Museum assistant uncovers missing artifact that may explain how Egyptian pyramids were built

TORONTO -- A curatorial assistant at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland has uncovered a missing 5,000-year-old fragment of wood that could offer a clue as to how Egyptian pyramids were built.

Abeer Eladany says she made the discovery when she was conducting a review of items housed in the University’s Asia collection, which includes donated relics from the Great Pyramid of Giza.

For more than a century, scholars have hypothesized about the weights and measurements used by builders of the pyramids. Some are now speculating that Eladany’s discovery may be part of a measuring stick that could reveal clues regarding the pyramid’s construction.

“It may be just a small fragment of wood, which is now in several pieces, but it is hugely significant given that it is one of only three items ever to be recovered from inside the Great Pyramid,” Eladany said in a statement earlier in December.

In 1872, engineer Waynman Dixon discovered a trio of items inside the Queen’s Chamber of the pyramids. Two of them – a ball and hook – were donated to the British Museum upon his death. However, the third, a fragment of wood, has been missing for more than 70 years.

A 2001 record later indicated that the five-inch (12.7 centimeters) piece of cedar may have been donated to the University of Aberdeen’s museum collections through James Grant, a former alumnus who studied medicine at the University and later befriended Dixon and went to assist with the exploration of the Great Pyramid.

According to the university, a fragment of wood was donated by his daughter in 1946. However, it was never classified and despite an extensive search, could not be located, until Eladany conducted a review of the items housed in the university’s Asia collection.

“Once I looked into the numbers in our Egypt records, I instantly knew what it was, and that it had effectively been hidden in plain sight in the wrong collection,” Eladany, who spent 10 years working in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, said.

“I’m an archeologist and have worked on digs in Egypt, but I never imagined it would be here in north-east Scotland that I’d find something so important to the heritage of my own country.”

While the precise use of the wood is still unclear, the discovery has ignited new intrigue into the construction of the Eygptian pyramids.