Near the Giza Pyramids, an ancient branch of the Nile River and underground passages appear – Tahrir

The pyramids of Giza are not finished revealing their secrets. Although specialists in ancient Egypt knew that a waterway was used to build these archaeological structures, doubts remained about their exact shape and location. Since publication on May 16 by A Stady In the magazine Earth and Environment CommunicationsWe now know for certain that the ancient Nile River, now dry, flowed alongside the pyramids, including those of Giza, and would have made it possible to transport the materials needed to build one of the Seven Wonders of the World. .

The same desert strip

“No one was sure of the location, shape and size of this huge waterway.” Egyptian geomorphologist Iman Ghoneim from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington (United States) and lead author of the study told AFP. The branch of the Nil Nommée Ahramat – signifiant “pyramides” in Arab Egyptians – is located on 64 km, with a large apartment consisting of 200 and 700 metres, in the region of the Great Pyramids, in the middle of the next month of Gizeh, in the north. It played the role of a river highway, making it possible to transport workers and also blocks of stone, sometimes weighing several tons, thus explaining why all 31 pyramids were built along the same strip of desert. An additional discovery confirms these findings, as traces of footbridges were also found between the pyramids and temples located at the bottom of the valley – true river ports.

To map the location of the ancient waterway, the research team used satellite images, as well as geophysical surveys and sampling of sediments found at the site. “Unlike aerial photographs or optical satellite sensors that provide images of the Earth’s surface, radar sensors have this unique ability to strip away the sand layer to reveal ancient structures or buried rivers.” Iman Ghoneim explained.

Two underground buildings

Furthermore, another team of archaeologists, who were present during a similar period and at the same location, found themselves faced with a new puzzle. After geophysical explorations via ground-penetrating radar and electrical resistivity tomography, scientists discovered two underground buildings. These cavities are located beneath the funerary complex in Giza, which contains, among other things, the remains of Prince Hemyunu, known as the architect of the Great Pyramid, and are of two different sizes. One of them is shallow – between 0.5 to 2 meters below the surface of the desert – in the shape of the letter L, and covers an area of ​​10 by 15 metres, and the other is buried at a depth of 3.5 to 10 meters below the surface of the earth, and extends over an area of ​​10 x 10 meters. According to preliminary analyses, the two corridors communicate. underground with each other, and could later reveal an important archaeological structure.

Puzzled by this discovery, scientists atStady Published in May in the magazine Archaeological excavation – The result of cooperation between Egyptian and Japanese researchers – no convincing explanation has been found to explain the difference in density between the soil and inside the cavities, which could be a mixture of sand and gravel that forms air gaps. At the moment, archaeologists are not talking about a new cemetery, but rather a simple one “abnormality”. Future excavations may reveal more.