Long-lost branch of the Nile was 'indispensable for building the pyramids,' research shows

"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 harbors," study first author Eman Ghoneim, a professor and director of the Space and Drone Remote Sensing Lab at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, told Live Science in an email.

The team used radar satellite imagery, deep soil coring and geophysical tests to find and map the remains of the Ahramat branch.

Hader Sheisha, an associate professor of natural history at the University of Bergen in Norway who wasn't involved with the study, told Live Science in an email that "these findings show clearly that the Nile hydrological [network] was indispensable for building the pyramids."

She was the lead author of a 2022 study that found that a branch of the Nile went close to the Great Pyramid at Giza, making it easier to transport goods and materials.

Sheisha also noted that earlier studies proposed that goods were brought to pyramid sites through river branches that have since dried up.

An ancient papyrus that contains the logbook of a man named Merer notes that while the Great Pyramid was being constructed, workers brought materials to it by way of a nearby harbor.