Results of Ancient Egypt Research Associates (AERA) 30 years of excavation of the Heit el-Ghurab settlement site (also known as the Lost City of the Pyramids), 400 meters south of the Great Sphinx, show that it was the major Nile port the 4th Dynasty pyramid builders, around 2,500 BC.

AERA’s international, interdisciplinary team of archaeologists, surveyors, geochronologists, botanists, and faunal specialists have excavated, analyzed and reconstructed workers’ barracks, granaries, bakeries, scribal offices, cattle corrals, and a harbor basin. The upper phase of the settlement dates to Khafre and Menkaure, builders of the second and third Giza Pyramids.

Discovery at Heit el-Ghurab, and other evidence that came to light in the last 30 years, makes it possible to produce a bathymetric model of 4th dynasty water transport infrastructure at Giza. We can see how pyramid builders used the seven-meter rise of the annual Nile inundation as a hydraulic lift in the waterways and harbors that flanked the Lost City, the Sphinx, and the Pyramids.

Now the AERA team explores the deepest layers of this once-lost port city of the pyramids for evidence of Khufu, builder of the Great Pyramid of Giza, just when an ancient papyrus document, The Journal of Merer, opens a window onto daily use of the Giza waterways. Merer was the leader of a crew that delivered stone by boat from the eastern Tura quarries to the Great Pyramid of Khufu during its construction. Pierre Tallet and a team from the Sorbonne and French Institute in Cairo found pieces of Merer’s logbook ago at a port of Khufu at Wadi el-Jarf on the Red Sea. Tallet’s April 2017 publication of Merer’s Journal allows cross-correlation between translation of the texts and translations of the archaeological landscape.

经过三十余年的发掘，古埃及研究协会（AERA）认为位于大狮身人面像以南400米的海特埃尔-古拉卜遗址是建于第四王朝（约公元前2500年）的重要尼罗河港口。
由考古学家、测量学家、地质年代学家、植物学家和动物学家联合组成的国际跨学科研究团队发掘、分析和复原了金字塔建筑工人的营房、粮仓、面包炉、书记室、牛栏和港口船坞。遗址的晚期堆积形成于卡夫拉法老和孟卡拉法老在位期间，是为这两位法老修建第二及第三座金字塔的工人的住所。
海特埃尔-古拉卜遗址以及过去30年间的考古新发现，为吉萨地区第四王朝时期的水路交通基础设施提供了测深模型。我们从中可以探知，金字塔建筑工人利用尼罗河每年深达七米的洪泛，在失落之城、狮身人面像和金字塔一侧建立了航道和港口。
目前古埃及研究协会正在探索这个失落的港口城市的最早堆积，即吉萨大金字塔的建造者胡夫法老时期的相关遗迹。与此同时，近年出土的纸莎草文献《梅勒尔日记》为金字塔水路航道的日常使用提供了重要线索。梅勒尔是一名监工，他的工人团队负责将建造胡夫大金字塔的石材从图拉采石场东部用船运输到施工现场。来自法国索邦大学和开罗法国研究院的皮埃尔·塔莱及其团队发现了梅勒尔的日记残片，并在红海之滨发现了胡夫时期的瓦迪伊尔加尔夫（Wadi el-Jarf）港口。塔莱于2017年四月出版了《梅勒尔日记》，为文本释读和考古景观的理解之间搭建了桥梁。

Mark Lehner is Director and President of Ancient Egypt Research Associates, Inc. (AERA), an American nonprofit organization, an NGO registered with the Egyptian government as AERA-Egypt. Lehner has carried out archaeological research in Egypt for over forty years. He mapped and excavated the Great Sphinx and Pyramids of Giza. AERA sponsors the Giza Plateau Mapping Project (GPMP), which conducts annual excavations of Old Kingdom settlements near the Sphinx and Pyramids with an interdisciplinary and international team of archaeologists, surveyors, geochronologists, botanists, and faunal specialists. From 1990-1995 Lehner was Assistant Professor of Egyptian Archaeology at the University of Chicago. He is now a Research Associate at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Since 2005 AERA has directed archaeological field schools to train young Egyptian archaeologists working for the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities at Giza, Luxor and Memphis on behalf of the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) funded by USAID. Lehner’s research interests include settlement archaeology; archaeological method and interpretation; ancient architecture; quarrying and construction; ancient irrigation and water transport infrastructure, ancient society and economy and complexity studies applied to the social sciences.

马克·雷纳是古埃及研究协会会长及主席，该协会是建立于美国的非盈利组织，并在埃及登记成立了非政府组织古埃及研究协会（埃及）。雷纳在埃及开展考古工作已逾40年，对狮身人面像和吉萨大金字塔都进行过测绘和发掘。古埃及研究协会赞助了吉萨高地测绘项目，每年对狮身人面像和金字塔附近的古王国时期居址开展发掘工作，拥有一个包括考古学家、测量学家、地质年代学家、植物学家和动物学家在内的国际跨学科研究团队。1990-1995年期间，雷纳在芝加哥大学任埃及考古助理教授。2005年以来，受USAID赞助，古埃及研究协会一直代表美国埃及研究中心在吉萨、卢克索和孟菲斯开办田野考古学校，为埃及古物部培训青年考古工作者。雷纳的研究领域包括聚落考古、考古学方法与解读、古代建筑、采石与施工、古代灌溉和水路运输基础设施、古代社会与经济以及复杂化研究在社会科学领域的应用等。