Most of the ancient Egyptian pyramids are clustered in a narrow strip of desert that stretches along the foothills of the country’s western desert plateau. It is assumed that these monumental structures were built near waterways that facilitated the transportation of building materials and labor. But today the Nile, which is the only river that irrigates this inhospitable land, flows miles away. And its ancient arms, including the one that should explain the concentration of pyramids in a strip that is now in the middle of the desert, remain not completely known.
In an attempt to continue solving this enigma, a team of researchers from various countries has recently identified segments of an important extinct arm of the Nile – which they have named the Arm of the Pyramids –, which crosses precisely the area. Using satellite radar images, deep soil drilling and geophysical analysis, the group has been able to study the part of the Nile Valley adjacent to the pyramids. And after an exhaustive investigation, published by Nature Last week, they maintain that this river arm was fundamental for the construction of the iconic Egyptian structures.
“The discovery of this ancient arm, near the site of the pyramids, indicates that it indeed played a key role in the transportation of the enormous construction materials and the workers necessary for its construction,” says Mahfooz Hafez, one of the members of the team and the National Research Institute for Astronomy and Geophysics of Egypt (NRIAG). For this specialist, the extinct arm was part of a “river transport superhighway.”
Over the last few millennia, the landscape of the Nile Valley as it passes through Egypt has undergone great changes. The study notes that about 12,000 years ago, during the so-called African Humid Period, the arid Sahara Desert became a savanna-like environment, with extensive river systems, due to a global rise in sea level. At that time, the Nile had secondary arms that ran through its alluvial plain, and human life was not yet concentrated in its valley due to the high water levels.
This humid phase of the region gradually ended around 5,500 years ago, which pushed more and more people to move towards elevated areas located on the limits of the alluvial plain of the Nile Valley, which was still bathed by several meanderings. branches of the river. During that transition came the period of the Old Kingdom of Egypt, around 2,600 BC, which was when the first pyramids were built.
Then, as now, the Nile was the main source of life for Egypt. But with the passage of time, and the gradual desertification of the region, its central course continued to move towards its base and its secondary arms dried up, abandoning ancient human settlements in increasingly remote latitudes. Where exactly those branches of the Nile flowed and what they looked like, however, remains partly a puzzle.
Studies have been carried out in the past to try to locate these ancient branches of the Nile, and recent research has detected a river branch and a swamp-like environment at the foot of the pyramids of Giza. The recently published work reinforces the existence of a long-lost river arm, as it is the first to provide a map of that environment in the desert strip where the pyramids are concentrated. It also provides new clues about why they were built in their current locations and how the ancient Egyptians accessed their complexes.
“Studies had been carried out to discover ancient buried channels of the Nile, but this time we turned our attention to knowing the relationship between the river and the pyramids, and why they are all distributed on the western bank of the Nile,” says Hafez.
In search of lost temples
By analyzing radar images, researchers have been able to identify that the arm of the pyramids was between 2.5 and 10 kilometers west of the modern course of the Nile. It had a depth of between two and eight meters, a width of 200 700 meters, and extended for about 64 kilometers, bordering around thirty pyramids.
The pyramids of ancient Egypt were in complexes with other structures, including a relatively remote temple on the banks of a body of water connected to the rest by a causeway. The study indicates that these temples acted as river ports, and has determined that the five that have partially survived to this day are located along the shore of what was the river arm of the pyramids and that all the roads run perpendicular to its course. Researchers point out that the discovery could help find other temples that now remain buried. “We believe it will open the door to excavation along the arm of the pyramids to discover more archaeological sites and perhaps lead to a big find in the future,” notes Hafez.
The researchers also propose that the location of these temples may be useful to understand the evolution of the water levels of the river arm. Thus, the rhomboid pyramid and the red pyramid of the Dahshur complex, south of Cairo, are located deep in the desert, and radar data reveal that its temple-port stood opposite the bank of an extinct canal of the arm of the pyramids. In contrast, the pyramids of the Fifth Dynasty, from approximately 2,500 to 2,350 BC, are located at low altitudes and closer to the floodplain, indicating low water levels. The roads of the great pyramids of Giza, for their part, flow into a kind of river bay that links with the arm of the pyramids, and the largest of the three, the great pyramid of Cheops, seems to connect directly with the arm now located .
You can follow SUBJECT in Facebook, x and instagramor sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.
#extinct #branch #Nile #located #explains #enigmatic #location #Egyptian #pyramids