To what, then, could the subterranean passage have been oriented? Given Nabta’s megalith alignments toward Vega, we decided to test Vega against the Giza subterranean passage. Employing the most recent measures for Vega’s proper motion5 into the long-term calculations for its motion in the sky, we see that Vega achieved its highest declination of 86.54 degrees around 12,070 BCE. Vega matched the subterranean passage not simply at some passing date, but exactly when the star was at its northern culmination, the closest it comes to the celestial pole in its twenty-six-thousand-year precession cycle. In addition, the precision with which Vega seems to have matched the center of the shaft is surprising. Given the height and length of the shaft, its viewing angle actually includes a range of declination angles from 86.22 degrees to 86.87 degrees, centered on 86.54 degrees, and Vega appears to have hit it directly in the middle,*69 exactly at culmination. Therefore, if these calculations and measures for Vega prove to be accurate,†70 Vega began shining down to the bottom of the subterranean passage around 12,320 BCE, when Vega’s declination rose above 86.22 degrees, and around 12,070 BCE, Vega shone down the center of the shaft until ca. 11,820 BCE, when Vega sank below 86.22 degrees declination again and no longer shone to the bottom of the shaft.‡71
These Vega subterranean passage dates are consistent with the general Zep Tepi we can estimate from the fact that Orion’s belt matches the layout of the three pyramids on the Giza plateau.§72
It is important that Sirius culminated at about the same time. In The Egypt Code, Bauval notes that around Zep Tepi, Sirius would have been just visible on the horizon, as seen from the Giza plateau. In light of this new information of the bright pole star, Vega, shining down the subterranean passage when it was at precessional culmination, we can now look in even more detail at the astrophysics of the Sirius connection. Again, employing the latest measures for Sirius’s proper motion,6 as we did for Vega, we see that Sirius reached its southern culmination around 12,280 BCE at a declination of -60.43 degrees. That declination is noteworthy because the declination of the geometric horizon at Giza looking south is -60.02 degrees, and the visual horizon is thus -60.5 degrees,7 essentially identical to the southern culmination of Sirius. The Giza plateau, then, is the place on Earth (the only latitude) where Sirius, at the southernmost point of its twenty-six-thousand-year precession cycle, just barely eclipsed the earth.
Visual Horizon versus Geometric Horizon
The visual horizon is about 0.5 degrees lower than the geometric horizon, because the light from a star is bent when it passes through Earth’s atmosphere. It is thus possible to see starlight from slightly below the geometric horizon. The precise amount of refraction depends on atmospheric temperature and humidity, but, generally, it averages a bit more than 0.5 degree.
TAKE A WALK AT THE FIRST TIME WITH SIRIUS
Sirius is so bright that it is the only star that can sometimes be seen during daylight, and under good conditions at night it can be seen even when the star is just barely above the visual horizon.*73
We can imagine that we are living in the region (that is now Egypt) around 12,250 BCE and are so highly attuned to the night sky that we are especially oriented to the brightest star of all, Sirius. It is the time of year that is near the summer solstice, and it is millennia before the monsoons move north to bring life again to the desert—we are near the life-sustaining waters of the Nile, but we are nomadic, moving north and south each year, following the best conditions for survival. We are traveling north for several days during a hot summer, and we travel about 55 kilometers (34 miles) per day—a long but feasible day’s walk for a well-conditioned wanderer. This distance is half of one-degree latitude on Earth’s surface. We are five days’ walk south of the place that is now known as Giza. We are aware that the always-easyto-spot three-star asterism of Orion’s belt will rise early evening in the far southeast, and it will culminate south, hanging in the sky at a low altitude of around 15 degrees two hours before midnight. We also know that just after Orion’s belt transits the meridian to the south, at 110 minutes before midnight, Orion’s trailing companion, the starry ruler of the night sky, Sirius, will crack the horizon just 12 degrees east of due south, and Sirius will skim the southern horizon at a very low arc, reaching an altitude of just more than 2 degrees before descending again below the horizon. We know that Sirius is so bright that if we have an unobstructed view of the south horizon, perhaps if we are on a low hill or sand dune in the desert, we will be able to view our old friend in the sky for a couple of hours around midnight. To the north, the brilliant Vega is always up, always visible whenever the sky is dark. Less than 3.5 degrees from the celestial pole in the north, Vega is a restless North Star that cycles up, down, and around the pole each night in a small circle that is 7 degrees across, and when Sirius is high, Vega is low, reaching the bottom part of its circle around the celestial North Pole at just more than an hour after Sirius reaches its height in the south.
As we trek farther north each day, the familiar starry show in the sky each night repeats itself, but Sirius skims the horizon on an even lower and shorter arc each night as we move north. By the time we arrive, a few days walk farther north, at the place now known as Giza, Sirius makes such a low, brief arc on the horizon that viewing it requires perfectly clear conditions, and we must stand on a platform to catch any glimpse of the star. In one more day’s walk farther north it will be impossible to glimpse Sirius at all. The tracking of the star is a deeply ancient part of our ancestral lore and our annual life. During the days the angle of the sun in the sky informs us what time of year it is, and during nights, the appearance of Sirius tells us the same information. In this way, our ancestors have kept in tune with the seasons for a very long time. What’s more, we know that in the region just a couple of days farther north, at the place we now know as Alexandria, we used to be able to glimpse Sirius only a few generations ago before it disappeared entirely from the night sky. Our ancestors have been studying the sky for so long that they were able to teach us how the sky changes over a very long time. Thus we know that Sirius will again return to the northern regions, and the brilliant Vega will move down, away from the celestial pole, and Sirius will climb higher again in the southern regions. That is why the place in which we are standing now is the place of the First Time, Zep Tepi: Giza.
DUAL DATING AND VEGA RECONFIRMED
The ancient name of the Great Pyramid at Giza, the name used by the ancient Egyptians, was Akhet Khufu, The Horizon of Khufu.8 Is it possible that the sacred place where Khufu marshaled his kingdom to build the Great Pyramid was already known simply as Akhet, the Horizon, the place on Earth where the ruler of heaven, Sirius, briefly comes down exactly to the horizon every twenty-six thousand years? Khufu built his great pyramid on the Place of the Horizon in order to make it the Horizon of Khufu.*74
We have seen that the standard date for the building of the pyramids is the fourth dynasty, and we have seen that the layout of the pyramids that matches the stars of Orion’s belt is an allusion to a distant past, a symbolic reference to Zep Tepi described in inscriptions. Similarly, the Calendar Circle at Nabta Playa was likely constructed and used circa 5000 BCE, and it teaches about much earlier times—actually, about the entire precession cycle. In light of our findings regarding the subterranean passage and Vega, and our more detailed study of the motion of Sirius, we must consider again the possibility that the pyramids at Giza were indeed built during the fourth dynasty but were built on top of a location where there was some preexisting, symbolic, much older architecture. Constructions at sacred sites around the world, including those in ancient Egypt, have been built and rebuilt on locations of earlier constructions, often over millennia. Many people have suggested that the Giza plateau complex itself is one such site. Probably, the most stunning evidence for this has come from Boston University geologist Robert Schoch, who, together with inspiration from independent Egyptologist John Anthony West, measured the weathering of the Great Sphinx and the Sphinx enclos
ure. Schoch essentially proved that from a geophysical standpoint the Sphinx was weathered by long-term heavy rainfall and thus predates 5000 BCE. Schoch notes that we cannot determine precisely when the Sphinx was carved into the living bedrock, but rigorous geophysical analysis gives the epoch circa 5000 BCE as a minimum age.9
Like all things that challenge a reigning dogma in an academic field, Schoch’s dating of the Sphinx has generated voluminous polemical argumentation, but he is well supported by the geophysical evidence. In the Sphinx, then, there is monumental architecture on the Giza plateau that predates the fourth dynasty by more than two millennia. Our study of the Vega and Sirius signatures suggests there was some symbolic architecture on the Giza plateau as far back as the actual Zep Tepi and that Giza is the place of Zep Tepi. It has long been suggested that the subterranean chamber at the end of the subterranean passage of the Great Pyramid appears to be much more ancient than the fourth dynasty. Schoch has also suggested that the central subterranean chamber of the Red Pyramid of fourth-dynasty founder Pharaoh Sneferu at Dashur shows geological weathering that is evidence of a much more ancient date.10
It’s possible that the symbolic architecture existent at Zep Tepi included the subterranean passage down to the subterranean chamber, beneath a mound topped by a flat platform, possibly to the level where the Queen’s Chamber exists today. Indeed the Great Pyramid is known to be built over a bedrock mound platform that is, in its interior, about 8 meters (26 feet) high and extends to approximately where the subterranean passage emerges from the bedrock.11 In this view, the Great Pyramid was completed in the fourth dynasty on top of the then ancient subterranean passage and platform. The Zep Tepi platform was symbolically preserved in the completed architecture of the pyramid by the horizontal passage that leads to the Queen’s Chamber. The horizontal passage basically has the same dimensions (1.2 meters—3.9 feet—in height) as the subterranean passage, and conceptually, the horizontal passage is another star shaft directed exactly along the horizon—symbolically preserving the much more ancient horizontal platform used to represent and probably to view Sirius at the First Time, Zep Tepi, and preserving the place on Earth that demarcates the parts of Earth from where Sirius never disappears and the parts of Earth where Sirius does disappear.
Further suggestive of symbolic unity is the ascending passage that now connects the subterranean passage and the horizontal passage of the Queen’s Chamber. It is of the same dimensions (1.2 meters—3.9 feet—in height), and it is sloped upward at an almost identical angle to the downslope of the subterranean passage—much like a reflection off the horizon plane. If there was a Sirius platform at Zep Tepi and if the subterranean passage did exist, then it would have been possible for a single priest or priestess to view by employing a simple flat reflector or still pool of water where the subterranean passage enters the earth and connect the light of Vega from the north shining down the passage at the same time as the light of Sirius from the south just skimmed the horizon. Thus two great rulers of the starry sky—Sirius, the crown jewel of the night, and Vega, the ruler of all the circumpolar stars—were viewed and symbolized simultaneously at both of their twenty-six-thousand-year precessional culminations (with Sirius culminating south and Vega culminating north). Their precise culminations were 180 years apart, but for centuries they demonstrated simultaneous shining along the horizon platform and into the subterranean passage, and around 12,020 BCE their lights shone simultaneously and directly from the south and the north onto the place of the First Time. Significantly, this starry drama occurred around midnight, when the sky was dark, only on the days of the year around summer solstice. Further, the Great Pyramid and subterranean passage are located on the Giza plateau in such a way that the plateau slopes down and away to the southeast, giving an unobstructed view of the southern horizon in order to accommodate viewing the starry show.
Throughout ancient Egyptian history, the heliacal reappearance of Sirius marked the New Year as well as the imminent arrival of the Nile floods, much as the appearance of Sirius marked the New Year and the playa-filling monsoons at Nabta Playa. Monuments simultaneously marking the rising Sirius and the circumpolar stars represented the bounteous measure of the New Year cycle. We can see that at the place of the First Time, Zep Tepi, the start of the new Great Year of precessional motion of Sirius, ruler of the heavens, is monumentally indicated, together with the Great Year cycle of the celestial pole around the invariant point ruled by the greatest pole star of all, Vega. There is an elegant similarity in this use of stellar symbology (Sirius rising simultaneous with the circumpolar star) to mark both the annual cycle of the seasons and the Great Year cycle of the Ages.
At this point, traditional-minded archaeoastronomers would raise an objection that the Vega-to-subterranean passage alignment is only one star in one alignment and therefore is not significant. Yet we can now see that this single alignment is part of a symbolic system repeated again and again, and that it occurs not simply in any time in the star’s cycle, but at the special time of culmination. Still, objectors would say that other examples of the same alignment are needed for verification. To honor this, we can examine other subterranean passages.
Actually there are only two extensive subterranean passages associated with the six giant pyramids:12 third-dynasty Djoser’s step pyramid at Saqqara, fourth-dynastry founder Sneferu’s Bent Pyramid and Red Pyramid at Dashur, the great pyramids of Khufu and Khafre at Giza, and the fourth-dynasty Unfinished Pyramid at Zawiyet el-Aryan. Besides Khufu’s Great Pyramid, the other subterranean passage is beneath Sneferu’s Bent Pyramid at Dashur. Located 21 kilometers (13 miles) south of the Great Pyramid of Khufu, the giant Bent Pyramid of Sneferu is at latitude 29.79 degrees. We learn from Egyptologist I. E. S. Edwards13 that the subterranean passage of the Bent Pyramid starts at the entrance to the pyramid on its north face, about 12 meters (39 feet) above ground. It continues down through the masonry for 25 meters (82 feet), first at an angle of 28.36 degrees, and then shifts to an angle of 26.33 degrees before moving from the masonry down into the bedrock after another 48 meters (157 feet). The passage continues, precisely directed at a constant angle through the bedrock to a chamber under the center of the pyramid, and the entire subterranean length of the passage into the bedrock is at a constant angle of 26.33 degrees. This angle, combined with the latitude of the Bent Pyramid, points to a location in the sky with a precise declination of 86.54 degrees—identical to the subterranean passage of the Great Pyramid of Khufu at Giza. So if the subterranean passage that is now under the Bent Pyramid existed at Zep Tepi, plunging into the bedrock beneath a horizon-viewing platform on the surface, essentially the same starry drama as at Giza could have been observed at Dashur—with the only difference being that at Dashur, Sirius would rise to a slightly higher altitude by about 20 arc minutes.
The ancient name of the Bent Pyramid was the Southern Shining Pyramid.14 Perhaps, when Sneferu marshaled his kingdom to build the Bent Pyramid, the location was already known and revered as the Southern Shining—the place on Earth, and especially south, where the ruler of the heavens, Sirius, shines eternally and never disappears beneath the horizon. Sneferu built three large pyramids. The first, at Meidum, bears an exalted personal ancient name: Sneferu Endures. The last, about 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) north of the Southern Shining Pyramid, had the ancient name of the Shining Pyramid. Sneferu’s son, Khufu, built the pyramid called the Horizon of Khufu. The Bent Pyramid and its subterranean passage are also located topographically so that the distant southern horizon was nearly perfectly flat and unobscured.
The subterranean passage under the Bent Pyramid has not been surveyed as extensively and repeatedly as has the subterranean passage under the Khufu Great Pyramid, thus we don’t know whether the Bent Pyramid passage may also be as precisely wrought as the Khufu Pyramid passage.*75 We do know, however, from measuring the structures that the builders of both of these giant pyramid complexes were capable of and in fact implemented great precision over long distanc
es. If it can be shown, then, that the only two subterranean passages under the two key true giant pyramids were oriented to the same declination in the sky with the same high precision, then that alone would contribute evidence that the builders indeed had astronomical intent—whether or not that intent was Vega. In light of these findings, perhaps another survey of this aspect of the Bent Pyramid could further illuminate the origins of these two subterranean passages.
We also note that the two other great pyramids on the Giza plateau, the Menkaure and Khafre pyramids, have shorter, less surgically precise subterranean passages that don’t extend down all the way under the center of their structures. Menkaure’s bedrock passage descends 31 meters (102 feet), about half of that length through the lower courses of masonry and the rest down into the bedrock at an angle of 26.03 degrees, and Khafre’s passage descends a much shorter distance at an angle of 25.92 degrees. These yield declinations to the sky of about half of one degree lower than their Great Pyramid partner, and the broader angular spread of their openings means that they would have captured the light of the culminating Vega during the same times as did the passage under Khufu’s pyramid.*76
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