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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.