Seems like and odd choice to build it in a desert.
The ground water table was about 2-3 meters lower than it is today [1] but the climate was slightly more humid.
A canal supplied the city of the builders and the harbors of the pyramids with water from the nearby Nile river that also helped to irrigate nearby fields [2].
All in all the edge of the desert would have, more or less, been where it is today, if you don't count the strips of land to the west that are artificially irrigated today. And it would have looked like very similar to this, only fields and a few huts instead of urban area.
[1]
...keeping with a flood plain estimate between 13–14 m, and a flood peak between 14.50–15.50.
- GOP3, p. 104
Water table 1982: ~15,4m
- Lehner Sphinx 1992, p. 70
[2] - GOP3 p.15ff
Not a historian, but I'd like to point out that the Pyramids of Giza are right next to Cairo, a fact which is often overlooked.
Also, they are only 20 kilometers from the ancient capital of Egypt, Memphis. So they are not really in the middle of nowhere.
My question is, does anyone know exactly when they were built?
