Water power may have helped build Egypt’s Step Pyramid

Engineers in France proposed that ancient Egyptians used water power to help build the Step Pyramid of Djoser, a 4,700-year-old structure in Egypt.

Researchers led by Xavier Landreau from Paleotechnic suggest a system of dams, water treatment facilities, and internal shafts could have lifted heavy stones during construction. This theory challenges the traditional belief that the pyramid was built solely with ramps and manual labor, positing that water flowing into the shafts raised platforms carrying the stones.

The team believes a nearby enclosure, Gisr el-Mudir, may have acted as a dam to collect water and sediment, while compartments outside the pyramid served as a water treatment system. However, Egyptologists like Franck Monnier have questioned the need for such a complex system, arguing that the pyramid’s relatively small blocks could have been moved with simpler methods.

Landreau and coauthor Guillaume Piton acknowledge a lack of direct archaeological evidence supporting their hydraulic hypothesis and have called for sediment investigations to test their idea. Further research has extended the investigation to the Red Pyramid at Dahshur, where the team proposed two long structures were dams, though these structures remain unexcavated and their connection to the pyramid is uncertain.