Seeing the famous pyramids of Giza for what they are today – an invincible and indestructible city surrounded by sand – and a vast city – it’s hard to imagine the day they were built.
The stone labyrinths, built to honor the dead and bring them to the afterlife, were built about 4,500 years ago without modern technology and with incredible precision.
But the Egyptians needed more than a few primitive ladders to move heavy stone blocks into place.
A new study shows that favorable environmental conditions made possible the construction of the pyramids of Giza, with the ancient Nile river system serving as a navigational channel for the transport of goods.
To build the plateau’s pyramids, tombs, and temples, ancient Egyptian engineers appear to have taken advantage of the Nile and its annual flooding, using an ingenious system of canals and basins that created a port complex at the foot of the plateau of Giza. It is a lack of ecological evidence of when, where and how these ancient landscapes developed.”
Archaeologists have believed for some time that the builders of the Egyptian pyramids may have dredged streams of water from the Nile, created channels and harbors, and took advantage of the annual floods to act as a hydraulic jack. to deliver building materials.
The port complex, which archaeologists assume served the pyramids of Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure, is now located 7 kilometers (or 4.3 miles) west of the Nile. The gates must also be deep enough to support barges loaded with stones.
Major excavations carried out during the urban engineering period around modern Giza revealed stratigraphic evidence of bedrock corresponding to an ancient branch of the Nile extending towards the base of the pyramids.
But questions remain about how the Egyptians designed the waterway at the Pyramids of Giza. During its construction, northern Egypt was experiencing some extreme climate changes with floods that repeatedly destroyed the lost pyramid city of Heit al-Ghurab, which was inhabited by seasonal workers.
In this study, the researchers turned to fossilized pollen grains to paint a more detailed picture of the river system as it unfolded over thousands of years. Pollination grains can be preserved in ancient sediments and have been used in other studies to reconstruct past climates and cultivated landscapes that look quite different today.
The team extracted pollen grains from five cores excavated in the present-day Giza Plain east of the pyramid complex and identified numerous flowering, grass-like plants that lined the banks of the Nile and marsh plants. that grow in marginal environments. your lake
They say it shows the existence of a permanent pool of water that seeped into the Giza floods and swelled thousands of years ago.
From there, they tracked the rise and fall of water levels in the Khufu tributary of the Nile over 8,000 years of Egyptian dynastic history and correlated their findings with other historical records.
Shisha and colleagues wrote: “Reconstructing Khufu’s branch levels over 8,000 years provides a better understanding of the river landscape during the construction of the Giza pyramid complex. Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure, who facilitated the transportation of building materials to the Giza pyramid complex.”
But after the reign of King Tutankhamun, which rose around 1349-1338 BC, the Khufu tributary of the Nile gradually declined until it reached its lowest documented level in the last 8,000 years towards the end of the dynastic period.
This decline correlates with chemical markers found in the teeth and bones of Egyptian mummies, which along with other historical records point to a similarly arid environment.
However, as with all archaeological studies, the timescales—from the rule of the pharaohs to the change in the environment—can vary greatly, so we must treat the findings with caution.
But by linking environmental and historical data, the study provides more direct evidence than when archaeologists searched for lost fractals – amazing self-replicating patterns often found in nature – and concluded that the ancient Egyptians may have dug river channels while building the Dahshur Pyramids. , south of Giza.
“It’s hard to believe the huge impact the Egyptians left behind,” geologist Arne Ramesh of the University of Innsbruck told New Scientist at the time.
The researchers behind this latest study suggest that similar techniques could be used to recreate the ancient waterscapes that occupied other Egyptian pyramid complexes, including the Dahshur Necropolis, when the massive structures were built. this.
The research was published in PNAS.
Source: Science Alert
Source: Arabic RT
