barry Wrote:
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> Joanne,
>
> What is the evidence that it was aligned
> intentionally to the cardinal points?
>
> AFIK, there is no extant direct evidence that the
> builders of the GP aligned that structure to the
> cardinal points.
>
> To be sure, I have recently come across a
> discussion elsewhere that offers an example of
> why it can be a mistake to assume that existence
> equals intent.

It's not only that, in this case, since the building is nearly perfect square, if one face was oriented to one thing, the whole building would appear to be "aligned" in all four directions when it was not. People have shown all kinds of fascinating properties in the GP, but there's no evidence that some, if not most, of these are unintended coincidences.

> However, given the accuracy of the alignment of
> the GP, I would suggest that it would not be
> egeregious to infer that it was the intention of
> the AE to align the monument to the cardinal
> points. Others, more learned than I, have
> reached a similar conclusion.

One problem here is that you don't know if it was accurated aligned or not because you don't know what the target was. The fact is that a very square building is oriented to the four cardinal points. I happen to think that upper southern shaft was meant to target the noon sun at a certain time of year. Others have suggested it targets a star. In the end, people have to look at what supports the arguments and decide how all the evidence adds up to the best explanation.

> Indeed, debates in history often seem to involve
> inferring human intentions in the absence of
> direct evidence.

This is true. The example you gave isn't a good one because we know more about our own culture at the time of WWII than we know about some ancient cultures. When looking at very different cultures in different times, we have to be additionally careful to avoid ethnocentrism. I know this word has gotten some over-exposure on this board, but it's still an important concept. We can't help seeing the world the way we see it, to a certain extent. It can be hard to keep that out of any interpretations, but we have to try. We have to try to see Egyptian art and monuments through AE eyes as much as we can. Many early Egyptologists did not do this, and some of their interpretations have become dogma.