The Egypt Code

by Robert Bauval

  39 R.O. Faulkner, op. cit., p. 120.

  40 According to Nataliè Beaux, in the Pyramid Texts Sirius is also sometimes called the ‘Morning Star’ (see Beaux, op. cit.).

  41 Beaux, op. cit., p. 64.

  42 R. W. Sloley, ‘Primitive Methods of Measuring Time, with Special Reference to Egypt’, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. 17, 1930, p. 167.

  43 E.C. Krupp, op. cit., p. 23.

  44 The chronologist Leo Dupuydt, however, has suggested that a better name for it would be the Historical Sothic Cycle because, strictly speaking, the value of 1,460 is not constant by changes slightly due to the proper motion of the star and the effects of precession (see Leo Dupuydt, ‘On the Consistency of the Wandering Year as Backbone of Egyptian Chronology’, Journal of the American Research Centre in Egypt, Vol. 32, 1995, pp. 45-6). For the varying length of the Sothic Cycle, see M.F. Ingham, in Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. 55, 1969, pp. 36-40.

  45 Petrie, op. cit., p. 164.

  46 The altitude of Sirius is taken as 1° and that of the sun -9°. Sirius would have had an azimuth of 109° 16′.

  47 Marshall Clagett wrote ‘If we work backward from 139 AD we would find the possible quadrennial dates of the beginnings of three Sothic Periods preceding the one beginning in that year: BC 1321-1318; 2781-2778; and 4241-4238. Meyer believed that the period beginning from 2781-2778 BC was too recent for the establishment of the calendar and so accepted the earlier period. He thought he had confirmed this when he had deduced from rather inconclusive considerations of the Gregorian dates for recent rising of the Nile that it was in the Sothic Period from 4241-4238 BC that the date of Sirius’s appearance best conformed with the date of the Nile’s rising. However, with the development and acceptance of the “short chronology” of Egyptian history which can be coordinated with the short chronology elsewhere in the Near East, the general opinion has switched to the third millennium for the establishment of the civil calendar since, at the beginning of the earlier period, Egyptian society was at an underdeveloped level of sophistication and was not a unified state’ (Marshall Clagett, Ancient Egyptian Science, Vol. II, Calendars, Clocks and Astronomy, American Philosophical Society, 1995, pp. 30-1). See also Richard Parker, The Calendars of Ancient Egypt, Chicago University Press, 1950. For a recent discussion on this, see Paul Jordan, Riddle of the Sphinx, Sutton Publications, 1998, pp. 35-7.

  48 David Ewing Duncan, The Calendar, Fourth Estate Publishers, London, 1999.

  49 Chapman, op. cit., p. 59.

  50 Manchip White, op. cit., p. 138.

  51 E.C. Krupp, Skywatchers, Shamans, and Kings, Willey Popular Science, 1997, p. 223.

  52 ‘O Atum-Khoprer (the rising sun), you rose high on the heights, you rose up as the benben stone in the Mansion of the Phoenix in Heliopolis.’ Pyramid Texts Utterance 600.

  53 Redford, The Ancient Gods Speak, op. cit., contribution by Spalinger, p. 125.

  54 Tacitus also saw the phoenix as a solar symbol and further asserted that ‘In the consulship of Paulus Fabius (AD 34) the miraculous bird known to the world by the name of the phoenix, after disappearing for a series of ages, revisited Egypt’ (Thomas Bulfinch, Bulfinch’s Mythology: The Age of Fable, Mentor Books, New York, 1962, p. 353).

  55 Cornelius Tacitus, The Annals of Tacitus, trans. Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb, Macmillan, 1877.

  56 Stephen Quirke, The Cult of Ra: Sun-Worship in Ancient Egypt, Thames & Hudson, 2002, pp. 27-8.

  57 Pliny the Elder, Natural History, Vol. III, trans. by H. Rackham, Harvard University Press, 1983, pp. 293, 295.

  58 R.T. Rundle Clark, Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt, op. cit.,1959, p. 246.

  59 I had met Dr John Brown at a conference in Glasgow in June 2004 and invited him on a tour of Egypt that I was conducting in November 2004 for the company Quest Travel of Cairo.

  60 R.A. Krauss, Sothis und Monddaten, Hildesheim, 1985, p. 201. See also R. Weill, Bases, Methodes et Resultats de la Chronologie Egyptienne, Paris, 1926, pp. 133-5. Also Clagett, op. cit., p. 37, who argued that the length of the solar year was even known in predynastic times.

  61 Redford, The Ancient Gods Speak, op. cit., p. 189.

  62 Cyril Aldred, Akhenaten, Pharaoh of Egypt: A New Study, London, 1968, pp. 25, 67.

  63 From a commentary by Germanicus on Aratus, translated by Nigidius Figulus. See Mommsen, Chronologie, p. 258. See Bomhard, op. cit. p. 9.

  64 Norman Lockyear, The Dawn of Astronomy, Cassell & Co., London, 1894, p. 248.

  65 Clagett, op. cit., p. 326. This is known as ‘The Decree of Canopus’, issued on the 9th year of the reign of Ptolemy III.

  66 The Roman poet Lucan (AD 39-65), Cleopatra gave a feast at the palace in honour of Julius Caesar, where Caesar was first told of the Egyptian calendar by the Alexandrian scholar Acoreus. According to David Ewing Duncan, author of The Calendar (Fourth Estate Publishers, London, 1999), ‘it was during this conversation that Caesar heard about Egypt’s reliance on the sun for its year - measured by the annual rise of Sirius in the eastern sky and by the flooding of the Nile, which, the Alexandrian sage said, “does not arouse its water before the shining of the Dog-star (Sirius)” .’ This prompted Caesar to ask the court astronomer, Sosigenes, to create a new calendar for Rome. Sosigenes, without a doubt, based this calendar on the existing one of Egypt, with its 365 days, but this time finally added an extra day each ‘leap year’. Even so, this new ‘Julian Calendar’ was still about 11 minutes in error to the true solar year, and was eventually readjusted in AD 1582 by Luigi Lilio under the orders of Pope Gregory XIII in Rome to produce the Gregorian calendar which we use today.

  67 Bomhard, op. cit., p. 83.

  68 The Gregorian reform of the Julian calendar was made in 1582. First 10 days were cancelled to bring the calendar into synch with the seasons. Then a formula was devised in order to make it adhere as closely as possible to the true solar (tropical) year. This entails considering that 3 leap years are cancelled over 400 years by declaring that the secular years are only bissextile if divisible by 400. But this is still not fine enough to match the true solar year, and will lead to a full day difference in 3,000 years.

  69 The tropic year varies in length over time. Today it is 365.2422 days, but in 3000 BC it was 365.2425. Belmonte, op. cit., pp. 10 and 36.

  70 Dr Malek reviewed my first book, The Orion Mystery, in 1994. See Discussions in Egyptology, Vol. 30.

  71 Shaw and Nicholson, op. cit., p. 256.

  72 Mark Lehner, op. cit., p. 84.

  73 G.A. Wainwright, The Sky Religion in Egypt, Cambridge University Press, 1938, pp. 14-18.

  74 G.A. Wainwright, ‘Seshat and the Pharaoh’, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. 26, 1941, pp. 30-40.

  75 Ibid. pp. 21-3.

  76 Wainwright, The Sky Religion, op. cit., pp. 24-5.

  77 Donald B. Redford, Akhenaten the Heretic King, The American University in Cairo Press, 1989, p. 126.

  78 H. Frankfort, Kingship and the Gods, Chicago, 1948, p. 86.

  79 Redford, Akhenaten, op. cit., p. 127.

  80 See Appendix 3.

  81 Wilkinson, op. cit., p. 212.

  82 Flinders Petrie, op. cit., Chapter XII, pp. 177-8.

  83 E.A. Wallis Budge, The Gods of The Egyptians, Vol. 1, Dover Publications, New York, 1969, p. 425.

  84 Wainwright, The Sky Religion, op. cit., p. 24-5.

  85 E.C. Krupp, Echoes of the Ancient Skies op. cit., pp. 25-6.

  86 Ali Radwan, ‘Step Pyramids’, Treasures of the Pyramids, ed. Zahi Hawass, White Star Publishers, 2004, p. 102.

  87 Bomhard, op. cit., p. xi.

  88 Wilkinson, op. cit., p. 76.

  89 Rundle Clark, op. cit., p. 27.

  90 Ibid., p. 263.

  91 Patrick F. O’Mara, ‘Was the Sed Festival Periodic in Early Egyptian History?’, Discussions in Egyptology, Vol. 12, 1988, p. 55.

  92 Nancy Hathaway, Friendly Guide to the Universe, New York, 1994.

  Chapter Three: The Duat of Memphis />
  1 Miroslav Verner, Abusir: Realm of Osiris, The American University in Cairo Press, 2002, p. 11.

  2 A Swiss Egyptologist, who I prefer not to name here, politely told me in a letter to concentrate on becoming ‘a good engineer’ and forget about the pyramids.

  3 Verner, op. cit., p. 14.

  4 J. Malek, ‘Orion and the Giza Pyramids’, Discussions in Egyptology, Vol. 30, 1994, pp. 101-14.

  5 Lehner, The Complete Pyramids, op. cit., pp. 106-7.

  6 Ibid., p. 120.

  7 Ibid.

  8 David G. Jeffreys, ‘The topography of Heliopolis and Memphis: some cognitive aspects’, in H. Guksch and D. Polz (eds.), Stationen: Beitrage zur Kulturgeschichte Agyptens, Rainer Stadelmann Gewimdet, Mainz, 1998, p. 70.

  9 The bearing of the rising sun at summer solstice was near 28° north-of-east. Allowing for 2 degrees altitude for the full disc to be seen over a mound or obelisk from Abu Ruwash, this brought the bearing to near 27° north-of-east.

  10 The story is told in the Westcar Papyrus (Berlin Museum). Verner, op. cit., p. 70.

  11 Malek and Baines, The Cultural Atlas: Ancient Egypt, op. cit., p. 154.

  12 According to Miroslav Verner, the name Abusir derives from the Greek Busiris, which was taken from the ancient Egyptian Per Usir, meaning ‘Realm of Osiris’. See Verner, op. cit.

  13 Miroslav Verner attributes this discovery to Werner Kaiser (Verner, op. cit., p. 42).

  14 Jeffreys, op. cit., pp. 63-71.

  15 Ausim is some 20 kilometres north of the Giza pyramids.

  16 Strabo, Geographia, Vol. XVII, I, 30.

  17 George Goyon, ‘Kerkasòre et L’ancien Observatoire D’Eudoxe’, Bulletin de L’Institut Français D’Archeologie Orientale, Tome 74, 1974, p. 142.

  18 George Goyon, ‘Nouvelles Observations Relatives à l’Orientation de la Pyramide de Kheops’, Revue D’Egyptologie, Tome 22, Paris, 1970, p. 85.

  19 Ibid., p. 89. See also Baines and Malek, Altas of Ancient Egpyt, op. cit., p. 15.

  20 G.A. Wainwright, ‘Iron in Egypt’, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. 18, 1933, pp. 6-11.

  21 Shaw and Nicholson, op. cit., p. 42. Also Z. Zaba, L’Orientation Astronomique dans L’Ancienne Egypte et la Precession de l’Axe du Monde, Prague, 1953.

  22 Zaba, op. cit.

  23 Ibid., p. 60.

  24 Wilkinson, op. cit., p. 206.

  25 Ibid., p. 205.

  26 Pyramid Texts, 351.

  27 Shaw and Nicholson, op. cit., p. 162.

  28 Ibid., pp. 96-7.

  29 Ibid.

  30 Herman Kees, Ancient Egypt: A Cultural Topography, Faber & Faber, London, 1961, p. 155.

  31 James H. Breasted, Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt, University of Pennsylvania, 1972, p. 101.

  32 R.O. Faulkner, ‘The King and the Star Religion in the Pyramid Texts’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 25, 1966, pp. 153-61.

  33 I.E.S. Edwards, The Pyramids of Egypt, Penguin, 1982, p. 292.

  34 Pyramid Texts utterance, 263.

  35 Pyramid Texts, 360.

  36 Pyramid Texts, 865.

  37 Pyramid Texts, 351-353.

  38 Lehner, The Complete Pyramids, op. cit., p. 28

  39 Pyramid Texts, 819-821.

  40 Pyramid Texts, 934-6.

  41 One of the signs, Libra, is neither animal nor human.

  42 Known also as the Seven Sisters.

  43 E.A. Wallis-Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, Vol. 2, Dover Publications, New York, 1969, p. 312.

  44 George Goyon, ‘Kerkasòre et L’ancien Obsevatoire D’Eudoxe’, op. cit., p. 144.

  45 Belmonte, op. cit., p. 32.

  46 Virginia Lee Davis, ‘Identifying Ancient Egyptian Constellations’, Archaeoastronomy No. 9 (JHA, Vol. XVI, 1985).

  47 Donald V. Etz, ‘A New Look at the Constellation Figures in the Celestial Diagram’, Journal of the American Centre in Egypt, Vol. XXXIV, 1997, pp. 143-61.

  48 Selim Hassan, The Sphinx, Its History in the Light of Recent Excavations, Government Press, Cairo, 1949, p. 69.

  49 I.E.S. Edwards, The Pyramids of Egypt, Penguin, 1961, p. 122.

  50 Hassan, op. cit., p. 94.

  51 Paul Jordan, Riddles of the Sphinx, Penguin, op. cit., p. 181.

  52 Hassan, op. cit., p. 80.

  53 Ibid., p. 127.

  54 Lehner, The Complete Pyramids, op. cit., p. 127.

  55 Hassan, op. cit., pp. 139-40.

  56 Graham Hancock and I used this same logic in 1996 in our book Keeper of Genesis as part of our argument that the Sphinx represented Leo (Heinemann, 1996).

  57 Christian Zivie-Coche, SPHINX!, Edition Noesis, Paris, 1994, p. 89.

  58 Hassan, op. cit., p. 139-40. The association of Horakhti or Ra-Horakhti and the Sphinx is also made by Cyril Aldred Akhenaten, King of Egypt, op. cit., pp. 142, 237. See also Redford, Akhenaten the Heretic King, op. cit., p. 20.

  59 Fakhry, Ahmed, The Pyramids, University of Chicago Press, 1969, p. 164.

  60 Hassan, op. cit., pp. 55-6.

  61 Zivie-Coche, op. cit., p. 89.

  62 Zahi, Hawass, ‘The Temples of the Rising Sun’, in Horus Magazine, April 2001.

  63 Redford, op. cit. p. 180.

  64 Labib Habachi, The Obelisks of Egypt, The American University in Cairo Press, 1994, p. 5.

  65 Ibid., p. 47.

  66 Ibid., p. 90.

  67 Ibid., p. 165.

  68 Edwards, The Pyramids of Egypt, 1993, op. cit., pp. 284, 286.

  69 Alexander Gurshtein, ‘The Evolution of the Zodiac in the Context of Ancient History’, Vistas in Astronomy Journal, Vol. 41, Part 4 (1997), p. 512.

  70 Bauval and Gilbert, op. cit.

  71 Lehner, op. cit., p. 29.

  72 Nataliè Beaux, ‘La douat dans les Textes des Pyramides’, Bulletin de l’Institut Français D’Archaéologie Orientale, Vol. 94, 1994, pp. 1-6.

  73 Hassan, op. cit., pp. 278-9.

  74 Bauval and Gilbert, op. cit., pp. 262-3.

  75 A South African author, Wayne Herschel, has also independently arrived at the same conclusion that the Pleiades represent the Abusir pyramid cluster. He published this in a book entitled The Hidden Records (by Hidden Records, 2005). Since Herschel’s book was published before The Egypt Code, I acknowledge that this conclusion must be attributed originally to him.

  76 Malek and Baines, op. cit., p. 154.

  77 M. Verner, op. cit., p. 266.

  78 Ronald A. Wells, ‘The 5th Dynasty Sun Temples at Abu Ghorab as Old Kingdom Star Clocks: Examples of Applied Ancient Egyptian Astronomy’, Studien zur Altagyptischen Kultur (SAK). Band 4, 1990, pp. 95-105.

  79 Wilkinson, p. 121.

  80 Lehner, op. cit., p. 151.

  81 Ibid., p. 152.

  82 Using geographical coordinates: Abusir to Heliopolis = 27,620 metres; Giza to Abusir = 11,420 metres; Letopolis to Heliopolis = 17,000.

  83 The pyramid builders are thought to have used a unit of measurement called the royal cubit which was equal to about 0.525 metres.

  84 Bauval and Gilbert, op. cit., pp. 262-3.

  85 E.C. Krupp, op. cit., p. 22.

  Chapter Four: As Above, So Below

  1 Pyramid Texts Utterance, 263.

  2 Pyramid Texts, 360.

  3 Pyramid Texts, 351-353.

  4 Lady Duff Gordon, Letters from Egypt 1862-1867, Ed. Gordon Waterfield, Routledge & Keagan Paul, London, 1969, p. 180.

  5 Scott, Heremetica, Asclepius III, op. cit.

  6 Quoted in Lockyer, The Dawn of Astronomy, Cassell, 1894, pp. 231-2.

  7 I used the words ‘almost perfect’ because, of course, the natural morphology of the Nilotic region and the contours of the Memphite necropolis imposed on the ancient surveyors constraints that forced them to deviate from an ideal plan. On the whole, however, the overall imagery of the celestial Duat is unmistakably seen defined on the land.

  8 Arielle Kozloff, ‘Star-gazing in Ancient Egypt’, Hommages à Jean Leclant, Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, Bibliot
heque D’Etude, Vol. 4, 1994.

  9 Ibid.

  10 In 1989, a few years before Kozloff’s article appeared, I had arrived more or less at the same conclusion when I wrote that ‘A major feature of the (celestial) After-world often mentioned in the Pyramid Texts is the “Winding Waterway”, which was, in all probability, seen as a celestial counterpart of the Nile . . . The “winding” characteristic of this celestial-Nile perfectly describes the gyrations of the Milky Way about the earth, surely the only feature in the sky which can be regarded as a “winding waterway” ’, Bauval, Discussions in Egyptology, Vol. 13, 1989.