occurred only at that time. First, and purely by chance, the Milky Way, as visible
from Giza in 10,450 BC, exactly duplicated the meridional course of the Nile
Valley; secondly, to the west of the Milky Way, the three stars of Orion’s Belt were
at the lowest altitude in their precessional cycle, with Al Nitak, the star
represented by the Great Pyramid, crossing the meridian at 11° 08’.8
Precession and the stars of Orion’s belt.
The reader is already familiar with the way the earth’s axial precession
causes sunrise on the vernal equinox to migrate along the band of the
zodiac over a cycle of about 26,000 years. The same phenomenon also
affects the declination of all visible stars, producing, in the case of the
Orion constellation, very gradual but significant changes in altitude. Thus
6 Personal communications/interviews.
7 Skyglobe 3.6.
8 Personal communications/interviews.
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from its highest point at meridian transit (58° 11’ above the southern
horizon as viewed from Giza) it takes Al Nitak about 13,000 years to
descend to the low point, last registered in 10,450 BC, that is
immortalized in stone on the Giza plateau—i.e. 11° 08’. As another
13,000 years pass, the belt stars very slowly rise again until Al Nitak is
back at 58° 11’; then during the next 13,000 years they gradually fall
once more to 11° 08’. This cycle is eternal: 13,000 years up, 13,000 years
down, 13,000 years up, 13,000 years down, for ever. 9
It’s the precise configuration for 10,450 BC that we see on the Giza plateau—as
though a master-architect came here in that epoch and decided to lay out a huge
map on the ground using a mixture of natural and artificial features. He used the
meridional course of the Nile Valley to depict the Milky Way, as it looked then. He
built the three pyramids to represent the three stars, exactly as they looked then.
And he put the three pyramids in exactly the same relationship to the Nile Valley
as the three stars then had to the Milky Way. It was a very clever, very ambitious,
very exact way to mark an epoch—to freeze a particular date into architecture if
you like ...10
The First Time
I found the implications of the Orion correlation complicated and eerie.
On the one hand, the Great Pyramid’s southern shafts ‘precessionally
anchored’ the monument to Al Nitak and Sirius in 2475-2400 BC, dates
which coincided comfortably with the epoch when Egyptologists said the
monument had been built.
On the other hand the disposition of all three of the pyramids in
relation to the Nile Valley eloquently signalled the much earlier date of
10,450 BC. This coincided with the controversial geological findings John
West and Robert Schoch had made at Giza, which suggested the presence
of a high civilization in Egypt in the eleventh millennium BC. Moreover,
the disposition of the pyramids had not been arrived at by any random or
accidental process but seemed to have been deliberately chosen because
it marked a precessionally significant event: the lowest point, the
beginning, the First Time in Orion’s 13,000-year ‘up’ cycle.
I knew that Bauval believed this astronomical event to have been linked
symbolically to the mythical First Time of Osiris—the time of the gods,
when civilization had supposedly been brought into the Nile Valley—and
that his reasoning for this derived from the mythology of Ancient Egypt
which directly associated Osiris with the Orion constellation (and Isis with
Sirius).11
Had the historical archetypes for Osiris and Isis actually come here in
9 Skyglobe 3.6
10 Personal communications/interviews.
11 See Chapters Forty-two to Forty-four.
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the First Time, twelve and a half thousand years ago?12 My research into
Ice Age mythologies had persuaded me that certain ideas and memories
could linger in the human psyche for many millennia, transmitted from
generation to generation by oral tradition. I could therefore see no prima
facie reasons why the Osirian mythology, with its strange and anomalous
characteristics, should not have originated as far back as 10,450 BC.
However, it was the civilization of dynastic Egypt that had elevated
Osiris to the status of the high god of resurrection. That civilization was
one that had few known antecedents, and none at all recognizable in the
remote epoch of the eleventh millennium BC. If the Osirian mythology had
been transmitted across 8000 years, therefore, then what culture had
transmitted it? And had this culture also been responsible for both the
astronomical alignments proven to have been manifested by the
pyramids: 10,450 BC and 2450 BC?
These were among the questions I planned to put to Robert Bauval in
the shadow of the pyramids. Santha and I had arranged to meet him at
dawn, at the Mortuary Temple of Khafre, so that the three of us could
watch the sun come up over the Sphinx.
12 ‘The Egyptians ... believed that they were a divine nation, and that they were ruled by
kings who were themselves gods incarnate; their earliest kings, they asserted, were
actually gods, who did not disdain to live on earth, and to go about up and down
through it, and to mingle with men.’ The Gods of the Egyptians, volume I, p. 3.
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The pyramids and the belt stars of Orion at 10,450 BC, meridian view.
The platform
Positioned beside the eastern face of the Second Pyramid, the largely
ruined Mortuary Temple was a spooky, grey, cold place to be at this hour.
And as John West had indicated during our conversation at Luxor, there
could be little doubt that it belonged to the same severe, imposing and
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unadorned style of architecture as the better-known Valley Temple. Here,
at any rate, were the same enormous blocks, weighing 200 tons or more
each.13 And here too was the same intangible atmosphere of vast
antiquity and awakening intelligence, as though some epiphany might be
at hand. Even in its present, much despoiled state, this anonymous
structure, which Egyptologists had called a Mortuary Temple, was still a
place of power that seemed to draw its energy from an epoch far in the
past.
I looked up at the huge mass of the Second Pyramid’s eastern face just
behind us in the pearl-grey dawn light. Again, as John West had pointed
out, there was much to suggest that it might have been built in two
different stages. The lower courses, up to a height of perhaps thirty feet,
consisted largely of cyclopean limestone megaliths like those in the
temples. Above this height, however, the remainder of the pyramid’s
gigantic core had been formed out of much smaller blocks weighing
around two to three tons each (like the majority of the blocks in the Great
Pyramid).
Had there been a time when a twelve-acre, thirty-foot-high megalithic
; platform had stood here on the ‘hill of Giza’, west of the Sphinx,
surrounded only by nameless square and rectangular structures such as
the Valley and Mortuary Temples? In other words, was it possible that the
Second Pyramid’s lower courses might have been built first, before the
other pyramids—perhaps long before, in a much earlier age?
The cult
That question was still on my mind when Robert Bauval arrived. After
exchanging a few chilly pleasantries about the weather—a cold desert
wind was blowing across the plateau—I asked him, ‘How do you account
for the 8000-year gap in your correlations?’
‘Gap?’
‘Yes; shafts that seem to have been aligned in 2450 BC and a site-plan
that maps star positions in 10,450 BC.’
‘Actually, I see two explanations that both make some kind of sense,’
said Bauval, ‘and I think the answer has to be one or the other of these ...
Either the pyramids were designed as a sort of “star-clock” to mark two
particular epochs, 2450 and 10,450 BC, in which case we actually can’t
say when they were built. Or they were built up over ...’
‘Hang on with that first point,’ I interrupted. ‘How do you mean “starclock”? How do you mean we can’t say when they were built?’
‘Well, let’s assume for a moment that the pyramid builders knew
13 The Mortuary Temple was excavated by von Sieglin in 1910 and was found to consist
of blocks of varying sizes weighing ‘between 100 and 300 tons’. Blue Guide: Egypt, p.
431.
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precession. Let’s assume they were able to calculate the declination of
particular star-groups backwards and forwards in time, just as we can
today with computers ... Assuming they could do that then, no matter
which epoch they lived in, they’d have been able to make a model of what
the skies over Giza looked like in 10,450 BC or 2450 BC as required, just
as we could. In other words, if they’d built the pyramids in 10,450 BC they
would have had no difficulty in calculating the correct angles of
inclination for the southern shafts so that they would be sighted on Al
Nitak and Sirius around 2450 BC. Likewise, if they’d lived in 2450 BC
they’d have had no difficulty in calculating the correct site-plan to reflect
the position of Orion’s Belt in 10,450 BC. Agreed?’
‘Agreed.’
‘OK. That’s one explanation. But the second explanation, which I
personally favour—and which I think the geological evidence also
supports—is that the whole Giza necropolis was developed and built up
over an enormously long period of time. I think it’s more than possible
that the site was originally planned and laid out at around 10,450 BC, so
that its geometry would reflect the skies as they looked then, but that the
work was completed, and the shafts of the Great Pyramid aligned, around
2450 BC.’
‘So you’re saying that the ground-plan of the Pyramids could date back
to 10,450 BC?
‘I think it does. And I think that the geometrical centre of that plan was
located more or less where we’re standing now, right in front of the
Second Pyramid ...’
I pointed out the large blocks in the lower courses of the huge edifice:
‘It even looks like it was built in two stages, by two completely different
cultures ...’
Bauval shrugged. ‘Let’s speculate ... Maybe it wasn’t two different
cultures, Maybe it was one culture, or cult— the cult of Osiris, perhaps.
Maybe it was a very long-lived, very ancient cult dedicated to Osiris that
was here in 10,450 BC and was still here in 2450 BC. Maybe what
happened was that some of the ways that this cult did things changed
over time. Maybe they used huge blocks in 10,450 BC and smaller blocks
in 2450 BC ... It seems to me there’s a lot here that supports this notion, a
lot that says “very ancient cult”, a lot of evidence that has just never been
investigated ...’
‘For example?’
‘Well, obviously the astronomical alignments of the site. I’ve been
among the first to start looking into those properly. And the geology: the
work that John West and Robert Schoch have been involved in at the
Sphinx. Here are two sciences—both hard, empirical, evidence-driven
sciences—that have never been applied to these problems before. But
now that we have started to apply them, we’re beginning to get a whole
new reading on the antiquity of the necropolis. And I honestly think we’ve
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just scratched the surface and that much more will emerge from the
geology and the astronomy in the future. In addition, nobody’s yet made
a really detailed study of the Pyramid Texts from anything other than the
so-called “anthropological” perspective, which means a preconceived
notion that the priests of Heliopolis were a bunch of half-civilized witchdoctors who wanted to live for ever ... Actually they did want to live for
ever but they certainly weren’t witch-doctors ... They were highly civilized,
highly initiated men and they were, in their own fashion, scientists, as we
can judge from their works. Therefore I suggest that it’s as scientific or at
least quasi-scientific documents that the Pyramid Texts need to be read,
not as mumbo-jumbo. I’m already satisfied that they respond to
precessional astronomy. There may be other keys too: mathematics,
geometry—particularly geometry ... Symbolism ... What’s needed is a
multi-disciplinary approach to understanding the Pyramid Texts ... and to
understanding the pyramids themselves. Astronomers, mathematicians,
geologists, engineers, architects, even philosophers to deal with the
symbolism—everybody who can bring a fresh eye and fresh skills to bear
on these very important problems should be encouraged to do so.’
‘Why do you feel the problems are so important?’
‘Because they have a colossal bearing on our understanding of the past
of our own species. The very careful, very precise site-planning and
setting-out that appears to have been done here in 10,450 BC could only
have been the work of a highly-evolved, probably technological
civilization. ...’
‘Whereas no such civilization is supposed to have existed anywhere on
earth in that epoch ...’
‘Exactly. It was the Stone Age. Human society was supposed to have
been at a very primitive level, with our ancestors wearing skins,
sheltering in caves, following a hunting-gathering way of life and so on
and so forth. So its rather unsettling to discover that civilized people
seem to have been present in Giza in 10,450 BC, who understood the
obscure science of precession extremely well, who had the technical
capacity to work out that they were witnessing the lowest point in Orion’s
precessional cycle—and thus the beginning of the constellation’s 13,000
year upwards journey—and who set out to create a permanent memorial
of that moment here on the plateau. By putting Orion’s Belt on the
ground in the way they did they knew
that they were freezing a very
specific moment in time.’
A perverse thought occurred to me: ‘How can we be so sure that the
moment that they were freezing was 10,450 BC? After all, Orion’s Belt
takes up that same configuration in the southern sky, west of the Milky
Way at 11-plus degrees above the horizon, once every 26,000 years. So
why shouldn’t they have been immortalizing 36,450 BC or even the
precessional cycle that began 26,000 years before that?’
Robert was clearly ready for this question. ‘Some ancient records do
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suggest that Egyptian civilization had roots going back almost 40,000
years,’ he mused, ‘like that strange report in Herodotus that talks about
the sun rising where it once set and setting where it once rose ...’
‘Which is also a precessional metaphor ...’
‘Yes. Precession again. Most peculiar the way it always keeps cropping
up ... At any rate, you’re right, they could have been marking the
beginning of the previous precessional cycle ...’
‘But do you think they were?’
‘No. I think 10,450 BC is the more likely date. It’s more within the range
of what we know about the evolution of homo sapiens. And although it
still leaves a lot of years to account for before the sudden emergence of
dynastic Egypt around 3000 BC, it isn’t too long a period ...’
‘Too long a period for what?’
‘It’s the answer to your question about the 8000-year gap between the
alignment of the site and the alignment of the shafts. Eight thousand
years is a very long time but it isn’t too long for a dedicated highly
motivated cult to have preserved and nurtured and faithfully passed on
the high-knowledge of the people who invented this place in 10,450 BC.’14
The machine
How high was the knowledge of those prehistoric inventors?
‘They knew their epochs,’ said Bauval, ‘and the clock that they used was
the natural clock of the stars. Their working language was precessional
astronomy and these monuments express that language in a very clear,
unambiguous, scientific manner. They were also highly skilled
surveyors—I mean the people who originally prepared the site and laid
14 Just as any great Christian cathedral, however modern (for example the twentiethcentury gothic cathedral on Nob Hill in San Francisco), expresses the thinking,
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