If this is correct, then it is surely relevant that during the elaborate festivities organised for the first jubilee of Amenhotep III for his thirtieth year of his reign, the old king commissioned 730 effigies of the goddess Sekhmet, a solar deity, to be used for the jubilee rituals. This conspicuous number of 730 also crops up in the number of altars that were placed around the Great Temple of Aten at Tell el Amarna, where, according to Donald Redford, ‘the continuity of time and the constancy of the calendar depended wholly on the tireless regularity of the Sun-disc, and as if to commemorate the calendric continuum, 365 offering tables flanked Gm-itn on one side and 365 on the other’.28 This makes a total of 730 offering tables. And 730 is, of course, half the Sothic cycle (1,460 years), equal to the number of years that the sun disc appears to travel from north (summer solstice) to south (winter solstice). Bearing this in mind, Jocelyn Gohary writes that ‘with regards to the specific point in the civil calendar at which the (heb) sed-festival took place, the date I prt 1 was considered to be the ideal date for the celebration’.29 This view was also shared by Alan Gardiner, and by the calendar expert Richard Parker.30 In the Egyptian civil calendar the date I Prt 1 was the first day of the first month of the second season. It was also known as 1 Tybi (Tybi being the fifth month of the civil calendar). When the calendar was inaugurated in 2781 BC, 1 Tybi fell four months (4 × 30 = 120 days) after the summer solstice, which in our own Gregorian calendar gives us the date 19 October. This date had a particularly strong resonance for me, because it so happened that I had found myself twice on this date at the Great Temple of Rameses II at Abu Simbel and, as all Egyptologists know, this is when the rising sun aligns with the main axis of the temple so that its light shines into the holy of holies, which contains four statues, one of which represents Ra-Horakhti. At this point I knew I was sensing something in all these interlocking clues: something that was going to change for ever my perception of what those great religious centres of Egypt meant.
Jubilee Centres Ad Infinitum
The first time I saw the great rock-cut temple of Rameses II at Abu Simbel was in the spring of 2002, when I was escorting a group of visitors on a tour of Egypt.31 We had all flown out of Cairo earlier that morning, and after a brief stopover at Aswan airport, the Egyptair jumbo took us another half-hour further south to Abu Simbel.
The thing that one notices first about this dry and hot resort on the southern frontier of Egypt is the clarity and calmness of its weather, which is even more impressive after experiencing the dusty, polluted air of Cairo. On this particular day there was a soft, warm breeze, and the sky seemed dyed a bright cerulean blue, with not a single cloud in sight. At the airport we boarded coaches and after a bumpy ride along the shore of Lake Nasser, we arrived at the Great Temple. After the usual disorganised buying of tickets and security checks, we were led single file along a footpath that sloped down towards the lake. Suddenly the path took a sharp turn and we found ourselves almost face to face with the four seated colossi of Rameses II that dominate the façade of the temple. Even though I had prepared for this confrontation, nonetheless the huge surge in emotion within me almost threw me off balance. I felt dwarfed, humbled, inspired, awed and elated at the same time. I didn’t know if I wanted to cry or laugh.
Rameses II, a Nineteenth Dynasty pharaoh who ruled from c. 1290 to 1224 BC, has been described as the Napoleon of ancient Egypt. He is, unquestionably, the most universally know pharaoh, who was made even more famous by Hollywood in his role of the super-villain who wanted to prevent Moses and the Jews from crossing the Red Sea into Israel. Whether this is historically true or not is not our debate here. What interests us about Rameses II is that, above all else, he was a compulsive builder who saw things in a big way. Under his reign massive building programmes were implemented all across Egypt, with giant statues of himself flanking the entrances of these gargantuan temples and opulent palaces. At Luxor temple, for example, you will be greeted by a 15-metre-tall effigy of Rameses II seated on a throne. Upon entering the Karnak temple there he is again, this time standing high at the entrance of the second pylon. And at Mit’Rahin (ancient Memphis) you will find him yet again in the form of a huge statue now lying on its back like a sleeping giant under a sheltered area built in the 1960s by the Antiquities Department. But by far the most impressive statuary of Rameses II are those four seated colossi that guard the entrance of the Great Temple at Abu Simbel. Once seen, they will remain in your memory for ever as a reminder that there was once a time when kings were considered giants and gods whose images were made eternal in the stone.
And yet, amazing as this may sound, this very hard-to-miss temple was ‘lost’ after the Roman occupation of Egypt in 30 BC. It was not until 1813 that it was rediscovered (half engulfed in sand) by the Swiss-German explorer Ludwig Burckhardt when he sailed up the Nile in southern Nubia. But it was the flamboyant Italian Giovanni Belzoni who in 1817 first entered and explored it. It is estimated that the temple took some 30 years to complete, and when one looks at the many features that it incorporates, this comes as no great surprise. The four seated colossi dominating the façade are carved out of the living rock cliff and measure 21 metres in height - by far the tallest statues ever found in Egypt.32 Above the colossi, and centred on the axis of the temple, was also carved into the rock façade a standing statue of the sun-god Ra-Horakhti in his usual image of a falcon-headed man wearing the sun disc upon his head,33 which highlights the intense solar nature of this temple. The top fascia of the temple has carved on it a row of 22 cynocephali, a type of male baboon considered sacred to the sun-god. Apparently these creatures were in the habit of gathering at dawn on the shores of the Nile and facing the rising sun with arms upraised while uttering strange cries and yelps. To the Egyptians it seemed as if they were ‘speaking’ to the sun-god.34 In ancient Egyptian mythology the sky had many ‘gates’, with the twelfth gate being the place through which it emerged from the underworld Duat in the east at dawn. According to George Hart, the cynocephali baboons were the guardians of the eleventh gate of the sky who were seen in the ‘area directly before dawn’ and were referred to as ‘baboons of sunrise, gods who carry the blazing light’.35 Baboons, and particularly the cynocephali type, feature prominently in the decoration of temple façades and the pedestals of obelisks.36 The god of science and writing, Thoth (the Hermes of the Greeks), was the divine baboon, and in one inscription from the New Kingdom Thoth proudly asserts that ‘I am Thoth and I speak the language of Ra as a herald.’37 Another inscription describes the baboon cynocephali as ‘The baboons that announce Ra when this great god is to be born . . . They are at both sides of this god until he rises in the eastern horizon; they dance for him, they jump gaily for him, they sing for him, they sing praise for him, they shout out for him . . . They are those who announce Ra in heaven and on Earth.’38
The above texts describe perfectly those 22 baboons that form the frieze of the temple of Rameses II at Abu Simbel, as we shall now see.
A Symphony of Light
When the Dutch Egyptologist Jan van der Haagen headed the UNESCO team in the 1960s to save the temple of Abu Simbel from the rising waters of Lake Nasser, he was quick to notice that each morning the rays of the sun would first light up the row of 22 cynocephali at the top of the temple’s façade.39 As the sun rose a little higher its rays would then light up the solar disc on the head of the statue of Ra-Horakhti carved into the living rock in the upper centre of the façade. Immediately afterwards the sunlight would fall on the four seated colossi of Rameses II, until finally, when the sun reached a height of about 1° over the horizon, the whole façade of the temple would glow in the morning light. But that was just on an ordinary day. Around 19 October, something wonderful would happen at sunrise: a beam of light would shoot into the temple right through the 60-metre axis to light up the four seated statues of Ptah, Amun-Ra, Rameses II and Ra-Horakhti in the holy of holies. The effect - which I have witnessed on two occasions - is truly magical, and for a few minutes (abo
ut 24 according to my reckoning) the interior of the temple is like ‘a symphony of light’.
Haagen had a hunch that the orientation of the temple’s axis was not a coincidence, and that it had deliberately been aligned this way to allow the rays of the rising sun to enter the temple on 19 October. But why that specific date? According to the French Egyptologist Louis Christophe, a colleague of Haagen on the UNESCO project, the various statues of the Abu Simbel temple symbolised the process of deification of Rameses II as the sun-god that took place at his jubilees and which, according to Christophe’s reckoning, fell close to 19 October (in the Gregorian calendar). Apparently Rameses II celebrated a total of 14 jubilees in his lifetime, and the dates and locations of some are known with a fair degree of certainty. The fifth and sixth jubilees were celebrated at Memphis, and according to Dr Christophe’s calculations they both took place on 22 October. This date was so close to the 19 October that it led him to conclude that the temple at Abu Simbel (which is 1,250 kilometres to the south of Memphis) was probably planned to coincide with the jubilee date when the solar deification ceremonies for the king took place.40 Haagen agreed in principle with Dr Christophe’s conclusion, but nonetheless felt that the three-day difference between the Memphite date of 22 October and the Abu Simbel date of 19 October needed to be reconciled. Thus, in Haagen’s own words:
Orientation of the Great Temple of the Aten at Tell El Amarna
Here is my hypothesis. The astronomer of Thebes or Memphis who was responsible for determining the exact position of the sun for 22 October at Abu Simbel may not have had a detailed knowledge of the site: there is, after all, 1250 kilometres between Memphis and Abu Simbel. Also the astronomer may well have used an ‘ideal’ horizon line fixed at the level of the temple itself. But in reality the sun rises 5 minutes later after the ‘ideal’ horizon moment because there exists on the east bank of the river, at about 3300 metres distance, a ridge of hills high enough to delay its rising. And since in October at this location the sun’s path makes a 66 degrees angle with the horizon, the first segment of the sun’s disc appears at a point a little more to the south than that which it had been at the ‘ideal’ horizon. This problem is also further complicated by the fact that the ridge of the hills is far from being horizontal, and makes a pronounced depression at that specific spot.
An ‘ideal’ horizon, of course, is only possible in open flat desert regions or at sea. In the context of Abu Simbel, where the view to the true horizon is obstructed by the ridge of hills, sunrise occurs a little later than if it had been observed at ‘ideal’ horizon conditions, and the position of the sun is, therefore, a little further to the south or to the north depending on the time of year. Haagen was able to calculate that the sun would have risen on 21 October along the temple’s axis in ‘ideal’ horizon conditions. Also taking into account the slightly different obliquity for the epoch 1290 BC, the sun would have been a little further south, thus pushing the date to 22 October. This would imply that the ancient astronomer who determined the orientation of the temple’s axis in accordance with the ‘jubilee date’ had calculated the position of the sunrise rather than actually observing it on location. In other words, the ancient astronomer ignored the hills. So although he had the date of 22 October in mind, by ignoring the hills his design produced the date of 19 October. Although Haagen’s hypothesis is ingenious, I do not think that this is what happened. There is, in fact, another more likely explanation for the discrepancy in dates.
The pharaoh Rameses II, as we have noted earlier, ruled from 1290 BC to 1224 BC. In the previous chapter we have seen how the return of the New Year’s Day to the summer solstice, its point of origin, took place in 1275 BC (2781-1,506 = 1275 i.e., after a Great Solar Cycle). Immediately we can see that this date falls within the reign of Rameses II.41 This means that the date of 1 Tybi (the ‘jubilee date’, which is 120 days after the New Year’s Day) would have fallen on 19 October (Gregorian).42 With StarryNight Pro, we can determine the position of sunrise at Abu Simbel for 19 October, which turns out to be close to 11° south-of-east for an ‘ideal’ horizon. Allowing for the hills across Lake Nasser (and also for the high refraction at that time of year), this value must be adjusted to about 12° 30′ south-of-east. This is also the orientation of the temple’s axis. This again cannot be a coincidence, and we must conclude that the ancient astronomer had, in fact, intended the axis of the temple to be directed to sunrise on 1 Tybi (on 19 October) as actually observed over the distant hills. In this manner, whether by coincidence or by intention, anyone observing sunrise along the temple’s axis on 1 Tybi would, by necessity, be there at the start of a new age or Sothic cycle. This would apply, of course, ad infinitum.43 And even though it is true that there would be a very small shift of the sun’s declination due to the Milokovitch Factor (see Chapter Five, note 25), this would not much affect the solar alignment on 19 October.44
The ‘Jubilee Date’ at Giza
In the middle of winter of the year 1995 I was at the Giza plateau with the author Graham Hancock and the Dutch television producer Roel Oostra. We had come to film the sunrise at Giza on 21 February.45 I had calculated that on that date the sun would be rising in direct alignment with the ancient causeway that ran alongside the Great Sphinx, and we wanted to film this event for a documentary for the Discovery Channel. For this, we set up the cameras some 100 metres behind the Sphinx and along the axis of the causeway, which is about 13° to 14° south-of-east. We then waited for sunrise. It did not occur to me at the time that we could have equally come here on 19 October, for the sun would also have risen at the same place on the eastern horizon. This, of course, is because the sun will always cross the same point twice at intervals of six months. Had I realised this at the time, and had I also been aware of Haagen’s work at Abu Simbel, I would have immediately realised that the ‘jubilee date’ of 1 Tybi was also locked into the design scheme of the Giza Necropolis. According to accepted chronology, the Great Sphinx and its causeway date from c. 2500 BC. This would mean that they were built some 281 years after the inauguration of the civil calendar, which was in 2781 BC. In 2500 BC 1 Tybi would not have fallen on 19 October but, because of the drifting calendar, rather on 28 December. The position of the sun at that date would have been about 26° south-of-east and thus way off the alignment of the causeway, which is 14° south-of-east. In other words, for the causeway to align with the sunrise on 1 Tybi, it had to have been aligned in c. 2781 BC and not c. 2500 BC. But was there any evidence of this?
The British geologist Colin Reader has been involved with the so-called ‘Age of the Sphinx Debate’ since the late 1990s, and has gained recognition and respect from Egyptologists for his level-headed and professional approach to the problem. In 1997 he investigated the geological conditions around the Sphinx and its enclosure, and at first fully supported the established view that the Sphinx and its temples, as well as the causeway, belonged to the Fourth Dynasty and could thus be dated to c. 2500 BC. But as further evidence was uncovered, Reader altered his view, and in 2002 published his revised date in the Journal of the Ancient Chronology Forum.46 The new evidence had forced him to consider that the Sphinx and its causeway could not be attributed to the Fourth Dynasty, but rather must be dated to the early dynastic period. Significantly, one of Reader’s arguments involved the alignment of the Sphinx causeway which, when carefully considered in relation to the two adjacent ancient quarries, showed that it ‘was established some time before Khufu’s work at Giza . . . I conclude that the Sphinx and a number of other related structures must have pre-dated the Fourth Dynasty. Taking into consideration the earliest known use of stone masonry in Egypt I date this Sphinx complex to the Early Dynastic Period.’ Reader, however, does not deny that the Fourth Dynasty pharaoh Khafra had a major influence on the Sphinx, ‘but not as a builder’: I believe that the unique layout of Khafre’s mortuary complex, which includes the Sphinx and the Sphinx temple, developed as a result of that pharaoh’s usurpation or re-working of the existin
g solar-cult complex. How better could the association of the king with the sun-god have been symbolised other than by linking Khafre’s ‘mansion of eternity’ (his pyramid) with a long established site of solar worship and the everlasting circle of birth, death and re-birth manifested in the daily rising and setting of the sun?
The early dynastic period in which Reader places the Sphinx and its causeway falls somewhere between 2920 and 2575 BC, with the First Dynasty falling between 2920 and 2770 BC.47 This brings us tantalisingly close to the magical date of 2781 BC, when the civil calendar was inaugurated. That the Giza Necropolis as a whole is intensely astronomical - and, therefore, calendrical - needs no further emphasis, as in my previous books The Orion Mystery (1994) and Keeper of Genesis (1996) the stellar and solar qualities of the monuments have been discussed in great detail. Nowhere else at Giza is the solar connection more evident than at the Sphinx complex. The Sphinx itself, as we have seen, faces the rising sun at the equinoxes, and the calendrical symbolism is clearly attested by the two series of 12 pillars at its temple, which, according to at least one eminent Egyptologist, makes it ‘a monument to the circuit of the sun and the hourly and daily cycles of time’.48 If Reader is correct in his deduction that the Sphinx complex belongs to the early dynastic period, and if we also assume a date near 2781 BC, then this connects the Sphinx complex to the time when the New Year’s Day fell on the summer solstice. If this hypothesis is correct, we surely ought to find links between the Sphinx complex and the summer solstice. In a study conducted by Mark Lehner on the astronomical context of the Sphinx complex, he discovered thata dramatic effect is created at sunset during the summer solstice as viewed, again, from the Sphinx Temple. At this time, and from this vantage, the sun sets almost exactly midway between Khufu’s and Khafra’s pyramids, that construing the image of the akhet, ‘horizon’, hieroglyph on a scale of acres. The effect is, again, best seen from the Sphinx Temple colonnade, or an equivalent height on the east temple where the sand rises. At this height the image of the Sphinx is merged into the silhouette of Khafre’s pyramid. The image is actually to be appreciated from most any vantage point out east of the Sphinx and Khafre Valley Temple.49
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