page_title: Joseph's Granaries
section_title: Early Middle Ages
hierarchical_section_title: Joseph's Granaries / Early Middle Ages
caption_attribution_description: Boat on the river Nile looking towards the pyramids at Saqq&#226;ra and Dahsh&#251;r, Egypt. Coloured lithograph by Louis Haghe after David Roberts, 1846. Iconographic Collections Keywords: David Roberts; Louis Haghe
context_page_description: Joseph's Granaries is a designation for the Egyptian pyramids often used by early travelers to the region. The notion of a granary being associated with the Hebrew patriarch Joseph derives from the account in Genesis 41, where "he gathered up all the food of the seven years when there was plenty in the land of Egypt, and stored up food in the cities ... And Joseph stored up grain in great abundance, like the sand of the sea, until he ceased to measure it, for it could not be measured". "So when the famine had spread over all the land, Joseph opened all the storehouses and sold to the Egyptians". Similarly, in the Quran: " said: 'Give me charge of the granaries of the land. I shall husband them wisely'". 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.
context_section_description: Early Christian commentators on Genesis never make the association of Joseph's granaries with the Pyramids in Egypt; nor do Jewish commentators. A.-J. Letronne (1787-1848), the successor to 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."  However, the first actual evidence of the use of the phrase is found in the early travel narratives of pilgrims to the Holy Land.  The female Christian traveler Egeria records that on her visit between 381-84 CE, "in the twelve-mile stretch between Memphis and Babylonia [= Old Cairo] are many pyramids, which Joseph made in order to store corn."  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."  This late 4th century usage is further confirmed in a geographical treatise of Julius Honorius, perhaps written as early as 376 CE, which explains that the Pyramids were called the "granaries of Joseph" (horrea Ioseph).  This reference from Julius is important, for it indicates that the identification was starting to spread out from pilgrim's travelogues.
  Beginning in the early 6th century, commentators on the orations of Gregory of Nazianzus record that it was known there were competing explanations for the purpose of the Pyramids.  For example, Pseudo-Nonnus writes: "The Pyramids are themselves worthy of viewing, and were built in Egypt at great expense.  The Christians say they are the granaries of Joseph, but the Greeks, among whom is Herodotus, that they are the tombs of certain kings."  In the 8th century Bishop Cosmas of Jerusalem repeats this almost verbatim; and also, less closely, Nicetas of Heraclea in the later 11th century.  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.  They are wide at the base and narrow at the top in order that the wheat might be cast into them through a tiny opening."
  The term continued to be used by pilgrims: the Piacenza Pilgrim in ca. 570, who notes "they are still full"; Epiphanius the Monk  (using Ancient Greek: ἀποθῆκαι, romanized: apothēcae, lit. 'storehouses') in ca. 750; and the Irish monk Dicuil in his report of the travels of a fellow monk named Fidelis in 762-65.  Fidelis says that "after a long voyage on the Nile they saw in the distance the Granaries made by Saint Joseph.  There were seven of them, to match the number of the years of plenty; they looked like mountains, four in one place and three in another." 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.  Pharaoh once reigned there, and during his reign Joseph built seven granaries which remain standing to this day."
  An important expedition had visited the Pyramids several years earlier (832), led by the Abbasid caliph al-Ma'mūn, and had explored the interior of the Pyramid of Khufu, finding (breaking into) a new passageway.  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.  They are not, as some believe, the granaries of Joseph.  Rather, they are marvelous shrines built over the tombs of ancient kings, and in any event oblique and solid, not hollow and empty.  They have no interior, and none has a door.  We noticed a fissure in one of them and ascertained that it is approximately 50 c
caption: View across the Nile by David Roberts (1846).
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