Why were more than two dozen of ancient Egypt’s pyramids — including the Great Pyramid of Giza — clustered in a narrow strip of desert? Scientists say they’ve come up with a solution to the mystery: Thousands of years ago, a river ran through it.
The research team, led by Eman Ghoneim of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, identified the extinct riverbed with ground-penetrating radar and some geological sifting and sleuthing. They call this dried-up branch of the Nile “the Ahramat Branch” — a name derived from the Arabic word for pyramid.
Confirming the existence of the Ahramat Branch could resolve some of the questions relating to how ancient Egyptians were able to accomplish the monumental task of building the pyramids.
“Many of the pyramids, dating to the Old and Middle Kingdoms, have causeways that lead to the branch and terminate with Valley Temples which may have acted as river harbors along it in the past,” the researchers write in a paper published today in the journal Communications Earth & Environment.
“We suggest that the Ahramat Branch played a role in the monuments’ construction and that it was simultaneously active and used as a transportation waterway for workmen and building materials to the pyramids’ sites,” they say.
