Hello Robin,

Your puzzlement about Dash's work seems justified.

It might be helpful to review the two threads on the topic.

Your original post questioned two statements in the AERA article. From the article:

"Survey points taken by the 2012 Glen Dash Foundation Survey Project, shown in red. The 2012 survey reveals a need to shift southward the Menkaure Pyramid (GIII), temple, and causeway. WFR stands for Western Field Ramp, an ancient construction embankment along an unfinished colossal stone wall. Map prepared by Rebekah Miracle, AERA GIS."

"In most cases, Giza's monuments were abut where we expected them to be. However, our new data gives us their exact location whereas before we only knew their approximate positions. In a few cases, we were surprised by our findings. For example, our best available maps placed the Menkaure Pyramid more than 20 meters (65.6 feet!) from its true location." Glen Dash Foundation Survey: Data for First Accurate Archaeological Map of the Giza Plateau. Ancient Egypt Research Associates, 2011-2012 Annual Report, Page 24.

A response to your post described the issue as one of accurately positioned the surveys on the globe:

"What Dash is talking about in the AERA article is how accurately the pyramids as a whole group were located on existing map bases - for example on 'Survey of Egypt' maps of Egypt, and by extension on the global surface. That had not been done very accurately, no better than 20m he says. With modern GPS that can now be done much more accurately. He uses Menkaure's pyramid as an example. He is saying that its position was absolutely incorrect by as much by 20m, not that its position was incorrectly measured relative to Khufu's pyramid by 20m. He is saying that the whole group was not accurately located on maps, not that one pyramid is accurate and one pyramid is not." Re: Is Petrie's Giza survey reliable?
Posted by: Dr Dave Lightbody (IP Logged)Date: June 22, 2014 12:19AM

The discussion narrowed the issue to one of the actual dimensions of the GIII pyramid base:

"Yes indeed, Lehner-Goodman confirm Petrie for Khufu base, with best mean estimate at 230.329 m. However, the point at issue here concerns the base of Menkaure, as discussed." Re: How reliable is Petrie's Giza survey? Posted by: robin cook (IP Logged)Date: June 23, 2014 01:36PM

The position of the GIII pyramid relative to other features on the plateau was taken as accurate:

"As for the center of the pyramid his measurements are right on the money...and since pyramid bases trend to be square I would be satisfied using 4156.52" as a mean for a square base knowing it may be off by a few hundreds of an inch. In the scheme of its location relative to the other two Petrie is very accurate." Re: How reliable is Petrie's Giza survey?
Posted by: Pistol (IP Logged)Date: June 23, 2014 07:19PM

Dash's work was again described as one of accurately positioning the surveys on the globe:

"Dash basically identified that the pyramids were not accurately modeled in the GPS world and discovered a significant margin of error when compared to Petrie's local and irrefutable placement and alignment between the pyramids." Re: How reliable is Petrie's Giza survey? Posted by: Pistol (IP Logged)Date: June 24, 2014 11:25AM

It appears to me that your orginial concern has not been resolved. Dash's map and narrative clearly dispute the spatial relationships of the Giza Plateau features to one another as depicted in historical works. Dash is not describing a global positioning issue. He is describing an issue with the distances between features on the plateau. Dash's map shows the 2012 GDFS survey points aligning with the GI complex as shown on the base map. The survey points are slightly south of alignment for the GII complex and further south of alignment for the GIII complex. Dash is disputing the internal accuracy of the historical surveys and even the topographic map.

I have done a lot of work using the various Giza measurements and a variety of satellite photos and topographic maps of the plateau. They all have been generally consistent. When I align the Dash survey points for the GI complex on a satellite image of the plateau, the survey points for GII and GIII do not align with the image.

As unlikely as it may seem, I think Dash probably made a mistake somewhere.

C. Wayne Taylor