There was never a need for a "star shaft" in any pyramid in all of Egyptian history. Khufu's pyramid is no exception.
Dave L Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> 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.
How can their scholarship not be relevant?
It is their flawed methodology that led them to equally flawed conclusions about "Star Shafts" and the "Golden Ratio". Neither is evidenced at the time the structures were built, so neither is actually a tennable answer to the question of why they were built.
>
> 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.
>
"Taken seriously" is not the same thing as "backed by evidence".
> 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.
But there IS no evidence. That's the point. There never HAS been evidence. Nobody every argued it satisfactorily, and the only reason it gets any air time is because people haven't bothered to look at a non-stellar answer for the shafts (besides air shafts, which are equally untenable). The same flawed argumentation that led to the Golden Ratio also led to Star Shafts. Both are defunct concepts. Calling them "star shafts" is a misrepresentation of their real purpose.
>
> I am not really interested any more in what these
> skeptics refuse to consider.
We refuse to consider opinion over evidence. Don't you?
>
> 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.
Less reason to trust its specific application to Dynasty IV pyramid building practices.
>
> 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.
Ridiculous. The unusualness of them centers on the fact that they exist in just one pyramid out of a hundred... and that pyramid, as Ken has rightfully pointed out, is NOT one with the stellar texts inside it, outside it, around it, on it, under it, over it... nowhere.
If the "star shafts" were such an important element in the afterlife beliefs, why were they not included in the pyramids where the stars were clearly so important?
>
> Culturally, they were a perhaps a more developed
> case of many common themes that are seen farther
> afield.
They aren't seen anywhere else... but in fact, you are actually correct in this statement. Where you (and others) err is in insisting that this "common theme" MUST be of a stellar nature.
It is not.
Anthony
You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him think.
