The Solar Boat Museum houses Khufu's magnificent funeral barge, discovered in a sealed limestone pit on the south side of the Great Pyramid in 1954. The ship — 43 metres long, built from Lebanese cedar planks lashed together without a single nail — was disassembled into 1,224 pieces and has been painstakingly reconstructed over decades. It is the oldest complete ship ever found and among the best-preserved organic objects from the ancient world.
The climate-controlled building was constructed directly over the original pit. Inside, you walk along raised platforms to view the ship from above and from the sides, getting a sense of its extraordinary scale. This would have been used in Khufu's funeral procession, either literally on the Nile or symbolically as a vehicle for the pharaoh's soul to cross the sky with the sun god Ra. A second boat pit nearby contained disassembled fragments of another vessel; parts of these are also displayed. The museum is part of the Giza Plateau ticket complex but may require a separate admission.