Newsletter, 30 June 1956

: It has become quiet about the wooden boat of King Cheops which was found in a pit on the south side of the Great Pyramid in 1954, and even the -New York Times in a recent advertisement calls the bark funerary rather than solar. At the end of April, a representative of the Center was permitted to take exclusive pictures of the work in progress for publication in the forthcoming issue of Archaeology. He reports that he owed this unusual privilege to the kindness of the Director General of the Antiquities Department, Professor Mustafa Amer, and that he was received at the site by the Chief Inspector of the Antiquities Department for Cairo and Giza, Mr. Zaki Noor, who took him around and showed him all details of the installation. The large brick building, which was erected last year between the eastern part of the baseline of the Great Pyramid's south side and the wooden shed surmounting the boat chamber, is about 40 meters long, and except for a small office in the southwest corner presents itself as a large hall, the south wall of which has not been built in order to give ready access to the boat pit and permit the removal of large beams from the latter without difficulty. Here and there on the floor are a number of large panels, actually the walls of deck cabins, which have already been treated by Dr. Zaki Iskander, Chief Chemist of the Cairo Museum, who is in charge of the technical work. The material mainly used in treating the wood is a solution of suitable thermo-plastics of different brands which is crystal-clear in appearance.