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
.
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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 existing 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.
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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’.
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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 that
a 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.
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In view of all this intense solar alignment related to the Sphinx complex, we must also expect that the 14° south-of-east alignment of the causeway had important solar connotations. Already a strong indication of this is that the orientation of 14° south-of-east (or north-of-east) is known in astronomy as the cross-quarter, which is the mid-point of 28°, the orientation of the sunrise of the winter solstice (14° south-of-east) or that of the summer solstice (14° north-of-east) as seen from the latitude of Giza. In
c
. 2781 BC an orientation of 14° south-of-east would have aligned the causeway to sunrise on 19 October (Gregorian), which is, of course, 1 Tybi, or ‘jubilee date’. The conclusion that the
heb-sed
, or jubilee, was celebrated at the Giza Necropolis (and other pyramid sites) was also arrived at by Jeremy Naydler in his latest book,
Shamanic Wisdom in the Pyramid Texts
.
50
Dr Naydler, a cultural historian, asked: ‘Were the pyramids and their surrounding buildings and ceremonial courts built simply to serve the royal funerary cult, or could they also have served mystical ends? Could they, for example, have been used for the performance of rites such as those of the (Heb) Sed festival, involving the living king?’ He then carefully presented a plethora of archaeological and textual evidence that strongly indicated - if not proved - that Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Dynasty kings had celebrated
heb-seds
/jubilees in their pyramid complexes. We have already discussed in earlier chapters the
heb-sed
rites for King Djoser at the Step Pyramid complex at Saqqara. Regarding his immediate successor, King Sneferu of the Fourth Dynasty, there exists a ‘stela of king Sneferu from the Bent Pyramid complex, showing him seated on a throne wearing the short tunic of the (heb) sed festival’.
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His son, the celebrated Khufu, builder of the Great Pyramid at Giza, also seems to have performed a
heb-sed
at his pyramid complex, evidenced by a stone fragment belonging to the northern wall of the causeway of the Great Pyramid that shows him wearing the short tunic typical of the
heb-sed
celebrations.
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Naydler also demonstrated that virtually all the other pyramid sites in the Memphite Necropolis were probably used for
heb-sed
celebrations.
But what of the Great Temple at the solar city of Akhet-Aten, ‘Horizon of the Sun Disc’, which seems to have been exclusively dedicated to the Aten, ‘Lord of Jubilees’ and ‘Distinguished in Jubilees’? An inscription quoted by Richard Wilkinson states: ‘Aten living and great who is in jubilee residing in the temple of Aten at Akhet-Aten’.
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Surely, then, it is this particular temple that should, above all others, be aligned towards the sunrise on the ‘jubilee date’.
The Hills of Sunrise
We have already seen how the New Year’s Day had returned to the summer solstice in 1275 BC during the reign of Rameses II. At the ascension of Akhenaten in
c.
1352 BC, there were still 77 years left before that event would take place. Because of the calendar’s drift at the rate of one day every four years, 1 Tybi would have fallen not 120 days after the summer solstice, on 19 October, but only 101 days after it, on 30 September. Using StarryNight Pro, I worked out that for the location of Tell El Amarna, the sunrise on 1 Tybi would have been at about 3.5° south-of-east. Was this the orientation of the Great Temple of Aten at Tell El Amarna as well?
Obtaining the orientation of this temple was not such an easy task. I contacted the Egypt Exploration Society (EES) in London, who informed me that the information I needed was in the report and maps published by Barry Kemp of Cambridge University, who conducted the latest survey of Tell El Amarna in 1977-8 on behalf of the EES.
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To avoid delay, I decided to consult the Sackler Library at Oxford, which was closer to my home. To my delight they had a copy of Kemp’s publication. I found the information I was looking for in maps marked Sheets 3, 4 and 5. There was an excellent line drawing of the plan of the Great Temple showing its axis and grid north lines R40 and Q40 established during Kemp’s survey. I carefully measured the angle of the axis of the Great Temple relative to grid north and found that it was 14° south-of-east. On Sheet 3, however, Barry Kemp gave the necessary angular adjustments: magnetic north was 1° 23′ west of grid north and true north was an extra 1° 30′ west of magnetic north. This meant that the orientation of the temple was 14° + 1°23′ + 1° 30′ = 16° 53′ south-of-east.
The orientation of the temple was thus about 13.38° further south than that of the rising sun on 1 Tybi. The temple, in other words, was
not
aligned to the ‘jubilee date’ as I had expected it to be. I was puzzled. For here was a temple specifically dedicated to the sunrise and linked to the jubilees. Indeed, many Egyptologists seemed to support the idea that the site for this temple (and the city of Akhet-Aten) had been chosen by Akhenaten himself when he witnessed the sun rise between two hills in the eastern horizon there which defined the hieroglyphic sign for
akhet
(‘horizon’) - two hills with the sun disc in the middle. Because of all this, I had been certain that I would discover that the Great Temple of the Aten was aligned towards the rising sun on 1 Tybi, the ‘jubilee date’. Yet the numbers seemed to indicate otherwise. So why was the temple orientated towards the rising sun at 16° 53′ south-of-east? Checking this 16° 53′ south-of-east orientation with StarryNight Pro gave the date 29 October on the Gregorian calendar. So what happened on 29 October in 1352 BC that prompted the ancient surveyors of Akhet-Aten to align the Great Temple to the rising sun?
Akhenaten, it must be remembered, was a purist who wanted to adhere to the cosmic order as set down by the ancestral religion of Heliopolis. It was the ancestral priest-astronomers of Heliopolis who, in
c
. 2781 BC, had set the New Year’s Day, i.e. I Akhet 1, to the heliacal rising of Sirius. This event happened to coincide with the summer solstice at that time.
According to Rolf Krause, there was a festival celebrated at Akhet-Aten on I Akhet 1, the New Year’s Day, which was called
mswt-itn
, ‘The Birthday of Aten’. But because of the effect of precession, the heliacal rising of Sirius in
c.
1352 BC had moved to 10 days
after
the summer solstice. So if in Akhenaten’s time the New Year’s Day was kept linked, as tradition demanded, to the heliacal rising of Sirius, this meant that if one counted the days of the calendar starting 10 days
after
21 June, i.e. from 1 July, the ‘jubilee date’ according to the shifting calendar was pushed forward also 10 days, from 19 October to 29 October! This was too much to be coincidence. It seemed to me certain that the Great Temple of the Aten was, in fact, aligned to the ‘jubilee date’ in accordance with the original Heliopolitan calendar that had fixed the New Year’s Day to the heliacal rising of Sirius! Akhenaten was far more of a purist than he had hitherto been given credit for.
In late October 2004 I had the opportunity to visit Tell El Amarna for the second time. My friend Roel Oostra was shooting a television documentary based on my book and wanted to film the sunrise at Tell El Amarna on 29 October. According to my calculations, the sun disc would be seen rising between the two standing columns of the Small Temple of the Aten, which had the same orientation as the Great Temple nearby. As there was not much left of the Great Temple itself Roel felt that the sunrise between the two columns would provide a more dramatic effect for the purpose of television viewing.
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So on 28 October we drove from Cairo to Al Minya and stayed the night in a small hotel just outside the town. The convoy of armed security police that had escorted us also stayed at the hotel, as this region of Egypt was regarded as a hotbed for religious fanatics who wanted to disrupt the tourist trade by attacking foreigners. Throughout the evening our local guide tried to persuade the convoy’s officer to allow us to go to the site of Tell El Amarna before sunrise, but the officer was adamant that this was not possible. So we all went to bed feeling frustrated and tired. Something, however, must have happened during the night to change his mind, because at 5 a.m. our guide excitedly woke us all up with the good news that the officer had agreed to allow the armed convoy to escort us to Tell El Amarna right away. We scrambled out of our rooms, gulped some lukewarm tea and biscuits, and off we went. The armed police in the convoy waved and smiled cheerily at us as we drove towards the city of Akhet-Aten. The gentle ‘persuasion’, whatever form it had taken during the night, had obviously made them happy.