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 upper 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 Egyptian 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
Until the late eighteenth century of our era, pharaonic Egypt remained a blurred memory, almost a dream. In Europe during the Dark Ages and the Renaissance the Western psyche was befuddled by rumours and inaccurate reports brought back by lone travellers, and it was not until Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798 that the pharaonic civilisation was reawakened in its historical reality. Fortunately, Napoleon had brought along with him a group of scientists and artists who began to systematically record the ancient monuments along the Nile and who started the orderly collection of ancient artefacts. Part of the legacy left by these early Egyptologists was the Institut Français in Cairo, the scientific embryo that would eventually serve as the role model for the various foreign archaeological institutes that would sprout in Egypt and, more importantly, for the future Egyptian Antiquities Department that would be founded in 1856 by the intrepid Frenchman Auguste Mariette Pasha (and which in 1994 was renamed the Supreme Council of Antiquities, or SCA).
By the time Naopoleon’s scientists rediscovered ancient Egypt, the country had suffered several centuries of foreign occupation and experienced many internal wars, and its ancient monuments and tombs had endured many centuries of ruthless plunder. The Persians were the first to come, in 525 BC and occupied the country till 380 BC (and a second time from 365 to 332 BC). It was during these two Persian occupations that so much damage was done to the pharaonic legacy, not only materially but also spiritually. The Persians were finally ousted in 332 BC by Alexander the Great, whose leading general, Ptolemy son of Lagos, founded the so-called Ptolemaic dynasty at Alexandria in 305 BC. The Ptolemies, in contrast to the Persians, were enlightened masters who, rather than destroy and plunder, restored the ancient temples and built many new ones along the Nile. At Alexandria they founded a new capital which, with its celebrated library, university and museum, became the principal source of scientific and philosophical enlightenment for many centuries.
All this, however, was rudely interrupted by the arrival of the Roman legions under Augustus Caesar in 30 BC. Egypt became a Roman province and the pharaonic civilisation was no more. It was mostly under the Romans, and especially later under the Christians, that the legacy of pharaonic Egypt suffered the most. Temples were deliberately destroyed or converted into churches, and in AD 491 the few that still practised the old religion were officially closed and their priests and priestesses killed or banished. The last stand was at the temple of Isis on the island of Philae which, in AD 550, was ransacked by Christian monks and turned into a basilica. Within a few decades the old religion had been forgotten, and even the hieroglyphs could no longer be understood by their own people. The country had totally converted to the new faith of Christianity, with the Christianised Egyptians becoming known as the Copts. Ironically, it was the Copts, more than the foreigners, who turned against their ‘pagan’ origins with venom. Yet, even more ironically, the 3,000 years of the old religion was too deeply entrenched both on the land itself and also in the collective unconscious of the people. The old religion, refusing simply to die, entered into the bloated body of Roman Christianity and there lay dormant like a virus, occasionally releasing its subtle and subliminal influence. There is no doubt that a great deal of the iconography and mythology of Christianity was borrowed from that of ancient Egypt. Isis and the child Horus become the Virgin and the child Jesus, and even the passion of the dying and resurrected man-god Osiris served as a model for the passion of the Christ.
2
But another, perhaps less well-known legacy of ancient Egypt that affects our daily life even today is its calendar.