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 and 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.
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.