‘Google Earth pyramids’ revisited
Remember that researcher who thought she spotted previously undiscovered Egyptian pyramids in Google Earth imagery? It turns out that there really are some ruins in the picture, but they’re not pyramids.
That’s the verdict of an Italian archaeologist who has been surveying the area around the present-day town of Dimai in Egypt’s Fayoum Desert.
“The features in Google images are well-known since 1925, when they were surveyed by G. Caton-Thompson and E.W. Gardner,” Paola Davoli, an Egyptologist at Italy’s University of Salento and co-director of the Soknopaiou Nesos Project, told me in an email. “They are natural mounds surmounted by a building (the biggest one) and by dug wells (in the other cases). For sure they are not pyramids, but their date and use are still not known.”
Well, there you go, not natural but not unknown either. I should have thought that Caton-Thompson would have surveyed that area since she was all over the Fayum.
