Discovered Nile's branch that leaded to the Pyramid's construction site
Discovered through satellite surveys a branch of the Nile buried under the sand of the desert, which 4000 years ago connected all the places where over 30 pyramids of Ancient Egypt were built.
A piece behind the mystery of the construction of the pyramids of ancient Egypt has been solved thanks to a campaign of satellite and on-site radar investigations. Researchers from the University of North Carolina Wilmington have discovered an imposing branch of the Nile that once flowed close to today's strip of desert where 31 pyramids built between 2686 and 1649 BC, including those on the Giza plateau.
That the pyramids had been built with the aid of waterways had always been one of the most accredited hypotheses as various previous studies lead to believe that in the past the Nile had a decidedly greater flow, with many more branches, but until today there was no conclusive evidence.
"Our research offers the first large-scale map of one of the ancient branches of the Nile, linking it with the largest Pyramid fields of Egypt" explains Eman Ghoneim, the researcher who signed the study, published in Communications Earth & Environment (https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01379-7). The research discovered the remains of what was a 64 km long branch of the Nile, with a width varying between 200 and 700 meters, located between 2.5 and 10.25 km west of the current course of the Nile, which ran from the pyramids of Lisht in the south to the Giza plateau.
The remains of the river are invisible in optical satellite images, but several sections have been detected thanks to the combination of data obtained through the synthetic aperture radar of the TanDEM-X satellite, data from the Landsat 8, Sentinal-1 and Sentinal-2 satellites, the use on-site of radar capable of penetrating the ground and with subsequent investigations using electromagnetic tomography, as well as core sampling of the sediments of the identified areas.
Some sections of the disappeared branch coincide with the current Bahr el-Libeini canal and the remains of an abandoned canal present on old topographic maps, which also contain indications of other abandoned canals, which would trace the progressive migration of the river's course towards the east. In particular, the current lake of Dahshur, according to researchers, represents the only existing trace still visible of the ancient branch of the Nile which has now disappeared.
The route of the ancient branch of the Nile, renamed Ahramat by researchers, "branch of the pyramids", would be perfectly aligned with the various monumental structures surrounding the pyramids. Many of the ancient causeways leading to the pyramids are perpendicular to the course of the Ahramat, reaching up to its banks, which suggests that they served as docks on the waterway. The researchers also identified the presence of now buried tributary channels that led into the river. Everything therefore suggests that in ancient times the Ahramat was an important waterway that connected the main centers of ancient Egypt, used for the movement of men and materials for the construction of the various monumental complexes in the region, which overlooked directly on the river.
The branch's eastward migration and subsequent disappearance are attributed to multiple factors: the northeastward shift of the Nile Delta due to tectonic activity may be one reason, as could the advance of sand from the desert plateau western Egypt, facilitated by a period of severe drought that hit the region starting around 4200 years ago, which would have led to the accumulation of sediments and the progressive reduction of the river's flow.
