Ancient Khufu-1 timber ship: spring-back of mid-shear plank

The Khufu-1 ship, dated to the twenty-sixth century BC, was found in a stone pit near the Great Pyramid of Khufu, in Giza, west of Cairo, Egypt. While assembling the ship, the restoration team faced a mismatch of the mid-sheer plank to the hull. The curvature did not match the ships’ hull while assembling. This problem was handled by applying a thermo-hydro-mechanical (THM) process. Later, while the ship was displayed in the Solar Boat Museum, the same plank was recorded with another mismatch. This work argues that in both cases, the plank experienced a spring-back. The first one happened during the 4600 years of storage in the stone pit, and the second one happened somewhere between the restoration and the positioning of the assembled ship in the museum.