THE BOATS OF DAHSHUR
During he early excavations at Dahshur, de Morgan found three boats moored within a large vaulted building attached to the southwest comer of the enclosure wall for the pyramid of Senwosret III. Later, he reported that he had found another three boats about 100m nearby and that he left them in situ. This total of six boats conflicts with a newspaper report that counted five.
Although some Egyptologists believe that these boats were made for non-royal persons there seems to be a direct tie with King Senwosret III. Opinions also differ on the function of these boats: some believe that they were for funerary ritual purposes, while others believe that the king used them for transportation in the netherworld. I believe that these boats are solar boats, used by the king and the god just as Khufu did in the Old Kingdom.
We know that of these boats, one is now housed in the Carnegie Natural History Museum in Pittsburgh. The second boat, painted red, is in Chicago's Field Museum; while two more boats, both white, remain in Cairo's Egyptian Museum. We know that the person who moved the boats outside the country was Emiel Bruch who assisted de Morgan, but we don't know the location of the fifth or sixth boat. It seems that they are still in their original locations at Dahshur. So exists another mystery to be solved by future Egyptologists.
