The Egyptology world has had its feathers ruffled by a contentious new study that claims that a 4,500-year-old pyramid was built using jaw-droppingly sophisticated technology, including a spectacular “hydraulic elevator”. According to the authors, the mind-blowing system enabled enormous building blocks to be floated from the floor to the pyramid's summit via a central shaft, like lava flowing upwards through a volcano - yet archaeologists remain unconvinced.

The oldest of Egypt’s seven monumental pyramids, the Step Pyramid of Djoser stands on the Saqqara Plateau and is surrounded by several enormous ancient structures. Examining the pyramid and its associated infrastructure, the study authors suggest that the unified complex consists of a gigantic dam, a water treatment facility, and a water-powered lift, all of which were employed in tandem to enable the construction of the famous landmark.

If correct, this would dramatically transform our understanding of ancient Egyptian engineering, implying a level of ingenuity that could have been applied to later monuments such as the Pyramids of Giza. However, the study’s findings have triggered a backlash from some of the field’s top scholars, which is why it’s important to break them down.

Finding Number One: The Dam

A few hundred meters from the Step Pyramid lies a colossal 2-kilometer-long (1.2 miles) stone wall called Gisr el-Mudir. Considered the world’s oldest monumental stone structure, this mysterious barrier has been hypothesized to have functioned as a fortress, a cattle pen, or a royal celebratory arena, though there is little consensus on its original purpose.

Reaching an altogether different conclusion, study author Dr Xavier Landreau from the research institute Paleotechnic told IFLScience that “the first key finding that we have uncovered is that the Saqqara Plateau was built beneath the watershed” for an area of land encompassing 15 square kilometers (5.8 square miles). Using paleoclimate data to calculate the quantity of water that would have flowed into the plateau 4,500 years ago, the researchers concluded that Gisr el-Mudir was well positioned to function as a huge dam.

“When you examine the cross-section of the wall, you see that it has the technical signature of an open check dam with its transition filters,” says Landreau. “Show it to an Egyptologist and they will probably say ‘no, it’s just a classic wall’. But just show it to a hydraulics student in their second or third year and they would say ‘yes, of  course, it’s obvious [that it’s a dam]’.”

Well, we showed it to one of the biggest names in Egyptology – Dr Zahi Hawass, the former Egyptian Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs – and he reacted just as Landreau expected. 

“I’ve been excavating in Gisr El-Mudir for the last 12 years,” Hawass told IFLScience. “I found a new pyramid there, I found Old Kingdom tombs, I found statues. I just finished the excavation last May. There is not one single piece of evidence that I saw in my excavation to prove [that it was a dam].”

Finding Number Two: The Water Treatment Facility

Within a moat surrounding the Djoser complex sits yet another extraordinary ancient feature known as the Deep Trench. Cut entirely out of the rock, this 400-meter-long (1,312 feet), 27-meter-deep (89 feet) channel represents another Egyptological mystery, yet the study authors say it displays all the characteristics of a water treatment plant.

Interpreting these elements as a sedimentation basin, a retention basin, and a water purification system, the researchers suspect that Gisr el-Mudir and the Deep Trench may have been used in combination to deliver clean drinking water to the Saqqara Plateau while also providing hydropower for construction projects.

Once again, Landreau insists that while this idea would likely seem “new to the Egyptological world, it’s actually extremely common in the field of hydraulics and water filtering, and we can find quite similar structures in the Roman world.”

Finding Number Three: The Hydraulic Elevator

The most significant claim made by the study authors is that the water flowing out of the Deep Trench may have been used to cyclically fill and drain one of two shafts running up through the center of the Djoser pyramid, as a means of vertically transporting huge building blocks. 

“Below the Djoser complex there is a quite spectacular network of pipes,” explains Landreau. “There are seven kilometers of pipes entirely cut in the rock at a depth of 28 meters below the ground.”

“We don’t know who dug it, when or how,” he says, although the researchers claim to have discovered that water could be transferred into this underground labyrinth from the Deep Trench in “at least three possible locations”. 

“If the water comes from the Deep Trench and reaches the central shaft, then the water will meet a stone blockage,” causing 28 meters worth of pressure to build up, Landreau says. The lithic impediment to which he refers is a large granite box, topped with a 2.7-tonne lid, and represents the key to this entire controversy.

Indeed, it was Hawass who first discovered this box, concluding that it was the sarcophagus of Djoser – the pharaoh for whom the pyramid was built. With no mummy to be found inside, however, the famous Egyptologist and his colleagues assumed that the body had been stolen by tomb raiders – an all-too-common occurrence at ancient Egyptian sites.

However, Landreau and his team's idea is drastically different, suggesting that the box was never a coffin but was instead a kind of plug that could be opened or closed to fill and drain the shaft. “The granite box’s architecture and its removable plug surrounded by limestone clay-bound blocks present the technical signature of a water outlet mechanism,” they write in their study.

Calculating that the flow of water from Gisr el-Mudir and the Deep Trench would have been strong enough to power this hydraulic system, Landreau says “we have evidence that there was the possibility of a filling and draining cycle in this giant shaft – but why?”

The most logical answer, he concludes, was to allow ancient architects to “load stones at the ground level and unload them at the top, and build the pyramid like a volcano from the center.”

Hawass thinks very strongly otherwise. “The shaft is a burial chamber. I discovered the sarcophagus in this burial chamber,” he says. “If you say the shaft was used for water you should see evidence now of water. But there is no evidence at all. It is a burial chamber shaft.”

Like other archaeologists, Hawass also points to the fact that no historical sources mention the invention of such an elaborate system during the building of any Egyptian pyramid. “In the 26th dynasty, they restored the burial chamber. We discovered inscriptions telling us about that, and they never mentioned water at all,” he says.

What The Egyptologists Say

Several leading Egyptologists refused to be interviewed about this study, with one top scholar saying she didn’t want to speak on record about it as “no archaeologists think it’s plausible.” Echoing this statement, Hawass bluntly states that the team's “theory is completely wrong,” and that “there is no evidence at all that any pyramid in Egypt used water for transporting stones.”

However, leaning on his paleoclimate data and hydraulic calculations, Landreau insists that everything reported in the study checks out, theoretically at least. Ultimately, he and his team don’t have the historical evidence to say that this really was how the Step Pyramid was built, but their observations indicate that “there is a possibility.” 

“For the progress of knowledge and science, we have to study such a possibility,” says Landreau.

In response, Hawass bristles that “'maybe' can’t be used in archaeology. Archaeology depends on evidence.” Yet Landreau sticks to his guns, insisting that “the most important people to give their opinion on this article will be hydraulic engineers as they will be able to confirm the possible path of water - and I truly believe they will be in accordance with our findings.”

The study is published in the journal PLOS ONE.