Joseph's granaries
[2] The designation was used throughout the Middle Ages and only really abated in the Renaissance, when travel to the region became easier and closer investigation revealed the implausibility of the structures serving as storehouses for foodstuffs.
Jean-Antoine Letronne (1787-1848), the successor to Jean-François Champollion at the Collège de France, thought the ultimate source was the Jewish community at Alexandria: "As for the idea that Joseph was the author of these granaries, it is due, I think, to the Alexandrian Jews, who showed themselves always very jealous of linking the history of Egypt to theirs, and to have the Hebrews play a role in this country.
The female Christian traveler Egeria records that on her visit between 381 and 384 AD, "in the twelve-mile stretch between Memphis and Babylonia [= Old Cairo] are many pyramids, which Joseph made in order to store corn.
"[9] Ten years later the usage is confirmed in the anonymous travelogue of seven monks that set out from Jerusalem to visit the famous ascetics in Egypt, wherein they report that they "saw Joseph's granaries, where he stored grain in biblical times.
"[10] This late 4th-century usage is further confirmed in a geographical treatise of Julius Honorius, perhaps written as early as 376 AD,[11] which explains that the Pyramids were called the "granaries of Joseph" (horrea Ioseph).
[16] In the late 6th century Gregory of Tours recorded the kind of reasoning that made the idea seem plausible to those who had never traveled to the sites themselves: in Babylonia "Joseph built wonderful granaries of squared stone and rubble.
"[20] A hundred years later (870) the French monk Bernard the Wise records that his party "went aboard a Nile boat and after sailing for six days reached the city of Babylonia in Egypt.
[22] Accompanying him on this adventure was the Syrian archbishop of Antioch Dionysius of Tell Mahre, who left some important observations: "In Egypt we also beheld those edifices mentioned by the Theologian [Gregory of Nazianzus] in one of his discourses.
"[25] Over a hundred years later, the Arab traveler Ibn Hawqal (d. 988) wrote an influential book on geography, wherein he spoke of the Pyramids at Giza: "Some report that they are tombs; but this is false."
Writing in c. 390, the Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus explained that "the figure pyramid has that name among geometers because it narrows into a cone after the manner of fire, which in our language is called πῦρ.
The peck-like shape of this turban marks the memory of his corn-provisioning; whilst evidence is given that the care of the supplies was all on his head, by the very ears of corn which embellish the border of the head-dress.
"[37] The identification then persisted in Christian tradition with Firmicus Maternus c. 350, adding an etymological argument that "because he was the great-grandson of Sara, the nonagenarian by whom Abraham through God's favor had begotten a son, he was called in Greek Serapis, i.e. Σάρρας παῖς ["Sara's son"]";[38] next was Rufinus in 402;[39] then just a few years later Paulinus of Nola puts into verse another more expansive explanation: "Thus he [Satan] fashioned holy Joseph into Serapis, hiding that revered name beneath a name of death; yet all the time the statue's shape revealed the faith, for a bushel overtops its head, the reason being that in ancient days corn was collected at the inspiration of the Lord before a famine, and with the grain from Egypt's fruitful breast Joseph fed countless peoples and filled up the lean years with years of plenty.
"[40] The identification was also known in the Jewish tradition, for the Babylonian talmud preserves a saying most likely also from the late 2nd century, this time relying on Semitic etymology: "Serapis [סר אפּיס] alludes to Joseph who became a prince [sar סר (= שַׂר)] and appeased [meiphis מפּיס] the whole world.
"[49] Some forty years later (1307–21) the Venetian Marino Sanudo Torsello wrote a book on crusading – Liber Secretorum Fidelium Crucis – and included Burchard's statement, though without attribution.
[51] Around this time artists included the image of grain being stored in the Pyramids as part of the Joseph cycle that adorns the mosaics in the atrium of St Mark's Basilica (San Marco) in Venice.
"[55] There is also a late 14th-century copy of the Histoire ancienne jusqu'à César that contains similar imagery, and like the San Marco mosaics, "replaces the beehive granaries of Cotton Genesis with pyramidal buildings borrowed from the scene of Joseph Selling Corn.
In 1323 the Anglo-Irish friar Simon Fitzsimon (Symon Semeonis) visited the area with his friend Hugh (who died in Cairo) and observed "the granaries (granaria) of Joseph mentioned in Genesis.
"[58] The year 1374 saw thirteen Tuscan travelers make the pilgrimage to the Holy Land, three of which left accounts: Leonardo Frescobaldi, Simone Sigoli, and Giorgio Gucci.
"[59] Sigoli offers a fuller and more literary account, noting that "Joseph found means to have from every side as much corn as he could, and quickly he collected a very great number of bushels, and this grain he put in these granaries.
[61] In 1392 Thomas Brygg, an Englishman who later became mayor of Bordeaux, noted the "famous granaries of wondrous size which Joseph, the son of Jacob, had built in the days of Pharaoh.
"[62] In 1395 the French lord Ogier d'Anglure described the challenges of getting to the foot of the Pyramids and the commotion of workers stripping the smooth facing: "the great stones falling like so many vine plants that these masons were chopping down."
"[63] In a rather different notice written in 1350, Ludolph of Sudheim, a parish priest from Westphalia, correctly refers to the Pyramids as sepulchers, and says "these tombs are called by the natives Pharaoh's granaries.
"[64] Some twenty years earlier the German Dominican William of Boldensele had traveled about Egypt and left (1336) a very critical account of the notion: "the simple people of the country say that these were Pharaoh's barns and granaries in which Joseph had the wheat kept in the time of the great famine mentioned in the Bible ...
For from top to bottom they are closed and made entirely of huge stones well joined to one another—except that there is a very small door quite high above the ground and a very narrow and very dark little passage through which one descends there for a certain distance, but it is not all wide enough to put grain in, as those of the country say and believe.
The supposed author most likely did not visit the locales in his narrative, and in the case of his account of the Pyramids, he actually reverses the conclusions and reasoning of William: "these are Joseph's Granaries, which he had made to store the wheat for hard times ...
Anselmo Adorno traveled from Bruges in 1470 and gives a number of arguments against the prevailing view: "Facing Babylon, beyond the Nile, towards the desert that lies between Egypt and Africa, stand several ancient monuments pyramid-shaped, two of which are edifices constructed of very large stones, which are of considerable grandeur and amazing height.
Indeed, from top to bottom they are made of enormous stone well joined to each other, leaving them a little door at a good height above the ground, and a narrow and obscure path by which one descends to a room, not seen anywhere in the interior to be wide and spacious.
The French traveler Greffin Affagart (Seigneur de Courteilles) visited the Pyramids in 1533 and noted that "some call [them] the granaries of Pharaoh, but this is wrong because they are not hollow on the inside, rather they are sepulchers of some kings of Egypt.
[78] He cites many of the ancient authors mentioned above, and dismisses the erroneous etymologies yielding notions of "receptacles and granaries," and calls attention to the obvious fact "that this figure is most improper for such a purpose, a Pyramid being the least capacious of any regular mathematical body, the straitness and fewness of the rooms within (the rest of the building being one solid and intire fabric of stone) do utterly over-throw this conjecture.
The rectangular style of granary was constructed on similar principles, and though the side walls sloped gradually towards the top, where there was a flat roof, they were never of a true pyramidal form.
