Were the pyramids built alongside a now lost branch of the Nile?

Back in 2017, I reported on the discovery of the log book of Inspector Merer in the Wadi al-Jarf in Egypt. Merer was the captain of one of the boats that shipped stone to build the Great Pyramid of Khufu / Cheops at Giza. In antiquity the Nile had seven branches which emptied into the sea in the Nile Delta. We can see from tomb paintings that in those days there were tropical animals such as crocodiles and hippopotamus in Egypt. But only two branches of the Nile delta remain today, and the crocodile has long since receded to the Sudan. The climate in the Near East grew dryer in late antiquity, causing the Sahara to invade the cornlands of north Africa, and affecting Syria also. Today the Nile is four miles from the plateau on which the pyramids stand. But in antiquity the level of the Nile was higher, and there were many branches running to what are today isolated ancient Egyptian monuments. In 2022, a study by H. Sheisha &c in PNAS (online here) revealed the existence of a lost…