Rediscovering The Nile: The Ancient River That Was Once Overlooked By The Egyptian Pyramids

Although we usually imagine the conditions in Ancient Egypt to be much like the Egypt of today, back during the Holocene there was significantly more rain as a result of the African Humid Period (AHP). This translated in the river Nile stretching far beyond its current range, with many more branches. This knowledge led a team of researchers to test the hypothesis that the largest cluster of pyramids in the Nile Valley was sited along one of these now long since vanished branches. Their findings are described in an article published in Communications Earth & Environment, by [Eman Ghoneim] and colleagues.

The Ahramat Branch and pyramids along its trajectory. (Credit: Eman Ghoneim et al., 2024)

The CliffsNotes version can be found in the accompanying press release by the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Effectively, the researchers postulated that a branch of the Nile existed along these grouping of pyramids, with their accompanying temples originally positioned alongside this branch. The trick was to prove that a river branch once existed in that area many thousands of years ago.

What complicates this is that the main course of the Nile has shifted over the centuries, and anthropogenic activity has obscured much what remained, making life for researchers exceedingly difficult. Ultimately a combination of soil core samples, geophysical evidence, and remote sensing (e.g. satellite imagery) helped to cement the evidence for the existence what they termed the Ahramat Nile Branch, with ‘ahramat’ meaning ‘pyramids’ in Arabic.

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and high-resolution radar elevation data provided evidence for the Nile onc ..

Support the originator by clicking the read the rest link below.