This link between the Giza layout and Orion in the south-eastern sky is also highlighted by another interesting clue that involves all the pyramid fields between Saqqara in the south and Abu Rawash in the north. Looking south-east from Djedefra’s pyramid at Abu Rawash, 8.5 kilometre north-west from the Giza pyramids, the pyramid fields along the western escarpment overlooking the Nile valley as far as Saqqara lie on, or are either side of a straight line, beginning with the pyramid of Djedefra (son of Khufu) at the extreme northern end, and ending with the pyramid of Userkaf (son of Menkaura and great-grandson of Khufu) in the south. Userkaf’s complex was built right up against the north-east corner of Netjerikhet’s (Djoser) 13ha funerary complex that dominated the Saqqara necropolis. When Orion’s three-star asterism was above Userkaf’s and Netjerikhet’s complexes, viewed from anywhere along this line of pyramid fields, it closely matched the Giza layout when viewed from north of the Giza site looking south. Interestingly, the appearance of the asterism in the sky due south, closely matched the Giza layout when viewed from the north-west looking south-east along the 52.2 degree line that highlighted the asterism in the south-eastern sky when it closely matched the Giza layout. A direct line between Djedefra and Userkaf/Netjerikhet has a bearing of 52.2 degrees south of east, and runs past the two important pyramid fields of Giza and Abusir. Both these pyramid fields extend away from the line to the north-east towards the edge of the escarpment, and are roughly oriented towards the important religious centre of Iunu. Clearly, the general south-east direction of the escarpment dictated the line-up of these pyramid fields, but not exactly, as not all follow the edge of the escarpment. The two Zawyet el-Aryan pyramids are near the edge, but Djedefra’s funerary complex is about 2 kilometres, and Menkaura’s about 1 kilometre from the edge. The preferred site for these funerary complexes was usually high ground where they could be clearly seen over long distances - they were certainly not hiding their tombs as in later times.
Pyramids as ‘stars’?
The pyramids are distinctive landmarks, and in their pristine state, with their white polished limestone casings that reflected the sun, moon and starlight, meant the pyramids shone brightly in a sea of sand during the day, and shone with an ethereal gleam at night. As the sun rose over the eastern horizon, the first rays of sunlight lit up the apexes of the pyramids causing them to shine like stars in an otherwise dark landscape - an awe-inspiring line of beacons/‘stars’ along the western escarpment. The same effect happened when the last rays of sunlight lit the apexes as the sun set in the west, when all else was in shadow.
At the southern end of the line of pyramid fields, the name of Netjerikhet’s Third Dynasty funerary complex at Saqqara, was ‘Horus is the Star at the Head of the Sky’ (Quirke/Helck), or ‘Star of Horus, Foremost of the Sky’ (in the Pyramid Texts, Horus was called the ‘Morning Star’). At the northern end, the name of Djedefra’s (Radjedef) pyramid was sHdw Dd=f ra, ‘Radjedef’s Star’ (J. P. Allen). One of the two pyramids at Zawyet el-Aryan, roughly midway between Abu Rawash and Saqqara, was named ‘Nebka is a Star’ (Edwards).
The true meaning and implications of these explicit stellar names, only become apparent in the earliest surviving royal funerary texts inscribed within pyramids from the end of the Fifth Dynasty. Unas the king (the first king to have ‘son of Ra’ included in his cartouche), purified himself with the cool water of the stars and bathed in the starry firmament (Pyramid Texts, 138), the ‘Imperishable Stars’ raised Unas aloft (Pyramid Texts, 139), and Unas guided the ‘Imperishable Stars’ (Pyramid Texts, 373). Unas was born as a star, and he appeared as a star (Pyramid Texts, 262). Unas opened his place in the sky among the stars of the sky, for he was the ‘Lone or Unique Star’ (Pyramid Texts, 251). Atum, the ‘father’ of Unas, assigned Unas to the excellent and wise gods, the ‘Imperishable Stars’ (Pyramid Texts, 380). He was a son of Sopdet (personification of Sirius, the brightest star in their sky) (Pyramid Texts, 458), and was given a warrant as Great Power by Sah (Orion), ‘father of the gods’ (Pyramid Texts, 408).
This text, from Utterance 273-4, is regarded as one of the oldest of the corpus of texts found within Fifth-Seventh Dynasty pyramids. Referring to Utterance 273-4, Badawy states: ‘At least one of the pyramid spells mentioning Orion belongs to the older stock since it occurs in the context of the so-called Cannibal Hymn’ (Badawy 1964: p. 199).
The ‘warrant’ granted by Sah to the king, may be an allusion to a celestial, ‘afterlife’ version of a title deed, held in the king’s hand when he performed the ceremonial heb-sed run, and thought to be a legal document legitimizing the king’s right to rule the unified land of Upper and Lower Egypt, or as Lehner states: ‘. . . the household deed to the whole of Egypt’ (Lehner 1997: 92).
Beneath the Third Dynasty Step Pyramid and its ‘South Tomb’, depictions of Netjerikhet performing the ceremonial heb-sed run and holding the ‘title deed’ are found. ‘The step pyramid includes numerous architectural elements designed to perpetuate the role of the king in the afterlife. Symbolic components of the royal palace complex from which the king could rule for eternity. Elements associated with the celebration of the heb-sed (festival of rejuvenation of the kingship) express the desire to maintain the king’s ruleship in the netherworld’ (Wegner 2002: p.72).
From the Fifth Dynasty pyramid of Unas: ‘Sah (Orion) is encircled by the Duat, pure and living in the horizon. Sopdet (Sirius) is encircled by the Duat, pure and living in the horizon. I am (the king) encircled by the Duat, pure and living in the horizon. It is well with me and with them. It is pleasant for me and for them, within the arms of my father, within the arms of Atum’ (Pyramid Texts, 151).
The ideogram for Duat (N15) is a five-pointed star in a circle - an encircled star - just as the dead king who appeared as a star was encircled by the Duat. Like the classic ancient Egyptian five-pointed star motif that ‘decorated’ the royal funerary complexes, the pyramid has five points that define its form - the four corner points and the apex. Three early pyramids had names that were explicitly stellar. Evidence from the end of the Fifth-Sixth Dynasty, shows that the pyramid itself was believed to be the body of the king, and the king after his death was reborn as a star, and appeared as a star - ‘O Atum, set your arms about the king, about this construction, and about this pyramid as the arms of a Ka-symbol, that the King’s essence may be in it, enduring forever’ (Pyramid Texts, 1653).
Piankoff noted: ‘The pyramids were personified (C. Wilke, ‘Zur Personifikation von Pyramiden’, ZÄS, LXX [1934], 56-83), and the title of the queens of Dyn.VI shows that the name of the royal pyramid stood for the name of the deceased himself. Thus the daughter of Unas is the royal daughter of the body of the (the pyramid) ‘Perfect are the Places of Unas’; see P. Montet, ‘Reines et Pyramides,’ Kemi, XIV (1957), 92-101) (from ‘The Pyramid of Unas’, Piankoff 1968: p.4).
The names of the pyramids, ‘Djedefra’s Star’ and ‘Nebka is a Star’, suggests the royal funerary ideology was significantly influenced by the starry sky in the Fourth Dynasty. Ra the sun god was becoming popular with royalty at this time, and the name of the sun god, the brightest celestial body in their sky was incorporated into the name of Khufu’s son, Djedefra. However the explicitly stellar name of his pyramid shows that the royal funerary beliefs also had an important stellar content. The king appeared as a star-a brilliant star, who travelled far, and daily brought products from far away to Ra (Pyramid Texts, 263).
A simulation of the night sky over Giza in the Fouth Dynasty, shows the three-star asterism in Orion closely matched the layout of the three pyramids at Giza when the asterism was 52.2 degs south-of-east. The line up of pyramid fields along the western escarpment highlighted the asterism as the line from Djedefra in the north to Userkaf/Netjerikhet in the south was also 52.2 degs south of east, which mirrored the angle of the Giza layout. This meant that Sah (Orion) the ‘father of the gods’ was ‘standing upright’ - ‘alive’ after rising from lying ‘dead’ on his side in the east-a metaphor used by
the Egyptians to illustrate the king rising up, from being dead on his side, to standing up, alive in his celestial realm.
The main deities attested at Giza are Horus, Hathor (lit. House of Horus) Seth, Thoth and Anubis. The name of the god Khnum was incorporated into the full name of Khnum Khufu, which shows he was also an important deity. The name of the sun god Ra, was incorporated into the names of Khufu’s sons and grandson, Djedefra, Khafra, and Menkaura, and the epithet ‘son of Ra’ first appears with Djedefra, which shows Ra was a major player at this time also, although the cult of Ra found a fuller expression with the building of sun temples during the Fifth Dynasty. From the later Pyramid Texts, Ra was the brother of both Sah (Orion) and Sopdet (Sirius) (Pyramid Texts, 2126). Sah, Sopdet and the northern ‘Imperishable Stars’ played a significant role in the royal funerary beliefs, and when the explicit stellar names of at least three pyramids from the Third and Fourth Dynasties are considered, it seems a reasonable assumption that these stars were also included in the royal funerary beliefs then. If the upper southern shaft in Khufu’s pyramid linked to Sah (Orion) and the layout of the Giza group was a realization of a thematic vision for the Giza site that involved Sah, this reflected only one aspect of their multi layered belief system.
The so-called ‘star-shafts’
Robert Bauval is not alone in noticing a possible link between the Giza pyramids and Sah (Orion). In 1954, Egyptologist Dr Alexander Badawy, proposed that a link between Khufu’s pyramid and the Orion constellation was incorporated into the design of the pyramid. He theorized that the upper shafts in Khufu’s pyramid should be ‘. . . considered as open ways for the king’s soul to reach the circumpolar stars to the North and the Orion constellation, to the South’ (Badawy, 1954, p.138). Badawy provided the ancient Egyptian religious/funerary rationale behind these stellar links in his 1964 paper ‘The Stellar Destiny of Pharoah and the So-Called Air-Shafts of Cheops’ Pyramid’, and in her accompanying article, ‘Astronomical investigation concerning the so-called air-shafts of Cheop’s pyramid’, the astronomer Virginia Trimble, showed how the three-star asterism in Orion, ‘. . . passed once each day, at culmination directly over the southern shaft of the Great Pyramid at the time it was built’.
Dr I.E.S. Edwards, who was Emeritus Keeper of Egyptian Antiquities in the British Museum, and one of the leading authorities on the pyramids: ‘Symbolism was one of the most important features in Egyptian funerary and temple architecture. Its interpretation is often difficult, either because too little is known about the source of its inspiration or because elements have become stylized and their original hard to recognize. Dr Badawy devoted a number of articles to various aspects of this subject; they show that he had a deep understanding of the mentality of the ancient Egyptians and of the conventions which they observed. His articles on the so-called air shafts of the Great Pyramid paved the way to the final elucidation of these features - so long a puzzle to students.’
If, as Badawy proposed, the upper shafts connected to the sarcophagus chamber, linked to Orion in the south, and the circumpolar stars in the north, they can in principle be astronomically dated, as astronomer Virginia Trimble showed. If the three-star asterism in Orion and the Pole or North Star, Thuban, were the ‘targets’, then using survey data from the top ends of the shafts, the astronomically derived date for both shafts is c. 2570 BC ± 10 years, which is well within the estimated time for Khufu’s reign (c. 2590-2550 BC ± 50 years).
You have your tomb, O King, which belongs to the heart of Him whose seats are hidden; he opens for you the doors of the sky, he throws open for you the doors of the firmament(?), he makes a road for you that you may ascend by means of it into the company of the gods, you being alive in your bird shape. (Pyramid Texts, 1,943)
These small architectural components within the royal funerary complex may have linked to Sah (Orion) the ‘father of the gods’ and with the northern ‘Imperishable Stars’ (ixm.w-sk, lit. ‘those who do not know destruction’), who were described in the royal funerary texts as akhs (spirits) and gods. The Old Kingdom Pyramid Texts describe how the king ascended to the sky among the Imperishable Stars, his sister was Sopdet (Sirius), his guide was the Morning Star (Horus) and they grasped his hand at the ‘Field of Offerings’ (Pyramid Texts, 1,123b). Horus of the Duat, the ‘Morning Star’ (Pyramid Texts, 1,207), set the king to be a magistrate among the akhs (spirits), the ‘Imperishable Stars’ in the north of the sky . . . (Pyramid Texts, 1,220).
A stairway to the sky was set up for the king among the ‘Imperishable stars’ (Pyramid Texts, 1,941), and he went to the northern gods the ‘Imperishable Stars’ (Pyramid Texts, 818c). The king guided the ‘Imperishable Stars’ (Pyramid Texts, 373), and was the head of the akhs (spirits), the ‘Imperishable Stars’ (Pyramid Texts, 656c). The king became an ‘Imperishable Star’, son of the sky goddess who dwelt in the ‘Mansion of Selket’ (Pyramid Texts, 1,469a). On later ‘astronomical’ ceilings, Selket was depicted in the northern sky near Meskhetiu, the Plough/Big Dipper asterism, also an ‘Imperishable’ (Pyramid Texts, 458 ).
Sah (Orion) in the southern sky was one of at least two distinctive star patterns the ancient Egyptians recognised and incorporated into their funerary ideology. In the earliest surviving royal funerary texts inscribed within the pyramids from the end of the Fifth Dynasty, Sah was the ‘father of the gods’ - the gods referred to were probably the akhs (spirits) of the dead kings, who became ‘Imperishable Stars’ or gods/great ones. The king was a great star, the companion of Sah (Orion), who traversed the sky with Sah, who navigated the Duat with Wsir. The king ascended from the east of the sky, and was renewed at his due season and rejuvenated at his due time, and the sky bore the king with Sah (Pyramid Texts, 882-3).
The ancient Egyptians observed celestial cycles and used them to decide the date of their festivals and the correct timing of rituals. A fragment of a relief assigned to chamber A, from the chapel of Kawab’s mastaba (Fourth Dyn), shows the crescent moon (N11) placed horizontally over the five-pointed star (N14) that when combined was the ideogram for ‘month’. According to Gardiner, this showed ‘time as indicated by stars’. This suggests observations of celestial cycles were a vital part of the temple work that determined the right or potent time for ritual practices and keep track of their sacred calendar. Pyramid Text, 269, may be an allusion to observations of timekeeping stars, ‘O you who are over the hours, who are before Ra . . .’ The stars accompanied Ra the sun god as he traversed the sky, but the light of the rising sun completely overwhelmed the light of these stars. From the cenotaph of Sety I: ‘As he (Ra) sails inside the dusk, these stars are behind him . . . these sailing stars enter after him, and come forth from him.’
‘The end of the year was equated with death and burial, and the new year was equated with resurrection. The Wag festival was the great festival of the dead. On those occasions, ceremonies and processions took place in the temples and in the necropolis’ (Englund, 2002: 282). The important Wag festival is attested in the Fourth Dynasty, and mentioned in the Pyramid Texts (716) - ‘cows in suck’ were slaughtered for the king, and Sah (Orion) was ‘Lord of Wine’ in this festival. The king was conceived with Sah by the sky - the dawn light bore the king with Sah. The king regularly ascended with Sah from the eastern region of the sky, and regularly descended with Sah into the western region of the sky - Sopdet (Sirius) guided the king on the goodly roads which are in the sky in the Field of Rushes.
Realising a thematic vision at the Giza site
To make effective use of the Giza site, three suitable building plots may have been marked out on the Giza plateau, leaving the design of the separate funerary complexes up to the architects responsible for each design-a simple ordered planning of the site that takes into account the constraints of the terrain, potential quarries etc., and a possible thematic vision that reflected an aspect of the royal funerary ideology. This would ensure that each individual project could begin with the minimum of fuss. The people responsible for designing a
nd building the royal funerary complex and for realizing a possible thematic vision for the site, were the architects/master builders, overseers of the stone masons, overseers of the quarry men, transportation etc. involved in the building of each complex, whose main concern was that each individual project should progress as quickly and efficiently as possible. Often they were unable to finish the royal funerary complex according to the original specifications, as the kings sometimes died before the complex was completed. However, they ensured the royal cult complex could function, and the king could be buried securely within his pyramid. Key officials responsible for the royal building works, were involved in more than one project, as there are examples of high officials in the Old Kingdom, responsible for the royal building works, and served more than one king.
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