How dozens of Egyptian pyramids were built along the edge of Egypt's western desert, several kilometers away from the Nile, is (or was) an "ancient" dilemma.
Several studies had already theorized that, in order to transport the resources needed to build these pyramids, the River Nile must have had a branch that passed by the construction sites.
Only such a hypothesis could explain why pyramids - notably the famous Great Pyramid of Giza - are clustered on a thin strip of arid, inhospitable land.
To study this theory, a group of researchers from Macquarie University in Sydney (Australia) analyzed satellite images and other data on the elevation of the land in the region.
The conclusions of the study, published this Thursday in Communications Earth & Environment, indicated that depressions found in the landscape suggest that the ancient water channel extended 64 kilometers beyond the pyramid fields, between the city of Giza to the north and the village of Lisht to the south.
The researchers took soil and sediment samples along its route and discovered a bed of sand hidden under what is now agricultural land or desert.
"We calculated that it was around 200 to 700 meters wide and at least 8 meters deep at its deepest point," said the leader of the research, Timothy Ralph, quoted by New Scientist.
The same magazine details that the sidewalks found around the pyramids seem to end on the banks of this ancient branch of the Nile.
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This evidence is most likely confirmation that the water channel was used to transport building materials thousands of years ago.
The ancient "arm of the Nile" - nicknamed the "Ahramat arm", which means pyramid in Arabic - eventually dried up after a severe drought hit the region some 4,200 years ago.
