It makes a lot of sense because obviously having a river there makes the transport of materials a lot easier, but i do wonder how nobody noticed this before.
> The biggest unknown with my model is whether there was a major western Nile channel at the time, as modern authorities are split on this question.
Seems like what we have now is the discovery of a natural branch, which doesn't mean they didn't dig out useful extensions too.
The Nature article calls this branch a "tributary of the nile", which is the opposite thing to a branch. The paper says distributary (a branch). The tributaries are way to the south in Sudan and Ethiopia and Kenya.
>They said also that the first man who became king of Egypt was Min; and that in his time all Egypt except the district of Thebes was a swamp, and none of the regions were then above water which now lie below the lake of Moiris, to which lake it is a voyage of seven days up the river from the sea: and I thought that they said well about the land;
Later on
>Such is this labyrinth: but a cause for marvel even greater than this is afforded by the lake, which is called the lake of Moiris, along the side of which this labyrinth is built. The measure of its circuit is three thousand six hundred furlongs (being sixty schoines), and this is the same number of furlongs as the extent of Egypt itself along the sea. The lake lies extended lengthwise from North to South, and in depth where it is deepest it is fifty fathoms. That this lake is artificial and formed by digging is self-evident, for about in the middle of the lake stand two pyramids, each rising above the water to a height of fifty fathoms, the part which is built below the water being of just the same height; and upon each is placed a colossal statue of stone sitting upon a chair. Thus the pyramids are a hundred fathoms high; and these hundred fathoms are equal to a furlong of six hundred feet, the fathom being measured as six feet or four cubits, the feet being four palms each, and the cubits six. The water in the lake does not come from the place where it is, for the country there is very deficient in water, but it has been brought thither from the Nile by a canal; and for six months the water flows into the lake, and for six months out into the Nile again; and whenever it flows out, then for the six months it brings into the royal treasury a talent of silver a day from the fish which are caught, and twenty pounds when the water comes in. The natives of the place moreover said that this lake had an outlet under ground to the Syrtis which is in Libya, turning towards the interior of the continent upon the Western side and running along by the mountain which is above Memphis.
That's higher than the Great Pyramid. Lake Moeris still exists and is not near Giza. The two pyramids are thought to be exaggerations of the Pedestals of Biahmu:
Today, King Min is more commonly known as Menes, an upper Egyptian King who ushered in 3000 years of dynastic Pharaonic history by conquering the Nile Delta and thus uniting for the first time all of Egypt. He was as ancient to Herodotus as Herodotus is to us today (2500 years each). It is humbling just how deep Egyptian history goes.
Fascinating, thanks for sharing! Makes me wonder if the great pyramid was partially submerged, and if so, by how much.
This account lends some credence to theories of the pyramids functioning as some sort of ram pump in my opinion. (Check out John Cadman’s work if you’re interested).
Makes a lot of sense. I did a small dive into watersheds and fluvial systems a long time ago and something that surprises layman is how quickly rivers can change in just a few decades, let alone thousands of years. Even (or perhaps especially
) large rivers love meandering and and carving new paths over time.
Humans think of rivers as static things and like to use rivers as natural "borders" and forget that these are actually organic and evolving systems.
I can't speak to "the literature" but people have been colloquially talking about the mysterious lack of a canal since at least the 90s. One of the reasons people floated was a no-longer-active branch of the nile.
IIRC it's been well-known for a while how they moved the vast majority of materials by land (similar to how the Stonehenge megaliths were moved, highly dissimilar to how the Rapa Nui moai were).
No,the best theory is they cut the stones in a slightly underwater quarry. The limestone if submerged hasn't gained co2. They used a complex system similar to a canal. They used ballast like logs or airbags to float the cut rocks while keeping them uderwater. Even the top working row was a water filled mini canal. They would drop the stones into place. Once the water was removed the limestone would absorb co2 and swell, tightening the blocks together. This would have been some serious engineering.
Or maybe that branch was man-made, for one to help builders to transport the materials, and also to build the pyramid itself after controlling the water level there with some man-made dams.
I wonder would the proposed harbor locations have left any structure to indicate that they were in fact harbor temples rather than just temples?
I also wonder how much the river moves within that flood plain. I lived in a flood plain at one point and the river even season to season seemed to "move" a noticeable amount.
At Wadi al-Jarf[1], one of the oldest harbors in the world (~2600 BCE), they discovered numerous stone anchors, a stone jetty, and storage galleries carved into limestone that contained several boats, sail fragments, oars, and rope. They also found jars that have been discovered at another site across the Red Sea, indicating they may have been used for trade.
I would expect that harbors were mostly made of wood. Stone is too heavy and would sink into the bottom, and they didn't have access to enough metals to think about bronze (much less iron). Wood of course rots - while the climate in Egypt is the most conductive to wood not rotting, if it was a harbor structure I'd expect (read I'm not sure here!) that the area remained as a swamp for a while thus rotting away anything left behind before to fully dried up.
Ancient Egypt was notoriously wood-poor. Stonemasonry was developed to a high art there (in both senses of the word) out of necessity.
Many Egyptian watercraft were made not of wood but of papyrus. Where wood was utilised, it was imported from elsewhere (Lebanon, famous for its cedars, and acacia, possibly domestic in origin).
Amongst Egyptian relics, wood stands out as a high-value material reflecting its scarcity and imported status.
Other possible shipbuilding materials, not likely to have been available or widely used, would include animal skins (as with Inuit kyaks), water-proofed cloth (unlikely, though cotton was abundant), metals (unlikely), and concrete (again, highly unlikely).
Papyrus has even poorer survival characteristics as a shipbuilding material than wood, though some relics are extant.
The oldest surviving dugout canoe found could be as old as 10k years old. Certainly a number of ancient Egyptian boats have been found and dated to around the time of the pyramids. So dock piles could possibly have survived.
Of course there were no doubt a large number of boats and only a small number of temple docks.
The Mississippi used to change course every year, and was about double the current length - all while following essentially the same route. (until the US army got involved). How do you want to count that?
I've recently been looking into the natron theory, which I also like. Instead of chiselling out big granite blocks and moving them long distances, you use a bucket of powder and a lot of wood ash to chemically form rocks.
Readit News
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diary_of_Merer
In fact it describes artificial basins, found in previous core samples.
Nice article about that, lots of pictures:
https://the-past.com/feature/records-of-the-pyramid-builders...
> The biggest unknown with my model is whether there was a major western Nile channel at the time, as modern authorities are split on this question.
Seems like what we have now is the discovery of a natural branch, which doesn't mean they didn't dig out useful extensions too.
The Nature article calls this branch a "tributary of the nile", which is the opposite thing to a branch. The paper says distributary (a branch). The tributaries are way to the south in Sudan and Ethiopia and Kenya.
Here's the paper:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01379-7
>They said also that the first man who became king of Egypt was Min; and that in his time all Egypt except the district of Thebes was a swamp, and none of the regions were then above water which now lie below the lake of Moiris, to which lake it is a voyage of seven days up the river from the sea: and I thought that they said well about the land;
Later on
>Such is this labyrinth: but a cause for marvel even greater than this is afforded by the lake, which is called the lake of Moiris, along the side of which this labyrinth is built. The measure of its circuit is three thousand six hundred furlongs (being sixty schoines), and this is the same number of furlongs as the extent of Egypt itself along the sea. The lake lies extended lengthwise from North to South, and in depth where it is deepest it is fifty fathoms. That this lake is artificial and formed by digging is self-evident, for about in the middle of the lake stand two pyramids, each rising above the water to a height of fifty fathoms, the part which is built below the water being of just the same height; and upon each is placed a colossal statue of stone sitting upon a chair. Thus the pyramids are a hundred fathoms high; and these hundred fathoms are equal to a furlong of six hundred feet, the fathom being measured as six feet or four cubits, the feet being four palms each, and the cubits six. The water in the lake does not come from the place where it is, for the country there is very deficient in water, but it has been brought thither from the Nile by a canal; and for six months the water flows into the lake, and for six months out into the Nile again; and whenever it flows out, then for the six months it brings into the royal treasury a talent of silver a day from the fish which are caught, and twenty pounds when the water comes in. The natives of the place moreover said that this lake had an outlet under ground to the Syrtis which is in Libya, turning towards the interior of the continent upon the Western side and running along by the mountain which is above Memphis.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedestals_of_Biahmu
But Herodotus just reported what he was told, like with the gold-digging ants:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold-digging_ant
Which seem to have been real (marmots). So who knows.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menes
This account lends some credence to theories of the pyramids functioning as some sort of ram pump in my opinion. (Check out John Cadman’s work if you’re interested).
Humans think of rivers as static things and like to use rivers as natural "borders" and forget that these are actually organic and evolving systems.
You don't say...
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/premium/article/egypt-pyr...
[0] History Channel
I also wonder how much the river moves within that flood plain. I lived in a flood plain at one point and the river even season to season seemed to "move" a noticeable amount.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wadi_al-Jarf
Many Egyptian watercraft were made not of wood but of papyrus. Where wood was utilised, it was imported from elsewhere (Lebanon, famous for its cedars, and acacia, possibly domestic in origin).
Amongst Egyptian relics, wood stands out as a high-value material reflecting its scarcity and imported status.
Other possible shipbuilding materials, not likely to have been available or widely used, would include animal skins (as with Inuit kyaks), water-proofed cloth (unlikely, though cotton was abundant), metals (unlikely), and concrete (again, highly unlikely).
Papyrus has even poorer survival characteristics as a shipbuilding material than wood, though some relics are extant.
Of course there were no doubt a large number of boats and only a small number of temple docks.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stream_capture>
We know that rivers change courses, and there are both known and unknown instances of this.
Edit: "capture" above originally read "crapture".
Get your mind out of the sewer, dred...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1y8N0ePuF8
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