Hi Chris,

Thanks for the additional 'sky's height' references, which also don't refer to Orion. Msqt sHdw has been linked to the Milky Way.

About,

>The fact is, that the top end of the
>upper south shaft was facing an area
>of the sky where the distinctive 3-star
>asterism in the centre of Orion
>appeared due south c. 2570 BC during
>Khufu's reign.

I really don't think this is a fact but is speculation. Even if the shaft opened out all the way through the masonry (another assumption) it would simply face the air a few hundred feet above the land. Also, who's to say that the final few cubits of the shaft cutting through the facing stones didn't take a turn to horizontal or some other direction? I don't think that this possibility is so unlikely, given that the bottom of the shafts are horizontal.

The notion that the shaft was a tube that was aligned with specific astral entities (which would of course be limited for a few minutes each day and only operational for a few years due to precession) is a modern day overlay that attempts to second guess ancient Egyptian intent.

But this is a digression. My post was to try to demonstrate a pattern in Old Kingdom thinking that might be helpful in unfettering a discussion of the shafts in Khufu's pyramid from an alignment theory that is not in comformance with Old Kingdom religious texts.

Ken