Read The Egypt Code Online

Authors: Robert Bauval

The Egypt Code (54 page)

 
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, Bibliotheque 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.
 
11
There is today a modern multi-storey building which somewhat serves the same purpose!
 
12
From Flinders Petrie’s survey: Distance from the Khufu Pyramid to the Menkaura Pyramid measured from the SE/NW extend diagonals is 928.32m. The resulting geometry produces the angle 43° 50′. Others, such as the geometrician Robin Cook, have refined this angle to 43°20’.
 
13
Hertha von Deschend and Giorgio de Santillana,
Hamlet’s Mill
, Nonpareil Books, 1992, p. 67.
 
14
E.A. Wallis-Budge,
The Gods of the Egyptians
, Dover, 1969, Vol. II, p. 312. See also Otto Neugebauer,
The Exact Sciences in Antiquity
, Dover Publications, New York, 1969. Also Otto Neugebauer, ‘The History of Ancient Astronomy’,
Journal of Near Eastern Studies
, Vol. IV, 1945, p. 24.
 
15
Proclus,
Commentaries on the Timaeus of Plato
, Vol. I, 40B.
 
16
Strabo,
Geography
, Vol. XVII, I, 29.
 
17
Diodorus,
Bibliotheca Historia
, Vol. I, 98.
 
18
Iambilicus,
Life of Pythagoras
, 12.
 
19
Ibid., 4,19.
 
20
See Proclus, op. cit., Vol. IV. See also Schwaller de Lubicz,
Sacred Science
, Inner Traditions, New York, 1982, p. 286. According to Hertha von Deschend (
Hamlet’s Mill
, op. cit., p. 143): ‘There is good reason to assume that he (Hipparchus) actually rediscovered this (the precession), that it had been known some thousand years previously, and that on it the Archaic Age based its long-range computation of time.’
 
21
Z. Zaba,
L’Orientation Astronomique dans L’Ancienne Egypte et la Precession de l’Axe du Monde
, op. cit., p. 55.
 
22
Schwaller de Lubicz, op. cit., pp. 279-80.
 
23
Quoted by Schwaller de Lubicz
,
op. cit., p. 285.
 
24
Lockyer, op. cit., p. 23.
 
25
Alexander Gurshtein, ‘The Great Pyramids of Egypt as Sanctuaries Commemorating the Origin of the Zodiac: An Analysis of Astronomical Evidence’,
Physics-Doklady
, Vol. 41, No. 6, 1996, pp. 228-32. See also A. Gurshtein, ‘On the Origins of the Zodiacal Constellations’,
Vista in Astronomy
, Vol. 36, Part 2, 1993, pp. 171-91.
 
26
Guilio Magli’s paper is also on line at:
http://xxx.sissa.it/abs/physics/0407108
.
 
27
Krupp, op. cit., p. 201.
 
28
Ibid.
 
29
A cataract is a change in level of the river. There are six main cataracts in all, the sixth being just north of Khartoum in the Sudan.
 
30
Wilkinson, op. cit., p. 165.
 
31
Ibid.
 
32
Ron Wells, ‘Sothis and the Satet Temple on Elephantine: A Direct Connection’, Studien zur Altagyptischen Kultur (SAK). Band 12, 1985, p. 258.
 
33
R. Wilkinson, op. cit., p. 212. The earliest phase of the Satet (Satis) temple was an early dynasty ‘hut’ built into the corner of the three boulders enclosure. In the Third Dynasty this was enlarged and a forecourt was added. Further works took place in the Sixth Dynasty and various new temples were constructed on top of the ruins of the earlier one during the Eleventh and Twelfth Dynasties, especially by the pharaoh Sesostris I. In the New Kingdom the Eighteenth Dynasty queen-pharaoh Hatchepsut had the Satis temple completely rebuilt some two metres higher than the original three boulders. The Eighteenth Dynasty edifice was then extended to the east during the Ramesside period and again in the Twenty-sixth Dynasty. Finally a totally new temple was built over the ruins of the last one during the Ptolemaic period.

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