Hi Ken,

Badaway and Trimble's scholarship is not really relevant here - it is their proposal that is relevant, and it's one that has been widely accepted in mainstream Egyptology by central figures such as the President of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Egypt Zahi Hawass, by Mark Lehner, by Kate Spence and, for example, other participants in the Egyptian Exploration Society conference in 2005 on Ancient Egyptian Astronomy.

Nevertheless, Badaway's proposal that the so called 'Golden Ratio' was used to design and proportion Egyptian architecture IS taken seriously by the experts, most notably by Egyptologist and architectural historian Dr Corrina Rossi of Cambridge, author of "Architecture and Mathematics in Ancient Egypt", University of Cambridge, 2004.

The following article by Badaway is also treated seriously by Barry Kemp and Pamela Rose in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal. 1(1): 103-129 "Proportionality in mind and space in Ancient Egypt"

Badaway, A.
1963 The harmonic system of architectural design in Ancient Egypt. Mitteilungen des Instituts fur Orientforchung. 8. 1-14.

Personally I disagree with Rossi's conclusions regarding the use of these ratio's, but I note this to demonstrate that Badaway is taken seriously. If you see Rossi's book you will also see a plethora of complexity in the diagrams.

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Now, Back to the Star Shafts:

Because the explanation of the function of the shafts is so widely accepted by mainstream scholars and experts, and because the data fits so well, I am not really posting anything more to try and persuade people who refuse to accept the evidence.

I am not really interested any more in what these skeptics refuse to consider.

The reason I found Mr Grinsell's acceptance so interesting is because the subject of the book is wider funerary and burial practices "in Egypt, the Mediterranean and the British Isles"

The book is a decent quality summary of parallel burial practices, and Grinsell clearly sees nothing out of the ordinary with the beliefs of the Egyptians with respect to other cultures regionally and farther afields.

In conclusion, there really is nothing unusual about the Egyptian's belief that the pharaoh would ascend to the stars, and nothing unusual about the star shafts they left behind to allow this to happen. The only unusual aspect is the physical scale and precision with which they were built.

Culturally, they were a perhaps a more developed case of many common themes that are seen farther afield.

Cardinal orientation of sepulchural architecture for example is seen all over Europe, Russia, the British Isles etc.

Dave L


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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/07/2007 06:42AM by Dave L.