Joseph's granaries is a designation for the Egyptian pyramids often used by early travelers to the region. The notion of a granary (horreum, ) 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" (vv. 48-9, RSV). "So when the famine had spread over all the land, Joseph opened all the storehouses ( Vulgate, LXX)The Masoretic Text is defective here and is missing the noun, having only (lit., "all that was in them"). Many, including the editor of the Hebrew text, would restore the text to אוצרות‎ ("storehouses"); see J. Skinner, Genesis, ICC, 472. and sold to the Egyptians" (v. 56). Similarly, in the Quran: "(Joseph) said: 'Give me charge of the granaries () of the land. I shall husband them wisely (12:55).Trans. N. J. Dawood (Penguin Books 1999). 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.

Classical antiquity

The great antiquity of the Pyramids caused their true nature to become increasingly obscured. As the Egyptian scholar Abu Ja'far al-Idrisi (died 1251), the author of the oldest known extensive study of the Pyramids, puts it: "The nation that built it lay destroyed, it has no successor to carry the truth of its stories from father to son, as sons of other nations carry from their fathers what they love and cherish among their stories."Anwār ... al-ahrām; ed. Haarmann 1991, 105; trans. Mallat 2007, 23. As a result, the oldest discussion of the Pyramids that has survived is from the Greek historian Herodotus, who visited them soon after 450 BC. He describes "the underground chambers on the hill whereon the pyramids stand", which "the king meant to be burial places for himself".Historiae 2.124; ed. and trans. A. D. Godley, LCL 117:426-27. Several later classical authors, such as Diodorus Siculus, who visited Egypt 60 BC, also recorded that the "kings built the pyramids to serve as their tombs";Bibliotheca historica 1.64.4; ed. and trans. C. H. Oldfather, LCL 279:218-19. and similarly Strabo, who made his visit in 25 BC, explicitly noted that they were "the tombs of kings";Geographica 17.1.33; ed. and trans. H. L. Jones, LCL 267:90-91. yet in 77 AD the well-read natural historian Pliny the Elder simply says they were "a superfluous and foolish display of wealth", built by the kings so as "to avoid providing funds for their successors or for rivals who wished to plot against them, or else to keep the common folk occupied."Naturalis historia 36.75; ed. and trans. D. E. Eichholz, LCL 419:58-59; cf. Aristotle, Politics 1313b: "And it is a device of tyranny to make the subjects poor, so that a guard may not be kept, and also that the people being busy with their daily affairs may not have leisure to plot against their ruler. Instances of this are the pyramids in Egypt" (trans. H. Rackham, LCL 264:460-61).

Early Middle Ages

Early Christian commentators on Genesis never make the association of Joseph's granaries with the Pyramids in Egypt; nor do Jewish commentators. 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."Letronne 1860, 393. 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 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."Itinerarium Egeriae Y2 [= Peter the Deacon's citation]; ed. R. Weber, CCSL 175:100; PL 173:1129D; trans. Wilkinson 1999, 94. This passage is not found in the sole surviving manuscript, which is only partially preserved, but appears in a later work by Peter the Deacon that uses Egeria as a source; see Wilkinson 1999, 4, 86. Wilkinson is confident "this is the first text to mention what became the regular Christian explanation of the pyramids" (94 n. 4); cf. Osborne 1986, 115. 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."Historia monachorum in Aegypto 18.3; ed. Preuschen 1897, 79; ed. Festugière 1971, 115; trans. Russell 1980, 102. There is also a Latin version by Rufinus, which includes "additions and alterations appropriate to a man who had seen the places and people for himself and regarded the experience as the most treasured of his life" (Russell 1981, 6). Rufinus seems a little less clear: "There is a tradition that these sites, which they call the storehouses () of Joseph, are where Joseph is said to have stored up the grain. Others say it is the Pyramids themselves in which it is thought that the grain was collected" (PL 21:440; ed. Schulz-Flügel 1990, 350). This late 4th-century usage is further confirmed in a geographical treatise of Julius Honorius, perhaps written as early as 376 AD,Beazley 1897, 73, says "writing in 376"; Nicolet 1991, 96, has "perhaps prior to A.D. 376"; and Brill's New Pauly (Leiden, 2005), s.v. Iulius [= 6:1082] has "4th/5th cents." which explains that the Pyramids were called the "granaries of Joseph" ().Cosmographia 45; ed. Riese 1878, 51.2-4 (B); cf. Osborne 1986, 115. The quote appears only in version B of Riese's ed., a revision from late antiquity, and therefore may not derive from Julius. This reference from Julius is important, for it indicates that the identification was starting to spread out from pilgrims' 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.The commentaries are on the funeral oration for St. Basil the Great, wherein he lists the seven wonders of the world, including the Pyramids (Oration 43.63; PG 36:580A; trans. NPNF2 7:416. 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."PG 36:1064D; ed. J. N. Smith, CCSG 27:265; trans. Smith 2001, 121. In the 8th century Bishop Cosmas of Jerusalem repeats this almost verbatim;PG 38:534. and also, less closely, Nicetas of Heraclea in the later 11th century.ed. Billius and Morellus 1630, 2:783. 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."Historia Francorum 1.10; PL 71:167B; trans. Brehaut 1916, 9.

The term continued to be used by pilgrims: the Piacenza Pilgrim in c. 570, who notes "they are still full";Itinerarium 43; ed. P. Geyer, CCSL 175:152; trans. Wilkinson 2002, 149; ed. Tobler and Molinier 1879, 116; trans. A. Stewart, PPTS 2/4:34. The author, sometimes identified as Antoninus, says they are twelve in number. Epiphanius the Monk (using ) in c. 750;Enarratio Syriae 6; PG 120:265C; ed. Donner 1971, 74; trans. Wilkinson 2002, 211. He says they are thirty-six in number. 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."De mensua orbis terrae 6.13; ed. Parthey 1870, 26; trans. Wilkinson 2002, 231; ed. and trans. J. J. Tierney, SLH 6:62-63. As a reminder of the danger of travels in those days, Dicuil continues: "At this point, as they were going across to admire the three Granaries they found a dead lioness and, behind her, the dead bodies of eight men and women. The lioness had killed them by her strength and they had killed her with their spears and swords, for both the places in which the seven Granaries had been built were in the desert" (6.14). 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."Itinerarium 7; ed. Tobler and Molinier 1879, 312; trans. J. H. Bernard, PPTS 3:5; trans. Wilkinson 2002, 261. Bernard's party was treated very poorly by the Egyptians, thrown into prison for six days, had to pay bribes, etc., so much so that "his account may explain ... why there are so few descriptions of travel in Egypt during the next three hundred years" (Greener 1967, 25).