladany said, “I am an archaeologist and have worked on excavations in Egypt, but I never thought it would be here in North East Scotland that I would find something so important to my own country’s heritage.
“It may be just a small piece of wood, now in several pieces, but it is hugely important as it is one of only three objects ever recovered from the Great Pyramid.”