Soil core samples show an ancient riverbed under the desert near many Egyptian pyramids, revealing an ancient waterway that dried up thousands of years ago
A former stretch of the Nile River, now buried beneath the Sahara Desert, may help scientists understand how Egyptians built the pyramids and adapted to a drying landscape
The largest pyramid field in Egypt is clustered along a narrow desert strip, yet no convincing explanation as to why these pyramids are concentrated in this specific locality has been given so far. Here we use radar satellite imagery, in conjunction with geophysical data and deep soil coring, to investigate the subsurface structure and sedimentology in the Nile Valley next to these pyramids. We identify segments of a major extinct Nile branch, which we name The Ahramat Branch, running at the foothills of the Western Desert Plateau, where the majority of the pyramids lie. 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. 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. T
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