I've written several times about how I like to try and identify features on the ground at Giza that I've seen on satellite photographs. It's the sort of thing that I'm hoping my Hand Held GPS is going to help with next month.

Anyway here's an example from a few years ago which shows the sort of thing I mean. This search started when I saw a feature on a map drawn by Covington in 1902. A small straight line was labelled "Ancient Causeway".

It wasn't mentioned anywhere else that I could find so I decided to try and find it. Unfortunately it was too far South for the best know satellite photograph but I did manage to identify it on another aerial view.





It looked fairly simple but I still had trouble finding it on the ground. This next photo shows the ridge with the "Causeway" on top as I'm looking towards the Pyramids.



Having reached it here's views looking in either direction along the line of the feature (approximately East-West)







This last photo is looking back to the South as I walk away back towards Giza.



The so-called causeway is on top of the ridge and you can see how it stops as the land drops dramatically away. It demonstrates another thing which so often strikes me at Giza and that's how much the height of the terrain is so important but how maps and even satellite photos don't give any idea of it. Height information gets ignored by so many people who like to smoother Giza with coloured lines. The Egyptians themselves would have to had taken it into consideration as they plotted and surveyed but because it's not easily represented it gets ignored.

I don't think we need take Covington's description of this as a causeway too seriously as other authors use similar terms in the 19th Century for features that we wouldn't call causeways today. The Wall of the Crow, for example, is called a causeway by some early writers.

Jon

www.egyptarchive.co.uk