Egypt’s Pyramids May Have Been Built on a Long-Lost Branch of the Nile River

Thirty - one different Egyptian Great Pyramid appear to have been build along a branch of the Nile River that dried up millennia ago , accord to new researchpublishedtoday in Communications Earth & Environment .

The mathematical group of pyramid — which admit the renowned Pyramid of Giza and others like the Bent Pyramid and the Step Pyramid of Djoser — now exist on a narrow strip of desert western United States of the Nile . They were build over a millennium , start out about 4,700 eld ago . According to the authors of the recent study , there was once a 40 - mi - farseeing ( 64 - km ) branch of the Nile that extended through the now inhospitable landscape painting , explicate the rather curious placement of the pyramid so far from the Nile , the longest river in the worldand the lifeblood of Ancient Egyptian civilization .

“ Revealing this extinct Nile branch can cater a more tasteful mind of where ancient settlement were peradventure site in congress to it and prevent them from being lost to speedy urbanization , ” the squad wrote . “ This could improve the protection measures of Egyptian ethnical heritage . ”

The Pyramid of Khafre in Giza.

The Pyramid of Khafre in Giza.Photo: DeAgostini (Getty Images)

The team identified the arm — long since filled in by silt — using satellite mental imagery , geophysical surveys , and sediment cores taste from the Western Desert Plateau . They propose knight the ancient branch Ahramat , Arabic for “ pyramids . ”

The squad also ascertain that many of the pyramids they read along the Western Desert Plateau had causeway which terminated where the Ahramat Branch ran . Thus , the team purport that the river ramification was likely used to transport twist materials for the pyramids , a curing of projects so elephantine that the History Channel “ Aliens ” meme always needs to be kept close at hand .

Inlets that fed the Ahramat Branch are also occupy in by sand today , making them invisible to optical satellite imagination . But radio detection and ranging and topographic information of the sites divulge the recess ’ riverbeds as well as the causeways that led to the pyramids of Pepi II and Merenre .

A map showing the placement of the ancient river branch.

A map showing the placement of the ancient river branch.Graphic: Eman Ghoneim et al.

The causeways of several other pyramid ( Khafre , Menakure , and Kentkaus ) lead to another branch of the river the squad dub the Giza Inlet , indicating that the river branch was still running in the Old Kingdom ’s quaternary dynasty . Archaeologist Eman Ghoneim from the University of North Carolina Wilmington lead the research .

However , the team concluded that the authorship was on the bulwark for the Ahramat Branch beginning around 4,200 age ago , when a major drought may have increased the amount of wind - fuck up sand that tardily satiate in the branch , eventually cloud it even to planet imaging . But thanks to radar imagery and sediment coring , an ancient imagination of the Egyptians has come to light .

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