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Journalism of Courage
Moving things that weigh over two tonnes is a difficult task today — imagine doing so 4,500 years ago. Yet, that is exactly what the ancient Egyptians pulled off to build the iconic pyramids of Egypt. Take, for instance, the Great Pyramid of Giza. Scholars estimate that it contains roughly 2.3 million individual blocks of stone, each weighing 2.3 metric tonnes on average.
Moving such heavy objects without mechanised equipment seems so implausible that some have even (dubiously) credited aliens for the feat. A new study, however, finds that it was the River Nile that made Egypt’s pyramids possible.
Most of Egypts pyramids can be found in a 50 km, north-south stretch of desert between Giza and the village of Lisht. These sites today lie several kilometeres away from the Nile. While Egyptologists have long suspected that the river might once have been closer to the pyramids, and indeed contemporaneous literary evidence suggests the same, conclusive proof has been elusive — until now.
A study published in the journal Communications Earth and Environment on May 16 has identified segments of a major extinct branch of the Nile, which runs right adjacent to the pyramids and could have been used to move heavy material around.
A team led by geomorphologist Eman Ghoneim used radar satellite imagery, historical maps, geophysical surveys, and sediment coring — a technique used by archaeologists to recover evidence from samples — to map the river branch, which was likely buried thousands of years ago by sandstorms and a major drought.
“Locating the actual [river] branch and having the data that shows there was a waterway that could be used for the transportation of heavier blocks, equipment, people, everything, really helps us explain pyramid construction,” Suzanne Onstine, one of the studies co-authors, told the BBC.
The Ahramat, as the Nile branch has been named by the researchers, ran for roughly 64 km, was 200-700 m wide, and 2-8 m deep. The study also reveals that several of the pyramids’ causeways led to the inlets connected to the channel, which researchers posit could have acted as riverine harbours.
After all, moving stones to the site of the pyramid was just one part of the process. Thousands of workers had to then precisely place these blocks, which, researchers believe, was done via large ramps greased with water or wet clay, sledges, sturdy ropes, and levers.
Even conceptualising the pyramids required advanced understanding of mathematics and architecture. For instance, each side of Giza’s Great pyramid has a precise and consistent gradient of 52 degrees — a testament to both the planning of the architects, and the execution of the workers.
These workers lived in massive, highly organised settlements right next to the pyramids. The remains of bakeries and piles of animal bones show that not only were workers well fed for their labour, the whole endeavour was controlled by a strong central authority.
“Many people think of the site as just a cemetery in the modern sense, but it’s a lot more than that,” Egyptologist Peter Der Manuelian told The National Geographic in 2023. Their construction, decoration, and existence shed light into “every aspect of life in ancient Egypt”, he said.
