When talking about Egypt, the first thing that usually comes to mind are the pyramids. Many are fascinated by the wonderful structures because it was simply ahead of its time. They are large, further sparking your curiosity as to how they were constructed. Knowing that technology was primitive back in those days, they somehow managed to pull it off efficiently.
What makes these pyramids even more fascinating are the items found inside. There was one artifact removed from the Great Pyramid of Giza during the 19th-century, which was a cedar wood that was 5,000 years old. What makes this story great is that it was found, lost, and discovered again in a cigar box found in Scotland.
The Significance of the 5,000 Year Old Cedar Wood
The three relics contained a ball, hook, and a piece of cedar wood. It was discovered by an engineer named Waynman Dixon and James Grant back in 1872. They carried out excavations within the pyramid where they took the three relics from the Great Pyramid, which were the only known items removed from the 4,500-year-old structure.
A study conducted on the piece of wood hypothesized that it was used as some kind of measuring tool during the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza. Researchers carbon-dated the wooden fragment, which turned into splinters due to age and dated somewhat between 3341 to 3094 B.C. This was a critical discovery because this means that the relic predates way before the Great Pyramid of Giza’s construction by five centuries.
After the excavation, Dixon and Grant kept the relics. Grant took the piece of wood, while Dixon had the ball and hook with him. Right after the death of Grant, the artifacts he had with him were left to the University. But when her daughter donated the cedar wood in 1946, it was labeled nothing more than a “five-inch piece of cedar” that held no significance and was never formally cataloged by the University.
How One Artifact Went Missing
One went missing out of the three relics due to misfiling, which was the 5,000-year-old cedar wood. It was a small piece that was difficult to find due to the University’s vast collection of other relics and artifacts. But luckily, the wooden fragment was discovered by Abeer Eladany, an archaeologist that has been working on digs in Egypt. Never would she have thought that she would discover the missing relic out of the three in the “Dixon Relics” at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
She found the relic inside an old cigar box that had Egypt’s former flag. She tried to run it through the University’s museum records to determine what relic she found. After the cross-checking, she finally discovered the cedar wood that has been missing for a long time in the University’s collection.
These pieces of relics are critical in shaping the earth’s history and knowing where everyone started. Thanks to the accidental discovery of Abeer Eladany, another missing relic of history has been found once again.
