The Red Pyramid of Snefru at Dahshur, Egypt. Photo: Ivrienen at English Wikipedia / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0
20 Jul 2026 · Dahshur, Egypt
Two possible Old Kingdom dams found near the Red Pyramid
Xavier Landreau, Guillaume Piton and Sayed Hemeda used satellite imagery, 19th-century maps and watershed mapping. They argue that two 600–700 m structures across Wadi Dahshur, west of the Red Pyramid, long read as stone-transport ramps, are dams, one with a duckbill-shaped spillway, linked to a roughly 1 km diversion channel passing close to the pyramid.
Why it matters: If confirmed, it would add large-scale water management to Snefru’s pyramid building, and the duckbill weir would be unique in ancient Egypt.
Mainstream view: The structures are unexcavated and undated and lie mostly in a military zone. The authors say excavation is needed to test the idea. Earlier researchers interpreted them as causeways or transport roads. The lead author also proposed the 2024 hydraulic-lift idea for Saqqara.
Nature reported new geophysical survey results, published by Eldamaty, Abbas, Ballard and Reeves in the Amarna Royal Tombs Project’s occasional papers, that they say point to hidden chambers beyond the walls of Tutankhamun’s tomb, possibly the burial of Nefertiti.
Remote Sensing retracted Filippo Biondi and Corrado Malanga’s 2022 paper, which claimed SAR Doppler tomography revealed undiscovered internal structures in the Great Pyramid. The journal says an investigation after a reader’s concerns confirmed serious methodological flaws and statistical errors that undermine the conclusions.
Researchers analysed 138 dispersed blocks from a dismantled sector, using geometric silhouettes and computational matching, to propose how the early Inca walls fitted together.
A ScanPyramids team from TU Munich and Cairo University published ultrasonic shear-wave scans, made in 2022, of the 45 accessible granite blocks in the two lower rows of the King’s Chamber walls. They built a 3D model of block thicknesses and joints and found internal reflectors up to about 3 m deep, including an anomaly about 2 m behind block NW9 on the north wall.
