Some part of each complex may have been marked out when the Giza plateau was chosen as a suitable site, for example the centres of the pyramids, centres of the eastern baselines where the royal cult complexes were built, or the centres of the northern baselines where, for example, the entrance to Menkaura’s pyramid is located. The detailed design of the complex was left up to the architects responsible for an individual king’s complex. A coherent overall plan could have been achieved gradually as each architect followed similar design rules that considered or dictated the positional relationships between pyramids built at the same site. This still allows freedom for individual complexes to express aspects of the royal funerary ideology in their own distinctive way, and also allows for an overall thematic vision for the site, but this only meant that each king built his complex at a predetermined location that satisfied practical and ideological concerns.
The king planned his complex in any case, and he was free to design it how he wished. Building it at a location that had the additional ‘magic’ of being part of a wider thematic idea might have seemed very attractive, similar to Userkaf building his complex right up next to the north-east corner of Netjerikhet’s Third Dynasty enclosure wall. It seems he wanted to associate his ‘house of eternity’ with this huge sacred site that dominated the Saqqara necropolis, as if something of the ‘magic’ of the place might rub off on his.
It has been argued that if a thematic idea was envisaged for Giza, why did successive kings not build at Giza? Dr Jaromir Malek gave some possible explanations why it was not usual for successive kings to build next to each other:One can, in fact, find only one case where the pyramids of two successive kings were built in relative proximity, those of Sahure and Neferirkare. The inescapable conclusion is that a new pyramid was built at some distance from that of the preceding king, often at a different ‘site’ (the division of the Memphite necropolis into ‘sites’ is modern). The following were the most probable reasons: 1. In the case of the predecessor’s unexpected death, the site was so encumbered with the remnants of the building activities, in particular massive building ramps, that the planning, site survey and building work on the new pyramid could not have started until this situation was resolved.
2. If the predecessor’s pyramid was complete at the time of his death, the surrounding area would have already been at least partly occupied by the tombs of priests and officials. The proximity of quarries, easy transport and access to the prospective building site would have been of great importance but, in view of the enormous ideological significance of the pyramids, it is impossible to reduce the decision-making to these considerations. Other explanations offered in the past, such as feuding within the royal family or the location of the royal palaces, are even less convincing. The idea that the distribution of the pyramids is governed by definable ideological (religious, astronomical, or similar) considerations is attractive . . . (Orion and the Giza pyramids by Jaromir Malek, Discussions in Egyptology 30, 1994, pp 101-114)
One objection to the idea of a wider thematic scheme for the Giza group, is that kings were only concerned with the design of their own complex and gave little thought to other complexes nearby. It is true that each funerary complex was independent, and self-contained, and the architectural components that made up these complexes expressed some aspect of the royal funerary ideology - the entrance on the northern side for example, was perhaps a link with the northern ‘Imperishable Stars’, and/or the cooling north wind.
Each component of the royal funerary complex had either a practical function, and/or satisfied ideological concerns, but the overall site layout may also have been an expression of one aspect of the royal funerary ideology that appears to have been an intricate mesh of traditional and new ideas, sometimes apparently contradictory ideas as the priests were kept busy rearranging the order of heaven to adapt to developments in the king’s beliefs in the afterlife. Primarily, ideas both traditional and new were centred around night and day celestial phenomena, and to understand and explain the architectural rationale behind the designs, the sky with all its fascinating aspects, needs to be factored in.
If an association with Sah (Orion) was intended for the Giza layout, then what was seen in the sky - three points of light - two in line and one slightly offset, with the outer stars almost equidistant from the middle star - were simply drawn by eye, and given to the surveyors for scaling up to fit an appropriate site. No accurate measurements of the asterism were necessary, as simply drawing by eye would have sufficed. The oldest graphic representation of Orion’s three-star asterism is thought to be depicted on the New Kingdom ceiling of Sennemut’s tomb at Deir el-Bahri. Here the slight offset of the end star is 3 degrees. The actual offset in the asterism in the sky is 7 degrees, and at Giza, the centre of Menkaura’s pyramid is offset from the others by 11.5 degrees or 6.6 degrees if the centre of the eastern baselines where the royal cult complexes were built, are compared.
It has also been argued that if the Giza layout was designed to be a symbolic representation of the asterism, then the north/south directions are reversed - north in the sky is south on the ground - in effect, ‘turning Egypt upside down’, invalidating the idea of a symbolic representation of the asterism, at Giza. However, if the correct directionality is preserved, an ‘unnatural’ mirror image of the asterism is created, and a mirror image is not a symbolic or natural representation of what is seen in the sky.
When representing the natural world, the ancient Egyptians took each individual element and represented it as clearly and naturally as possible despite inconsistencies. In a painting of a pond from a tomb in Thebes, the pond is depicted in plan view, as if it were seen from above, but the fish, geese and trees are painted as seen from the side. Does this mean that the ancient Egyptian thought that fish swam on their sides or that trees grew horizontally along the ground? Of course not. It could be said that they ‘cannot have it both ways’, either they needed to change the view of the pond to conform with the rest of the scene, or the fish, geese and trees needed to be changed to conform to the overhead view of the pond.
Their design conventions however dictated that each individual element in the scene was depicted as it appeared most natural, despite the obvious contradictions. A relief portrait of Hesira, carved into the wooden door of his tomb (c. 2650 BC) also gives valuable insights into how the mind of an ancient Egyptian artisan worked, and the stylistic conventions or rules they were using. Everything had to be represented from its most characteristic angle. The head was most easily seen in profile so they drew it sideways. But if we think of the human eye we think of it as seen from the front. Accordingly, a full face eye was planted into the side view of the face. The top half of the body, the shoulders and chest, are best seen from the front, for then we see how the arms are hinged to the body. But arms and feet in movement are much more clearly seen sideways. That is the reason Egyptians in these pictures look flat and contorted. Moreover, the Egyptian artists found it hard to visualize either foot seen from the outside. They preferred the clear outline from the big toe upwards. So both feet are seen from the inside, and Hesira on the relief looks as if he had two left feet.
Even an architect today, given the task of representing the three-star asterism on the ground as three pyramids, would probably arrive at the same solution as can be seen at Giza. If the ancient Egyptians represented the three stars as three pyramids, and linked to the stars using shafts or ‘model’ passageways directed up at the sky from the main chambers in Khufu’s pyramid, then the way they did it was ‘right’ and natural according to their way of looking at things, though modern astronomers might complain about Egypt being turned upside down and ‘logical inconsistencies’ in the design.
Astronomical ceilings
Sopdet (Sirius) and Sah (Orion) with the decans of the Sah group are depicted in the New Kingdom tomb of Senenmut, on the southern part of the ceiling and in the centre of the upper register. Some decan stars belonging to Sah are described as in the u
pper part or above Sah and in the lower part or under Sah. If the creators of this ‘astronomical’ ceiling thought that ‘up’ or ‘over’ was north they would have described the decan stars as in the northern part or north of Sah. They did not describe it this way however, which suggests their descriptions of ‘upper’/‘over’ or ‘lower’/‘under’ was the natural way they understood celestial directions in this context. This is not all this ‘astronomical’ ceiling can tell us about how the ancient Egyptians thought about celestial directions and the way they depicted the sky. The flat ceiling is divided into a southern and northern half. The upper part of Sah (Orion) in the southern half of the ceiling, is further away from the northern half of the ceiling than the lower part of Sah. Modern-day astronomy purists could complain that the artisans had ‘turned Egypt upside down’ - to depict the sky correctly the scene in the southern half of the ceiling should be flipped over. Only by doing this will the upper stars in Sah (Orion) be nearer to the northern part of the sky.
As evidenced by this New Kingdom ‘astronomical’ ceiling, the ancient Egyptians did not in this case, describe stars that were higher in the sky or lower down near the horizon as north or south of lower or higher stars, and did not seem too concerned or were even aware that they had inadvertently turned Egypt upside down in this picture.
The tomb of Sety I (1294-1279), built 180 years after Senenmut’s tomb, has a similar ‘astronomical’ ceiling divided into two halves. However, some interesting differences are immediately apparent - the ceiling is not flat but has a shallow ‘elliptical’ curved profile, and the corresponding part of the ceiling to where Sopdet (Sirius) and Sah (Orion) are depicted is oriented correctly compared with the other half of the ceiling. The upper parts of each picture meet at the centre of the ceiling, whereas in the two pictures in Senenmut’s tomb, the upper part of the northern half of the ceiling meets with the lower part of the picture on the southern half of the ceiling.
The ceiling in the tomb of Rameses VI (1143-1136) is similar to Sety I, but the ceiling of the temple of Rameses II (1279-1213) in Luxor, has an arrangement similar to Senenmut’s ceiling with the upper part of Sah (Orion) further away from the upper part of the northern group. The scenes are laid out in ‘strips’ one on top of another that is very similar to a surviving water clock from Karnak dated to Amenhotep III (1390-1352), where similar ‘astronomical’ scenes are arranged in three strips one on top of another that circle around the water container.
These ‘astronomical’ ceilings, are not maps of the sky, and whatever conclusions that can be drawn from these should be treated with caution. ‘The survival of material specifically related to funerary practices dominates what we think we know about ancient Egyptian capabilities.’ Funerary art found in tombs and inside coffins that depict sky scenes, met religious/funerary requirements - ritual magic etc, and probably do not give a true picture of their ‘technical’ knowledge of the sky that was needed for calendar development, time keeping, navigation in the desert, and the surveying techniques needed for the orientation of sacred buildings. However these examples clearly reveal something of the mind set of the artisans.
The so-called ‘Giza diagonal’
Egyptologist Mark Lehner has spent years studying the Giza Necropolis, and although he has not found any evidence for an overall plan for the necropolis, has investigated the evidence for various alignments that may have partly determined the location of successive pyramids relative to each other and to other features within and outside the necropolis. ‘When it came time to build Khafre’s Pyramid, the alignments with Khufu’s Pyramid may have been consciously and carefully chosen as the layout lines were surveyed. At the same time, the design of the necropolis, from one complex to the next, was not so much a premeditated pattern laid down from the very beginning of Khufu’s reign, as an organic development in which some thematic considerations may have been accommodated to certain geological and topographical constraints’ (Lehner, 1985)
The Giza ‘diagonal’, has been noted by Lehner. A line connecting the SE corners of Menkaura and Khufu’s pyramids is parallel with a line connecting the centres of Khafra and Khufu’s pyramids. The NE direction of the Giza ‘diagonal’ is about 43.3 degs east of north, which means that if this ‘diagonal’ is extended to the north-east it will be heading in the general direction of Iunu. This bearing is interesting as it has the same angle as the slope of the corner edge of Khafra’s pyramid, and it closely approximates the angle of incline of the upper part of Sneferu’s southern pyramid at Dahshur, which suggests the master builders/architects, were designing the complexes according to common design rules. Egyptologists (including Lehner), who have studied and worked at the Giza and Abusir pyramid fields, have supported the idea that both these pyramid fields were aligned with the great religious centre of Iunu across the river to the north-east. If this is true, then all the architects involved in these more than half a dozen royal funerary complexes, were following the same alignment strategy that persisted through many generations. This same idea influenced the location of the royal funerary complex in relation to the other complexes in the same group - in other words there may have been constraints other than the purely practical that determined the location of an individual complex in relation to others in the same groupIdeological considerations, the positional relationships between complexes close to each other, and with other groups further away, and/or to an important sacred site outside the necropolis, apart from practical concerns, may also have influenced the overall process of designing and building a royal funerary complex.
In a sometimes frustratingly complex world we try to keep things simple, and ‘the constraints of topography’ argument, with other practical considerations, is seen as a simple, practical explanation that can logically explain most of we need to know about the Giza layout, but this emphasis on the purely practical can divert attention from other important design considerations that are not so immediately obvious. The constraints of the terrain were taken into account, and the need for the sides of the pyramid to have clear views to the cardinal directions was probably important. The presence of quarries also placed constraints on the decision making process, but as Malek has suggested: ‘The proximity of quarries, easy transport and access to the prospective building site would have been of great importance but, in view of the enormous ideological significance of the pyramids, it is impossible to reduce the decision-making to these considerations.’
If a wider thematic vision was envisaged for the Giza site, then this would of course mean that close cooperation between the people in charge of the three individual projects was necessary to ensure that they all conformed to the wider plan that integrated the separate complexes into a coherent whole. The people in charge of the royal building works were often closely related members of the same extended royal family, sometimes father and son. From Sneferu through to Menkaura, the ‘overseers’ of the king’s grandiose funerary projects were probably a close-knit fraternity, with a common aim and purpose. They were working together in the development of a revolutionary and exciting design for the royal tomb involving new architectural and structural innovations, probably influenced by developments in the royal funerary ideology. Some high officials served more than one king, and their knowledge, experience and a possible thematic vision was passed on to the next generation of architects/builders.
The royal funerary complexes were built for the extended family of Khufu, in the same extended necropolis along the west bank of the river between ‘The White Wall’ and Iunu, and if evidence of possible common alignment strategies that linked these complexes together or with the great religious centre at Iunu are noticed, it should come as no surprise. The team of architects/master builders and overseers may also have realized a thematic vision for Giza, inspired by an aspect of the royal funerary ideology that looked to the sky - the sun, moon, planets and the stars for the king’s hopes of an eternal afterlife.
APPENDIX 4
The Cosmic Order, the Eg
yptian Calendar and Christianity
At least 5,000 years separate us from the origin of the pharaonic civilisation. Two thousand years separate us from its final demise. But thanks to the prowess of its ancient builders in raising massive monuments in stone, the obsession of its people with the afterlife and the preservation of the corpse in the tomb, and the use of stone by its scribes to inscribe hieroglyphs, we know more about this ancient civilisation than we know of the alleged biblical civilisation. In contrast to the prolific archaeological evidence for the pharaonic civilisation (there is so much of it that it has even filled museums outside Egypt), there is not one shred of archaeological evidence to buttress the written history of the Old Testament. In view of this glaring reality, some authors have started to claim that biblical narratives are nothing but a pseudo-mythical history probably culled in part from the real history of ancient Egypt.1
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