13 October 2025 The Future is the Product of the Past

A long-lost branch of the Nile helped in building Egypt’s pyramids – Scientists Say

The Giza Pyramids are one of the world’s most iconic cultural landscapes, and they have fascinated humans for thousands of years.  It has been argued for years as to how these historic structures were constructed.

The Nile River is depicted as a geometric mountain chain. The Great Pyramid, which was built to commemorate the reign of Pharaoh Khufu, the second king of Egypt’s fourth dynasty, covered 13 acres and stood more than 480 feet when it was finished around 2560 B.C. 2.3 million limestone and granite blocks, each weighing more than 2 tons, were miraculously transported across miles of desert from the Nile’s banks to the pyramid site on the Giza Plateau.

It would have been exhausting to transport these stones over land.  For a very long time, scientists assumed that the process required the use of a river or channel, but today the Nile is miles away from the pyramids. However, on Monday, however, a team of researchers reported evidence that a lost arm of the Nile once cut through this stretch of desert and would have greatly simplified transporting the giant slabs to the pyramid complex.

The new study, which was released on Monday in the journal PNAS, evaluated the environmental factors that allowed the construction of the Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure pyramids at Giza, which tower over the west bank of the Nile.

The scientists reconstructed the rise and fall of the Khufu Branch, a now-extinct Nile tributary, over the previous 8,000 years using clues preserved in the desert soil. Their findings, propose that the Khufu Branch, which dried up completely around 600 B.C., played an important role in the construction of the ancient wonders.



📣 Our WhatsApp channel is now LIVE! Stay up-to-date with the latest news and updates, just click here to follow us on WhatsApp and never miss a thing!!



Location of the cores on the Giza floodplain. Photo: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). DOI:10.1073/pnas.2202530119

“It was impossible to build the pyramids here without this branch of the Nile,” said Hader Sheisha, an environmental geographer at the European Center for Research and Teaching in Environmental Geoscience and an author of the new study.

The recent Wadi al-Jarf papyri discoveries, which document contemporary Nile boat transport of stone blocks for pyramid construction from the cliffs opposite Giza and from the Red Sea, have helped to solve some of the mysteries surrounding those pyramid constructions.

The discovery of a trove of papyrus fragments at the site of an ancient harbor near the Red Sea in 2013 sparked the project. Some of the scrolls date from Khufu’s reign and tell of an official named Merer and his men’s efforts to transport limestone up the Nile to Giza, where it was fashioned into the Great Pyramid’s outer layer.

Today, the Nile flows more than 7 kilometers east of the Giza pyramids. However, Nile flow through a channel that linked the Giza plateau to the Nile, dubbed the “Khufu channel” after the famed Khufu pyramid at Giza (2,583,283 m3, 146 m high), has been hypothesized from modern wastewater project corings and its 1.8-kilometer-long trench that cut through an ancient channel—perhaps even through Khufu’s palace.”

The Wadi al-Jarf papyri describe the transport of stone to Giza via a branch of the Nile. Examinations of sediment collected near the pyramid site, as well as bones and teeth from mummies from the time period, revealed that the area had become much drier later on. Studying pollen grains provided evidence of ancient plant life that could not have survived without water.

“This fluvial channel, the Khufu branch, enabled navigation to the Pyramid Harbor complex, but its precise environmental history is unclear. To fill this knowledge gap, we used pollen-derived vegetation patterns to reconstruct 8,000 y of fluvial variations on the Giza floodplain… Our results show that Giza’s waterscapes responded to gradual insolation-driven aridification of East Africa, with the lowest Nile levels recorded at the end of the Dynastic Period.

Cover Photo: Artist’s reconstruction of the now defunct Khufu branch of the Nile River. Credit: Alex Boersma/Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2202530119

Related Articles

Experts to uncover the secret of the monumental and three-dimensional Urartian statue found on Garibin Tepe

2 November 2024

2 November 2024

In an area where rescue excavations were conducted last year, archaeologists discovered a basalt stone statue from the Urartian period...

İnteresting Relief on the Roman Millstone

20 February 2021

20 February 2021

During the Cambridgeshire A14 road improvement work, workers found an interesting millstone. A large penis was engraved in the Roman-era...

Export barred on roundel manuscript gifted to Queen Elizabeth I by Archbishop

12 September 2022

12 September 2022

A rare presentation manuscript that Archbishop of Canterbury Matthew Parker gave to Queen Elizabeth I in 1573 has been sold...

Tanzania’s mysterious footprints were made by early humans, not bears

6 December 2021

6 December 2021

The prehistoric footprints discovered by archaeologists caused confusion because scientists looked at them again to determine whether they were left...

1000-Year-Old Tomb Found in Perre Ancient City in southeast Turkey

1 July 2021

1 July 2021

A 1,000-year-old tomb was unearthed in the ancient city of Perre in Adiyaman province. Perre is one of the five...

The DNA of 4000-years-old hazelnut shells found in Kültepe

11 November 2023

11 November 2023

Excavations conducted ten years ago at the archaeological site of Kültepe Kanesh Karum, which dates back 6,000 years and is...

New Discovery at Karahan Tepe: The Figure of a Running Wild Donkey Carved on Stone

31 August 2024

31 August 2024

The figure of a running wild donkey carved on a stone was discovered during excavations at Karahan Tepe, a Pre-Pottery...

Assyrian seal found in the ancient Kef Fortress built by the Urartians

18 November 2024

18 November 2024

An alabaster seal, believed to be from the Assyrian Empire and belonging to a nobleman, was discovered in the ancient...

Persian plateau unveiled as crucial hub for early human migration out of Africa, study suggests

29 March 2024

29 March 2024

60,000 to 70,000 years ago, our species Homo sapiens walked out of Africa and began to find new homes around...

A Celtiberian city more than 2000 years old found in Spain

16 July 2023

16 July 2023

The Polytechnic University of Madrid announced the discovery of a Roman camp and the Celtiberian city of Titiakos in the...

The Lost Georgian King: Archaeologists Discover the Tomb of Ashot the Great Beneath Gevhernik Fortress

8 October 2025

8 October 2025

High in the misty mountains of northeastern Türkiye, where emerald valleys carve through the rugged Artvin landscape, an ancient fortress...

At Göbeklitepe, believed to be the earliest known Mesolithic temple complex, grinding stones were discovered

26 October 2022

26 October 2022

A recent discovery at Göbeklitepe, the oldest known Mesolithic temple complex, has revealed grinding stones, new finds expected to shed...

Norwegian Boy in Search of Granddad’s Wedding Ring Finds 1500-year-old Roman Jewellery

11 August 2021

11 August 2021

Sander Magnus Vang (12) needed to find his grandfather’s lost wedding ring. Instead, he found a 1500-year-old ring. The golden...

‘Mystery and Unfathomable’ King Arthur’s Hall is 4,000 Years Older Than Previously Thought

10 November 2024

10 November 2024

A mysterious monument in Cornwall has been discovered to be 5,000 years old—4,000 years older than previously thought. The rectangular...

Scientists find the oldest evidence of humans in Israel -a 1.5 million-year-old Human vertebra

3 February 2022

3 February 2022

An international group of Israeli and American researchers, an ancient human vertebra has been uncovered in Israel’s Jordan Valley that...