A response to Ghoneim et al
Zahi Hawass , Tuesday 27 Aug 2024
Was the ancient Egyptian pyramid chain really built along the abandoned Ahramat Branch of the Nile, asks Zahi Hawass
I have been asked to read and respond to an article published by Eman Ghoneim and other scholars in the journal Communications Earth & Environment in May this year claiming that "the Egyptian pyramid chain was built along the now abandoned Ahramat Nile Branch."
In doing so, I talked with my colleague Egyptologist Mark Lehner and am now responding to the many requests I have received for our opinion.
The article got a lot of publicity. The authors said that they had found evidence that would reveal the "secrets of the Pyramids" and even said that this would reveal how the Pyramids were built. People began to talk about a great discovery, but if you read the article there is really no discovery at all.
Any junior Egyptologist can give you an explanation of why the ancient Egyptian pyramids are concentrated along the Western Desert edge of the Nile Valley between the entrance to the Fayoum to the apex of the Delta. During the Old and Middle Kingdoms, in other words the Pyramid Age, this narrowest neck of the Nile Valley was Egypt's capital zone with its centre at Memphis, the capital that tied together the Two Lands of Upper Egypt (the Valley) and Lower Egypt (the Delta).
In ancient Egypt, the west was traditionally associated with the dead, and pyramids were built south and north of Memphis as prominent markers of cemeteries or cities of the dead. It is simply not true, as the authors claim, that "no convincing explanation as to why these Pyramids are concentrated in this specific locality has been given so far."
The ancient Egyptians built the Pyramids where they did because they needed sites having access to limestone. The rock core of the Pyramids came from such sites, but the casing stones came from the Turah quarries.
There is nothing new in the article, as any student specialising in the Old and Middle Kingdoms will know that Egyptologists have suggested for more than a century that a western Nile branch or canal gave access to the Pyramids. Indeed, 53 years ago French Egyptologist George Goyon developed the idea of a western Nile branch or canal connecting the Pyramids and their valley temples, and he identified this branch with the Bahr Al-Libeini Canal.
As far back as 1737, the Englishman Richard Pococke wrote that the Khalij Al-Haram (Pyramids Canal) corresponded to the western channel of the Libeini Canal. Earlier Arab authors also suggested that the western trough was a fossil Nile branch. Jeffreys in 2010 assembled and reviewed historical references to the idea that Ghoneim et al now propose as a new discovery.
They write that "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 harbours along it in the past."
For more than a century, Egyptologists have investigated the hypothesis that during the Old Kingdom the ancient Egyptians excavated harbours at the end of pyramid causeways, in front of valley temples, in natural bays such as at Abusir, and in valley mouths, such as at the Khentkawes Basin in the mouth of the central valley at Giza, or even farther west, like the basin in the southern valley at Dahshour.
At Giza, we have identified walls and dikes that served as the boundaries of the harbours of the Pyramids of Khufu and Khafre and of the Khentkawes monument. We have been able to discover the harbour of king Khufu and found that houses nearby were built on walls made of basalt. In excavating the area, we found evidence that this was originally the site of the harbour of Khufu and it would have been connected with canals.
Excavations in front of the Sphinx Temple produced evidence of the existence of the harbour of Khafre, and in front of the valley temple of Khafre we found two ramps in front of the two entrances. These slope down to connect with the nearby harbour. An account of these excavations was published in a book dedicated to the great French Egyptologist Jean Leclant.
The harbour and canal were used to bring stone to the site. This could have included granite from Nubia, alabaster from Hatnub in Middle Egypt north of Amarna, fine limestone from Turah, and basalt from Fayoum. The ancient Egyptians also brought copper and turquoise from Sinai, and even during the construction of the pyramids the workmen working on them would have used the canal and the harbour.
For more than a century Egyptologists have discussed the idea that the basins at the sites could have received Nile water, at least during inundations. The authors are either ignorant of this discussion and the research on this topic, or they are ignoring the extent to which their proposals has already been dealt with in scholarly works so that they can present their findings as a new discovery. Nearly all commentators agree, and it is an old idea, that the Libeini Canal is a relic of an older western Nile channel.
The authors write that "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 pyramid sites."
The authors present this as though it is a new idea. But there is nothing new in it. Most recently, discussion on this exact point came into focus with the discovery in 2013 of the Wadi Al-Jarf papyri that include, among other documents, the journal of a man named Merer who led a team making deliveries of limestone by boat from the eastern quarries at Turah to Giza in order to build Khufu's Pyramid. The journal refers to two routes to Giza from Turah.
Egyptologist Pierre Tallet pointed to the Libeini Canal as marking a western branch of the Nile and the southern route that Merer and his men took to Giza. The authors seem unaware of this stimulating new information.
The discovery of the Wadi Al-Jarf papyri is a major find and can confirm the existence of the canals and the harbours. Merer took 40 workmen and went to Turah to cut the fine white limestone needed for the pyramid's casing stones. In his account, he also mentioned his supervisor Dedi, and I myself found the tomb of Dedi in my excavations at the western side of the Khufu Pyramid near the famous tomb of the dwarf Pr-ny ankhw.
Merer was sent to Sinai after visiting Turah, and in his account he tells us about the area that he lived in at Giza known as "Ankh Khufu", which means "Khufu lives". He also tells us that he worked in the year 27 of the reign of king Khufu and that the person in charge was called Ankh Khaf. He says that when they came back to the Pyramids site, they arrived at a place called R-s, which means "mouth of the lake". The location of this has not been identified by scholars.
Ghoneim at al used Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery and "high resolution elevation data for the Nile floodplain and its desert margins, to bring the western channel along the Libeini into greater relief." They used Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) and Electromagnetic Tomography (EMT) along a 1.2 km long profile to reveal "a hidden river channel lying 1-1.5 m below the cultivated Nile floodplain. The position and shape of this river channel is an excellent match with those derived from radar satellite imagery for the Ahramat Branch," that is, the Libeini branch, they say.
Their 3D illustration of the western Nile channel in mid-flood is remarkably like the image published by National Geographic magazine in 1995 from our work on this same subject showing the pyramid harbours and their connection to a western Nile branch. We digitised 1977 Ministry of Housing and Reconstruction maps with contours at one-metre intervals showing the desert and flood plain from the north to the south of Cairo.
National Geographic enhanced the relief by exaggerating the vertical and projecting a 3D reconstruction, very much like Ghoneim et al's Figure 7, as well as a scale model of the deep trough marking a relic of the western Nile channel. In other words, the major finding of Ghoneim et al was already illustrated in 1995.
Any Egyptology student could explain why the Egyptian pyramids are concentrated along the Western Desert edge of the Nile Valley west of Memphis. Any Egyptology graduate student would be aware of the many publications that discuss a western Nile channel along the course of the Libeini. The Ghoneim article might thus have been more temperate if the editors had passed it first to Egyptologists for review.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 29 August, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
-- Sent from my Linux system.
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