Researchers from a North Carolina college believe that a long-lost branch of the Nile was once the thoroughfare that connected multiple sites where ancient Egyptian pyramids were built.
The research team from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington said that through satellite imaging, geophysical surveys and analysis of soil, they found where, thousands of years ago, a 40-mile long branch of the the Nile River once flowed west of where the Nile flows today, according to CNN.
“Even though many efforts to reconstruct the early Nile waterways have been conducted, they have largely been confined to soil sample collections from small sites, which has led to the mapping of only fragmented sections of the ancient Nile channel systems,” lead study author and professor Eman Ghoneim said.
“This is the first study to provide the first map of the long-lost ancient branch of the Nile River.”
The long-dried-up branch, which researchers dubbed the Ahramat Branch, was about a third of a mile wide and about 82 feet deep, Ghoneim said.
“The large size and extended length of the Ahramat Branch and its proximity to the 31 pyramids in the study area strongly suggests a functional waterway of great importance,” Ghoneim said, a far cry from the barren region of today.
She said water transportation would have facilitated the building of the 31 pyramids that are along the course of the branch.
The study is a window to understanding the past, Nick Marriner, a geographer at the French National Centre for Scientific Research in Paris, said.
“The study completes an important part of the past landscape puzzle,” Marriner said. “By putting together these pieces we can gain a clearer picture of what the Nile floodplain looked like at the time of the pyramid builders and how the ancient Egyptians harnessed their environments to transport building materials for their monumental construction endeavors.”
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Ghoneim said although water transport was a logical way to move the stones needed for the pyramids, no previous study has pinpointed one, according to a news release on the University of North Carolina at Wilmington website.
“Many of us who are interested in ancient Egypt are aware that the Egyptians must have used a waterway to build their enormous monuments, like the pyramids and valley temples, but nobody was certain of the location, the shape, the size, or proximity of this mega waterway to the actual pyramids site,” she said. “Our research offers the first map of one of the main ancient branches of the Nile at such a large scale and links it with the largest pyramid fields of Egypt.”
The pyramids were built over a span of about 1,000 years beginning about 4,700 years ago. The study suggests that about 4,200 years ago, the area experienced an increase in windblown sand, contributing to the demise of that branch of the Nile.
The research was published in Communications: Earth and Environment.
“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,” the study’s abstract said.
“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,” the abstract continued.
The study said that the Nile’s main branch has moved.
“Over time, however, the main course of the Nile River laterally migrated, and its peripheral branches silted up, leaving behind many ancient Egyptian sites distant from the present-day river course,” the study said.
The study said that the increase in sand deposits came as the weather pattern across northern Africa changed about 5,500 years ago, leading to the creation of the Sahara Desert.
