The Egypt Code (21 page)
Authors: Robert Bauval
This luxurious outburst of new life and abundance of nature was, in the eyes of the ancient Egyptians, a gift from the gods and, more especially, from the goddess Isis, who applied her great magic (as she had done for the dead Osiris) to bring back to life the Nile and induce the flood to rise from the underworld Duat (at Elephantine). And so, for a people who saw their land as ‘an image of heaven’ and their king as ‘the son of Isis’, it should not surprise us that they wanted to provide him with a sacred landscape that resembled the Duat in order for him to undergo the same miracle of rebirth with the flood and with Osiris. The apotheosis of the rebirth ritual (prosaically called the ‘funeral’ by Egyptologists) took place, according to my own thesis, at the temple of Ra-Horakhti in Heliopolis. In my mind I see the cortege bearing the king’s embalmed corpse placed on a boat or ferry (a splendid example of such a ‘solar’ boat is displayed at Giza) and made to travel from the sun temples of Abu Ghorab along the prescribed ‘solar’ path, then across the Nile and towards the sanctuary of the phoenix at Heliopolis. There the king’s mummy would await the ‘(re)birth of Ra-Horakhti’, which took place at dawn on the day of the heliacal rising of Sirius. On that day the starry Duat would be fully visible in the dawn sky, revealing the interrelationship between Orion and the Pleiades, as well as the path of the sun from the latter to Leo on the west and east sides of the Milky Way - as was defined on the land by the Giza and Abusir pyramids, as well as the solar path from the sun temples of Abu Ghorab to Heliopolis. For it is one of those intriguing facts that if you were positioned on a high point at Letopolis-Ausim, where once stood the so-called tower of Eudoxus, looking east at this celestial region containing the Duat, and then imagined that it could be rotated a full 90° clockwise so that it was now in the south, something strange and wonderful would happen: the Milky Way would now ‘flow’ along the meridian like the Nile on the ground, and the three stars of Orion’s belt to its right (i.e., west) would look like the three pyramids of Giza to the west of the Nile. Bringing the sky map and the ground map to an equal scale using the 1° = 333 metres scale ratio (see Chapter Three) we can see that the position of Leo falls right above Heliopolis, and that the small cluster of the Pleiades falls (not quite, but almost) above the small cluster of the Abusir pyramids. Now if we draw an imaginary line mirroring the path of the sun from the Pleiades to Leo, we see that it traces a path from the sun temples at Abu Ghorab to the sun temple at Heliopolis. In this scheme there is an almost perfect sky-ground correlation, or, in the parlance of the ancients, the starry Duat is on the Memphite Duat.
7
As above, so below. Admittedly the match is not mathematically perfect due to the bedrock realities of geography and topography. But the similarity of the sky map with the ground map is so uncanny that coincidence in this case is very difficult to accept. The pieces of the puzzle fit so neatly into the religious beliefs of the pyramid-builders and their clever astronomical alignments and architectural schemes that it is hard to see how all this can be a fluke.
7
As above, so below. Admittedly the match is not mathematically perfect due to the bedrock realities of geography and topography. But the similarity of the sky map with the ground map is so uncanny that coincidence in this case is very difficult to accept. The pieces of the puzzle fit so neatly into the religious beliefs of the pyramid-builders and their clever astronomical alignments and architectural schemes that it is hard to see how all this can be a fluke.
But before we consider this possibility seriously, let us see first if there is evidence that the ancient Egyptians ‘rotated’ the sky in their minds to have the Milky Way running south-north like the Nile. In other words, did they imagine the Milky Way flowing south-north when in fact it flows east-west? Was east in the sky south on the land?
During my research for this book I made liberal use of the articles published in the 1994
Hommages à Jean Leclant
. One of these articles particularly caught my attention. It was by the French Egyptologist Arielle Kozloff and was titled ‘Star-gazing in Ancient Egypt’.
8
In this article Kozloff proposed that the luminous band of the Milky Way was seen as the celestial counterpart of the Nile, which, as we have seen, was an idea that had crossed the mind of many other researchers including myself. What was intriguing about Kozloff’s article, however, was his suggestion that the ancient Egyptians perceived the Milky Way not as running east-west as it actually appears in the sky but running south-north like the Nile! In Kozloff’s own words:
Hommages à Jean Leclant
. One of these articles particularly caught my attention. It was by the French Egyptologist Arielle Kozloff and was titled ‘Star-gazing in Ancient Egypt’.
8
In this article Kozloff proposed that the luminous band of the Milky Way was seen as the celestial counterpart of the Nile, which, as we have seen, was an idea that had crossed the mind of many other researchers including myself. What was intriguing about Kozloff’s article, however, was his suggestion that the ancient Egyptians perceived the Milky Way not as running east-west as it actually appears in the sky but running south-north like the Nile! In Kozloff’s own words:
Stars, like the sun, appear to move through the sky in an east-west direction. That means that the bright band in the middle of the sky, if one were to think of it in terms of a river, flows from east to west. In considering the Milky Way as a river, the sky must have taken a differential orientation for the ancient Egyptians. We know that in contrast with their own Nile, the Egyptians considered the Euphrates river to flow north by flowing south. Thus, it is likely that they considered the river in the sky to flow north by flowing west. If true-west becomes Nilotic north, then true-north becomes Nilotic east, true-east becomes Nilotic south, and true-south becomes Nilotic west . . . It is probably more than a coincidence that Orion, the constellation with which Osiris, Lord of the West, is traditionally identified, appears in the southern part of the sky, which is to say on the west bank of the celestial river.
9
What Kozloff is actually saying is that the ancient Egyptians rotated the sky a full 90° in their mind so that the image seen in the eastern sky was projected on to the southern sky, this in order to match the flow of the Milky Way with the flow of the Nile. In other words, celestial east became Nilotic south.
10
Unwittingly, Kozloff’s findings had the unsolicited result of corroborating my sky-ground Star Correlation Theory.
10
Unwittingly, Kozloff’s findings had the unsolicited result of corroborating my sky-ground Star Correlation Theory.
There was, however, an ingenious and very original way of looking, quite literally, at the Star Correlation Theory from another viewpoint, which was recently put forward by the researcher Chris Tedder, an amateur Egyptologist and archaeoastronomer living in Finland. Tedder noted that an artery could be drawn from the pyramid of Djedefra at Abu Ruwash, cutting through the pyramid fields of Giza, Zawyet Al Aryan, Abusir and all the way to Saqqara. What drew his attention was that the artery had an orientation of about 52.2° south-of-east, which, curiously enough, was the degree of orientation south-of-west that the pyramids of Giza had. This scheme created a symmetrical geometry that was, at face value, unlikely to be a coincidence. Intrigued by this, Tedder then had the brilliant idea of seeing what happened when Orion’s belt was positioned 52.2° south-of-east in the direction of the artery in the year
c
. 2475 BC when the Giza pyramids were built. Being familiar with my Star Correlation Theory, he was struck by the fact that when Orion’s belt reached an azimuth of 142.2°, i.e. 52.2° south-of-east, this also became the angle the three stars of Orion’s belt made with the horizontal,
thus matching the angle the three pyramids made with the horizontal
. Imagining himself looking south from the vantage of Abu Ruwash, he then realised that something very interesting happened to Orion’s belt when it crossed the meridian: the three stars made an angle of 16.2° as seen from Abu Ruwash! At this point Tedder knew he was on to something. For although the sky image was constantly moving round the earth, it could not be a coincidence that when at precisely an orientation of 52.2° south-of-east, it not only aligned with the artery that passed through the pyramid field north of Saqqara, but also formed the same angle that defined the layout plan of the Giza pyramids and, furthermore, formed an angle of 16.2° with the horizontal matching the angle of the three pyramids when viewed from Abu Ruwash.
c
. 2475 BC when the Giza pyramids were built. Being familiar with my Star Correlation Theory, he was struck by the fact that when Orion’s belt reached an azimuth of 142.2°, i.e. 52.2° south-of-east, this also became the angle the three stars of Orion’s belt made with the horizontal,
thus matching the angle the three pyramids made with the horizontal
. Imagining himself looking south from the vantage of Abu Ruwash, he then realised that something very interesting happened to Orion’s belt when it crossed the meridian: the three stars made an angle of 16.2° as seen from Abu Ruwash! At this point Tedder knew he was on to something. For although the sky image was constantly moving round the earth, it could not be a coincidence that when at precisely an orientation of 52.2° south-of-east, it not only aligned with the artery that passed through the pyramid field north of Saqqara, but also formed the same angle that defined the layout plan of the Giza pyramids and, furthermore, formed an angle of 16.2° with the horizontal matching the angle of the three pyramids when viewed from Abu Ruwash.
Egyptologists and sceptics see nothing in this but pure coincidence, and pillory researchers like Chris Tedder, accusing them of being numerologists and fantasists. But others, like Tedder himself, cannot easily accept that such beautifully interlocking geometry of alignments between sky and ground is merely the result of hazard. To Tedder it was also self-evident that Abu Ruwash defined a place of observation that encompassed the whole Memphite region up to Saqqara. This, on face value, made a lot of sense. Abu Ruwash was, after all, the highest promontory in the Memphite Necropolis and also its most northerly point. It would certainly be the ideal place to set up an observation point. Except for one fact: Abu Ruwash is not along the meridianal axis of the Giza pyramids but at 52.2° west-of-north from it. But, as we have seen in Chapter Two, the site of Letopolis-Ausim is due north of the Giza pyramids. Everything about Giza, especially the Great Pyramid, attests to a meticulous establishment of a prime meridian passing through the Great Pyramid. It would thus also make perfect surveying sense to have an observation point at Letopolis-Ausim that would define the prime meridian on the ground for the Memphite Necropolis. And this brings us back to another far more controversial explanation for the Star Correlation Theory.
Although Tedder’s idea to explain the Star Correlation Theory is most ingenious, there is one nagging problem with it: there is not a shred of textual evidence to support it. There is, on the other hand, another explanation which is heavily supported by textual evidence but which is also the very stuff that fuels accusations of heresy among Egyptologists. And this is it: what if there had, in fact, been a time when both the Milky Way and the Nile flowed south-north and that this time was when both Orion’s belt and the Giza pyramids matched perfectly looking south at the meridian? And what if that time - and here is the heresy! - was the ‘First Time’ of
zep tepi
that the ancient Egyptians mention so often in their religious texts, informing us that all things began here in the Memphite-Heliopolis region? We should recall how, by using the Sothic cycle and the first appearance of Sirius in the Memphite-Heliopolis region, I tentatively dated the ‘First Time’ to 11,541 BC. So let us reconstruct the sky for that date and see how Orion’s belt looks when in the southern meridian.
zep tepi
that the ancient Egyptians mention so often in their religious texts, informing us that all things began here in the Memphite-Heliopolis region? We should recall how, by using the Sothic cycle and the first appearance of Sirius in the Memphite-Heliopolis region, I tentatively dated the ‘First Time’ to 11,541 BC. So let us reconstruct the sky for that date and see how Orion’s belt looks when in the southern meridian.
The First Time: 11, 541 BC
Artist’s view from the ‘observatory of Eudoxus’ at Letopolis (modern Ausim). In this
ground-sky map the Milky Way represents the Nile; the three Giza pyramids
represent Orion’s belt; the Abusir pyramids represent the Pleiades; the sun-temple of
Ra-Horakhti at heliopolis represents the sun in Leo. In this ground-sky correlation
scheme, the 90 days journey of the sun along that part of the ecliptic from a point
below the Pleiades to a point below leo is matched on the ground by the line joining
the sun-temples of Abu Ghorab and the sun-temple at Heliopolis.
ground-sky map the Milky Way represents the Nile; the three Giza pyramids
represent Orion’s belt; the Abusir pyramids represent the Pleiades; the sun-temple of
Ra-Horakhti at heliopolis represents the sun in Leo. In this ground-sky correlation
scheme, the 90 days journey of the sun along that part of the ecliptic from a point
below the Pleiades to a point below leo is matched on the ground by the line joining
the sun-temples of Abu Ghorab and the sun-temple at Heliopolis.
Looking south at an image of the sky of the ‘First Time’ from the vantage point of Letopolis-Ausim - and more dramatically from atop an imaginary observation tower
11
- it quickly becomes clear that the Milky Way now seems to link with the Nile in the distant south, as if this sky-river is ‘feeding’ its celestial waters into the Nile at far-away Elephantine on the southern frontier of Egypt. Looking to the immediate right of the Milky Way we see Orion’s belt. Its two brightest stars (Alnitak and Alnilam) make an angle of 43° 20′ with the meridian. On the ground to the right of the Nile is the Giza necropolis, and its two largest pyramids (Khufu’s and Khafra’s) also make an angle of 43° 20′ with the meridian!
12
Slowly, as you pan the map of the Memphite-Heliopolis region looking directly into the southern meridian, it becomes vividly clear that what you see on the ground bears a remarkable resemblance to what you see in the sky also when looking due south. In this astonishing sky-ground correlation, not only does Orion’s belt match the Giza pyramids and the Nile the Milky Way, but we can see that the constellation of Leo is directly over the position of Heliopolis. This means that an observer at Letopolis-Ausim at the ‘First Time’ would have simultaneously been able to see Orion’s belt due south and Leo due east, that is at the future location of the Giza pyramids due south and the temple of Heliopolis due east. What I am saying here is this: as amazing as it may seem, the sky image of 11,541 BC seems to correlate with the ground image of
c
. 2500 BC!
11
- it quickly becomes clear that the Milky Way now seems to link with the Nile in the distant south, as if this sky-river is ‘feeding’ its celestial waters into the Nile at far-away Elephantine on the southern frontier of Egypt. Looking to the immediate right of the Milky Way we see Orion’s belt. Its two brightest stars (Alnitak and Alnilam) make an angle of 43° 20′ with the meridian. On the ground to the right of the Nile is the Giza necropolis, and its two largest pyramids (Khufu’s and Khafra’s) also make an angle of 43° 20′ with the meridian!
12
Slowly, as you pan the map of the Memphite-Heliopolis region looking directly into the southern meridian, it becomes vividly clear that what you see on the ground bears a remarkable resemblance to what you see in the sky also when looking due south. In this astonishing sky-ground correlation, not only does Orion’s belt match the Giza pyramids and the Nile the Milky Way, but we can see that the constellation of Leo is directly over the position of Heliopolis. This means that an observer at Letopolis-Ausim at the ‘First Time’ would have simultaneously been able to see Orion’s belt due south and Leo due east, that is at the future location of the Giza pyramids due south and the temple of Heliopolis due east. What I am saying here is this: as amazing as it may seem, the sky image of 11,541 BC seems to correlate with the ground image of
c
. 2500 BC!
How can this be possible? How can we explain the 8,000-year gap between the sky and ground maps? Or, to put it in another way, how could the Egyptians of 2500 BC have known what the sky looked like in 11,541 BC?
Whenever I give a conference on ancient Egyptian astronomy, I know that sooner or later I will have to confront my audience with the problematical topic of precession. They are most relieved, however, when I dispose of it in less than 30 seconds. This is because I simply tell them that precession is really nothing more than a very slow wobble of our planet with a cycle of 26,000 years. To visualise it I ask them to think of a spinning top. They very quickly get the general idea. ‘Today,’ wrote the late Professor Hertha von Deschend, ‘the precession is a well-established fact . . . (but) it is by now only a boring complication. Whereas once it was the only majestic secular motion that our ancestors could keep in mind when they looked for a great cycle which could affect humanity as a whole. But then our ancestors were astronomers
and
astrologers.’
13
The immediate questions that loom in the mind are: Were the ancient Egyptians aware of precession? And, more importantly, did they track it through the ages and thus know its cycle? From the Egyptologists and most historians of science you will get a resounding no. Others, however, are not so sure. And there is a minority - myself included - that is convinced that it was not the Greeks who discovered precession but the Egyptians long before them.
and
astrologers.’
13
The immediate questions that loom in the mind are: Were the ancient Egyptians aware of precession? And, more importantly, did they track it through the ages and thus know its cycle? From the Egyptologists and most historians of science you will get a resounding no. Others, however, are not so sure. And there is a minority - myself included - that is convinced that it was not the Greeks who discovered precession but the Egyptians long before them.
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