Jubilee Post News & Views
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This is a discovery that will reignite interest in the Dixon Relics and the way how they can shed light on the Great Pyramid.
A long-lost Egyptian artefact has been found in a cigar box in Aberdeen. It is hoped it could shed new light on the Great Pyramid. They call it a chance discovery and that was was made by a member of staff at the University of Aberdeen during a collection review.
The small fragment of 5,000-year-old wood – which is now in several pieces – is said to be “hugely significant”. The engineer Waynman Dixon originally discovered it among items inside the pyramid’s Queens Chamber in 1872.
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The piece of cedar – which it is believed may have been used during the pyramid’s construction – was donated to the university in 1946 but then could not be located.
Curatorial assistant Abeer Eladany found it while conducting a review of items housed in the university’s Asia collection.
Abeer, who is originally from Egypt and spent 10 years working in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, cross-referenced it with other records. 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, she said.
“I’m an archaeologist 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.
“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.”
Two other items found by Waynman Dixon – a ball and hook – are now housed in the British Museum, but the wood was missing.
Neil Curtis, head of museums and special collections at the University of Aberdeen, said: “Finding the missing Dixon Relic was a surprise but the carbon dating has also been quite a revelation. It is even older than we had imagined.
