Before the Pyramids: Cracking Archaeology's Greatest Mystery

by Christopher Knight

  Figure 16. Solar boats in the sky

  The back sight at Giza. The three pyramids are aligned at their southeastern corners. The line was aimed straight towards Heliopolis, the city of the sun, in the northeast. The point where each pyramid touches this virtual line marks the time gap between the stars of Orion’s Belt, measured in seconds- pendulum beats and converted to pendulum lengths on the ground. The greater gap is between Khufu’s Pyramid and Khafre’s Pyramid, demonstrating how the pyramid of Khufu represents Mintaka, not Alnitak as previously suggested by Robert Bauval.

  Figure 17. Pyramids and back sight

  Academic Inertia

  One of Robert’s reasons for not wishing to pursue our suggestion was that he believed it had been aired before, for different reasons, in a very aggressive and public manner. In this case the attack had come from that icon of fair-mindedness and objectivity – the BBC.

  The ability of the ‘establishment’ to rebuff new ideas, and particularly when that change comes from individuals deemed to be amateurs, should never be underestimated. It is right and proper that new ideas are put to the test but sometimes the process is less than objective. In 1999 the highly regarded BBC science programme, Horizon had set out to ‘rubbish’ Robert’s correlation theory. The two programmes were made with Robert’s cooperation, but he was unaware that they would be broadcast under the inflammatory titles ‘Atlantis Revisited’ and ‘Atlantis Reborn’. The Horizon team knew that anyone associated with the term ‘Atlantis’ is likely to be viewed as a fantasist.

  Robert Bauval and Graham Hancock were both badly treated by these Horizon productions and, following a formal complaint, the Broadcasting Standards Commission judged that the central part of Horizon’s attack on Hancock and Bauval was indeed unfair. The complaint upheld by the BSC specifically identified Horizon’s unfair representation of the Giza-Orion correlation theory, in which Robert Bauval’s critic was given the opportunity to explain his point of view, but Robert’s own evidence was largely edited out.

  For what it is worth, it is our opinion that Chris Hale, the producer of the Horizon programmes, was not knowingly dishonest – he was just a victim of his own prejudices. He explains his point of view in a section of a publication called Archaeological Fantasies, edited by Garrett G Fagan.1 Hale has some fundamental issues with an aspect of claims made by Hancock and supported by Bauval, and this led him to give a very partial review of the evidence regarding the Orion correlation theory. We discuss this collision of thinking styles in Appendix 10, which we believe has considerable implications for the broader process of identifying what constitutes legitimate approaches to reasoning.

  It is human nature to protect ideas that we have adopted over many years of reasoning and very few people are willing or able to deal with new information that is not a small or incremental adjustment to embedded ideas. It matters not whether someone is a world-class professor in his or her subject or a believer in alien abductions – people seek out information that supports existing assumptions and reject anything that would demand a major overhaul of their existing world-view. This not only applies to ideas themselves but to the method of reasoning used.

  And Robert Bauval is no exception, but in this case for the good reason that he believes he has dealt with the point we were making when he countered the Horizon attack. We fully understand that our suggested variation on the correlation theory looked similar to the one raised by Ed Krupp, director of the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. Interviewed for the Horizon programme the American astronomer had said:

  When The Orion Mystery came out my curiosity was naturally aroused. Anybody coming up with a good idea about ancient astronomy I want to know about it. And in going through the book there was something nagging me. In The Orion Mystery there’s a nice double-page spread (showing two pictures of the Giza Pyramids and Orion’s Belt) and anybody looking at this would say, ah! Giza pyramids, Belt of Orion, one kind of looks like the other, you know, you’ve got three in row, three in a row; slanted, slanted; we’ve got a map!

  Immediately, Krupp had painted the picture of a halfwit seeing two sets of three objects in a bent row and leaping at the unwarranted assumption that there was a direct connection. This failure to mention a whole raft of reasons for the proposed connections feeds the preconceptions of the conventionalist group. Krupp continued:

  And what I was bothered by turned out to be really pretty obvious. In the back of my head I knew there was something wrong with these pictures, and what was wrong with these pictures in their presentation is that north for the constellation of Orion is here on the top of the page. North for the Giza pyramids is down here. Now they’re not marked, but I knew which way north was at Giza and I knew which way north was in Orion. To make the map of the pyramids on the ground match the stars of Orion in the sky you have to turn Egypt upside down, and if you don’t want to do that then you have to turn the sky upside down!

  Krupp’s argument was not exactly insightful. Apart from a completely arbitrary modern convention, why assume that north equals the top and south the bottom? Some people are still confused by the fact that Upper Egypt is in the south of the country and Lower Egypt is the northern half. This description refers to the fall of the River Nile from the higher altitudes towards sea level at the delta that spews the Nile’s fresh water into the Mediterranean.

  What we were trying to say to Robert was quite coincidentally related to Krupp’s comment but arrived at for entirely different reasons. In fact we believe our description of events negates Krupp’s objection and makes the correlation theory sounder than ever.

  Solar or Stellar?

  In the Introduction to the aforementioned book, Archaeological Fantasies, the editor says:

  Whatever is theorized about the pyramids must be coherent with the way in which other aspects of Egyptian civilization are described.

  This is obviously good advice – most of the time. But it would be foolhardy to insist that it is a rule that must always be applied in all cases as stated here.

  It is important to keep an eye out for the completely unexpected. One eminent geologist from Cambridge University once said to Chris: ‘You are assuming a closed system. What if it was not a closed system?’ He had been responding to Chris’s comment that the ancient global flood stories, such as Noah’s Flood, cannot be true because there is not enough water to flood everywhere simultaneously. In this case, what if the Egyptian pyramid builders were directly influenced by a group from outside their own culture? If we automatically rule out candidate ideas to explain the available evidence, just because they don’t seem to fit our previous expectations of the culture, it would be impossible ever to spot the arrival of a major external influence.

  One of the criticisms of Robert Bauval’s theories regarding the Giza pyramids is the apparent over-emphasis of stellar issues involved, when the Old Kingdom is generally considered to have been overwhelmingly a solar orientated culture. The importance of the Sun to these people is beyond question, from the god Ra to the incredibly important city of Heliopolis. It was only much later, most probably as a result of Babylonian influences, that Egyptians are known to have taken a serious interest in astronomy.

  Before the primary pyramid age, and indeed for some considerable time after it, the study of stars does not appear to have been of specific importance to the ancient Egyptians. Yet the pyramids do seem to imply a great interest in the stars and this is also borne out by many of the ‘spells’ or ‘incantations’ included amongst the Pyramid Texts. And if we are right about the pendulum method used to map the stars onto the Giza Plateau, the level of observational astronomy amongst whoever planned the pyramid sites must have been considerable.

  So where did this astronomical knowledge come from?

  Before we deal with this question, it is worth looking at one anomaly regarding the pyramids. This anomaly concerns the ruined pyramid of Djedefre, which stands about eight miles north of Giza at a place now called Abu Rawash.

&n
bsp; Djedefre was the successor and son of Khufu and he became king in 2528 BC, upon the death of his father. He apparently died eight years later when his brother Khafre came to the throne, who was in turn followed by his son, Menkaure. The question is, if the three pyramids of Egypt were, as is normally accepted, conceived as a single project, why was Khufu’s eldest son excluded from the plan by having his pyramid constructed inland of the Nile and further north?

  The name Djedefre means ‘enduring like Ra’ and he was the first king to use the title Son of Ra as part of his royal title, which is generally considered to show an indication of the growing popularity of the cult of the solar god Ra. Could it be that this king had no time for newfangled, and perhaps alien ideas about stars being as important as the Sun?

  A boat pit has been found at this pyramid, but it was empty apart from fragments of over 100 statues, mostly representing Djedefre on his throne. Three more or less complete heads were found, including one now in the Louvre in Paris and another that resides in the Egyptian Antiquity Museum in Cairo. The statues appear to have been deliberately destroyed, as though to deny the king’s status. It is widely thought that there were deep rifts and that Djedefre had gained the throne by murdering his older half-brother, Kauab. He then married his sister Hetepheres II, widow of his dead half-brother, to strengthen his claim to the throne, as his own Libyan mother was a ‘lesser wife’ with no ties to the royal family.

  Perhaps because of the break with his father’s family, Djedefre moved his mortuary temple and monument north to Abu Rawash, where he began to construct a large pyramid. This structure had only risen to about 20 courses when he died. The possibility of a family feud looks all the more likely because work on the pyramid was stopped immediately. Furthermore, there are no explanations as to why Kauab was not succeeded by any of his own sons, Setka, Baka or Hernet, so it may have been that they all died before, or at the same time as, their father.

  It has been further widely speculated that Khafre murdered Djedefre, and then destroyed all images associated with his brief rule of just eight years. And it is possible that he also killed Djedefre’s sons to remove any competition for the throne.

  It is certain that all Egyptian kings had respect for Ra and we already knew that the back sight, which links the three Giza pyramids, points northeast towards Heliopolis, the city of the Sun. But Djedefre shows an even greater liking for Ra. From his pyramid at Abu Rawash, the summer solstice Sun rises out of Heliopolis – a fact that must surely have driven the king’s choice of location.

  Was Djedefre cut out of the plan completely? The available evidence now suggests not.

  The feud theory is now under question, as the broken statues seem to have been smashed during the Roman and Christian era. Furthermore, it would also appear from fragmentary evidence around his pyramid that, after Djedefre’s death, he enjoyed a lengthy cult following that was not disrupted by his successor. Why Djedefre chose to build his pyramid at Abu Rawash is still considered a mystery, but there is evidence that Djedefre definitely had a religious departure from his family. His pyramid has a number of elements that seem to revert to earlier times, while his adoption of a ‘son of Ra’ name indicates his religious deviations away from the stellar leanings of his father Khufu. Whether or not the sons of Khufu set about murdering each other in a fight for the kingship, there is good reason to believe that the family were all happily working together – at least during the lifetime of Khufu. Recent evidence suggests that it was Djedefre who completed his father’s burial at Giza and was responsible for the provision of his funerary boats, where Djedefre’s name has been found.

  And we believe that there is a perfectly good explanation as to why Djedefre’s pyramid is at Abu Rawash and not Giza.

  No one appears to have looked closely at the relative positions of the pyramids associated with Khufu and his sons Khafre and Djedefre. Using satellite mapping we measured the distance between Djedefre’s pyramid and Khufu’s at Giza. The first thing that leaped out was the angle of the straight line. Drawing a line from the northwest corner of Djedefre’s pyramid, through its centre and the southeast corner and onwards for just over 8 km, it intersects Khufu’s pyramid at the northwest corner, continues through its centre and then hits the southeast corner. The pyramids are as perfectly aligned as Khufu’s is with Khafre’s.

  Khufu’s pyramid is aligned so that the diagonals of its sides are both perfectly aligned to the pyramids of his two sons. It looked for all the world as though Khufu was facing the setting Sun and stretching his arms out toward his sons exactly 90 degrees apart. The chances of this arrangement happening by accident are virtually nonexistent, and it must have taken great skill to get the alignment so accurate over a distance well beyond the horizon. So we conclude that even this distant pyramid was part of a complex plan created by Khufu during his lifetime. It may be that he accepted Djedefre’s single-minded religious beliefs concerning Ra, the Sun, but still wanted to involve him the largely star-orientated theology that he had been developing, to ensure that he and his progeny found an eternal home in the Duat above.

  When we looked at the distance between Khufu’s and Djedefre’s pyramids it was 8,218 m centre to centre, which was immediately interesting. We then measured the distances between the locations of each sarcophagus and found that the mummified bodies of the two kings had been placed 8,235 m apart – which, to an accuracy of 99.6 per cent, happens to be 10,000 Megalithic Yards!

  Surveying the Stars for the Giza Pyramids

  So, let us now return to question as to where the astronomical knowledge underpinning the planning of the pyramids came from. Our answer is that it came from the British Isles – and there are very hard-edged reasons for making this apparently outlandish claim.

  The British Isles, along with some other parts of Western Europe, still has the remains of tens of thousands of structures used for tracking and measuring the movements of the Moon, planets and stars. Thornborough itself had been in use for almost a millennium before the pyramids were built. Given that both the henges of Thornborough and the three pyramids of the Giza Plateau appear to be built in the form of Orion’s Belt, there are three possible explanations for the connection.

  First, it could be that there is no connection at all. It is simply that two different cultures naturally focused their attention on Sirius, the brightest of all stars, and then noticed a nearly straight line of three stars rise ahead of it and point almost at it. They then attached some mystical significance to these stars and decided for some reason to build a model of them on the ground.

  The second option is that there was contact between the ancient Egyptians and the people of megalithic Britain, and the Egyptians adopted the beliefs of the Northerners by merging their star-based astronomical ‘magic’ into their existing solar theology.

  The third possibility is that the astronomical priesthood of the British megalithic culture was actively involved in the design and layout of the pyramids. Whilst all of the evidence shows that the people of Britain were far behind the Egyptians in terms of stone building and the production of bronze tools, they were clearly ahead in their astronomy and the adoption of complex multifunctional measuring systems. Critics might argue that any association between these two groups would have led to the adoption of metals in Britain at a far earlier date, but we have good reason to believe that this would have been an anathema to the megalithic priesthood. This is an argument too complicated to enter into within the scope of this book. To follow this third, ‘strong’ version of the British-Egyptian theory, it could be that either the megalithic priests came to Egypt or that the Egyptian kings sent their builder-priests north to investigate the ‘magic’ of the stars understood by a people they had learned about.

  The evidence suggests it was the latter of these options that occurred.

  If the pyramids were placed as we have argued – by timing the stars of Orion’s belt rising and then converting the pendulum lengths used into linear units – then we can d
etect where and when it was done. This is because the angle of the rising of the stars changes by latitude, and when we looked at the rising of the stars of Orion’s Belt at Giza in circa 2500 BC we found no correlation whatsoever with the actual layout of the pyramids in any units at all.

  But then we tried Thornborough and the fit was immediate – and astonishingly accurate! Using standard astronomy software we took the timings on the autumn equinox at Thornborough on 14 October in 2500 BC and we found that the three stars rose at following times of day, using a 24-hour clock:

  Mintaka 21:02:27

  Alnilam 21:10:49

  Alnitak 21:18:11

  As we have previously said, it is the two outer stars that have to be measured at rising because the dogleg of the middle star distorts the true timing and therefore ultimately the linear distance between the stars. This means that the time taken between the rising of Mintaka and Alnitak was 15 minutes and 44 seconds – a total of 944 seconds.

  The time lag between the rising of the first and last stars represented 944 swings of a seconds-pendulum that was 99.55 cm in length: 944 such lengths would measure 940 m. The gap between the centres of Khufu’s and Menkaure’s pyramid, as best as we can tell, is 942 m. This gives a fit of 99.8 per cent, which is as close to perfect as it is possible to get, given that we could be slightly out in our estimations of the true distance between pyramid centres, and bearing in mind that the Egyptians could have been slightly out in placing them.

  Either it is a huge coincidence that both structures are copies of Orion’s Belt and the measure of the stars at Thornborough in 2500 BC fit the pyramids’ position on the ground, or there is a connection. It becomes obvious that further and quite extensive research into possible connections between the two cultures in question is going to be necessary. From our own point of view we remain utterly convinced that the three major pyramids on the Giza Plateau were built upon a footprint that was not created first on the desert sand by the side of the Nile, but in the green and pleasant land of North Yorkshire. Both the Thornborough henges and the Giza Pyramids were planned by engineers, and engineers cannot avoid leaving evidence of their presence. In both these cases we can see their footsteps as clearly as if they walked this way yesterday.