Egyptian and American geologists have located the bed of a dried-up arm of the Nile, 64 km long, along which the Cheops Pyramid and other tombs of the pharaohs of the Old and Middle Kingdoms were built. The river's level dropped sharply about 4.2 thousand years ago as a result of prolonged drought and sandstorms, researchers wrote in an article published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment.
„We used radar satellite imagery as well as geophysical data and deep soil samples to analyze the soil and sediment structure in the vicinity of Ancient Egypt's largest pyramids. This analysis allowed us to identify several fragments of the channel of the vanished branch of the Nile, which we named Ahramat. There were harbors and temples on its shores that were connected by paved roads with many pyramids from the Old and Middle Kingdoms, the study said.
The discovery was made by a group of American and Egyptian geologists, led by University of North Carolina professor Iman Ghoneim, as they studied how the nature of the Nile flow has changed over the past several thousand years. The interest of scientists in this question is due to the fact that all the great pyramids of Ancient Egypt are located at a great distance from the Nile, which is supposed to have served as the main artery for the supply of building materials for the pyramids.
In recent years, archaeologists, physicists and geologists have found evidence that these materials were transported through a vanished arm of the Nile, traces of which have recently been found in the pyramids of Cheops, Chephren and Menkaur. Professor Ghoneim and other scientists tried to find similar evidence for the existence of a dry arm of the Nile in other pyramids from the time of the Old and Middle Kingdoms, as well as at a great distance from them.
To do this, they prepared satellite radar images of the area near these ancient monuments, and also collected soil samples in different regions of Egypt along the Nile. These photographs and measurements allowed scientists to locate several large fragments of the ancient river bed at once. The longest of these is located next to step pyramids in the Abusir necropolis, and the other two, slightly shorter, are near the pyramids of Senusret I and Amenemhet I in the El-Lisht necropolis and in the vicinity of the modern city of Jirza.
Based on the results of these measurements, the scientists reconstructed the course of the Ahramat, an ancient arm of the Nile, and also studied how the river's water level changed over time. These calculations show that the water level has gradually decreased since the time of the fourth dynasty of pharaohs and fell to very low levels 4.2 thousand years ago, during the reign of the eighth dynasty. At the same time, ancient Egypt was affected by a series of droughts and sandstorms that not only caused instability and famine, but also forced the Nile to change course, leading to shallowing and the subsequent disappearance of Ahramat, the researchers concluded.