2024-08-05 18:00:08
We have lost count of the theories put forward over the millennia, from the most eccentric to the most learned, to explain the construction of the Egyptian pyramids. A French team brings a new stone to this rickety house every year The study was published on August 5 PLoS Onewhich promises to cause controversy: the publication, originally scheduled for July 24, was postponed indefinitely the day before, a sign of tension among the editors of the scientific journal.
The truth is that the thesis presented is audacious. Researchers gathered around Xavier Landreau (Atomic Energy Commission), who created a private laboratory called Paleotechnic, interested in the first pyramid in Egypt, of Djoser, the first king of the Third Dynasty, more than 4,600 years ago on the Saqqara Plateau , on the left bank of the Nile. They came to the conclusion that its builders had relied in part on hydraulic power to assemble a mountain of limestone blocks from the inside, “A bit like a volcano”.
“water effect”
This plan, the fruit of four years of meditation and study, became gradually imposed on the signatories, who specifically did not work in Saqqara and who did not have any Egyptologists. If Xavier Landreau visits the site as a tourist, most of the sources – excavation reports, scientific books, but also field surveys, satellite imagery, etc. – is in the public domain.
“We just go with the flow”, summarizes this Egyptology enthusiast. He remembers that the pyramid of Djoser was 40 meters above the level of the Nile, “which is not very useful” to provide a construction site and religious complex as large as that of Saqqara. Your first suggestion is to admire the wadis that provide the plain from the west. And to the great enclosure of cut stone, called Gisr el-Mudir, a few hundred meters above the pyramid.
This square structure of 650 by 350 meters, whose work has been the subject of many hypotheses, “Show the technical signature of a dam”, according to Xavier Landreau and his colleagues. It would have regulated the flow of watercourses, filtered part of the sediments they carried, while protecting the bottom of the stream from large floods. “During the Old Kingdom, the paleoclimatic conditions were different, with a savannah environment and frequent rains, causing flooding problems”said Xavier Landreau.
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