Hi Mark,
Thank you for posting your interesting comments.
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It is reasonable to conclude that the east side was built first, as concluded by Maragioglio and Rinaldi, and that the north east corner of the Base Square does not have as perfect a right angle as that of the N.E. corner socket because the north side had an east-west solar alignment based on the equinox. Glen Dash carried out practical work to show how this might have been done very precisely.
The north-west corner of the Base Square is close to a perfect right angle so the west side points to true north better than the east side simply because the east-west parallel was determined more precisely than true north, as apparent from the east side.
The theory of conducting the solar orientation ritual is interesting, but unfortunately it does not correspond to the observed data.
If we consider the data on azimuths separately for each side of such pyramids as the Meidum pyramid (N: -35' 25", S: -23' 36", E: -20' 35", W: -18' 3" [Petrie]), Bent pyramid (N: -7' 30", S: -4' 8", E: -17' 20", W: -11' 49" [Dorner]), Menkaure pyramid (N: +16' 48", S: +12' 57", E: +12' 23", W: ? [Petrie]), then it is difficult to assume the usage of two orientation methods simultaneously (stellar method to determine the N-S axis and solar method for the E-W axis ), which have different accuracy and, therefore, a greater parallelism of the opposite sides would be observed to the detriment of the accuracy of the right angles. (For example, it is difficult to assume for the Meidum pyramid that the stellar and solar methods both gave deviations to the west which were almost the same in absolute value; the same for the Menkaure pyramid and deviations to the east).
No other rituals (other than the 'stretching of the cord' ritual) for orientation and laying of the foundations of the building in ancient sources is not mentioned. It is known for certain that the orientation ritual was carried out at night, because there is mention that a moonless night was chosen for it.
In this regard, assumptions about the usage of the solar method of orientation are more exercises for the mind than correspond to real data.
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I put my model to Prof. Ramsey who advised that he was sure my date of 2840 BC for the foundation (and alignment) of Khufu's Pyramid was incorrect from his radiocarbon studies.
I am not surprised that Prof. Ramsey informed you that your dates did not match his radiocarbon study.
I paid attention to his "Radiocarbon-Based Chronology for Dynastic Egypt" in my article (chapter 7), as well as
here and
here.
If I had a communication with Prof. Ramsey, I would ask him three questions:
1. Why, in his work, which claims to be a fundamental radiocarbon research for reconstruction of the Egyptian chronology, he used such a small number of samples for the Old Kingdom (only 11, of which 6 were not clearly identified), if he could use the data on samples of short-lived materials (of which there are 37) from the study of Bonani and Haas? By the way, he did use one(!) sample by Haas, and this is noted in the appendix. I wonder if he himself considers the modeling results for the Old Kingdom convincing.
2. Why did he combine the data for the Old and Middle Kingdoms within the framework of one common model, nevertheless separating the New Kingdom into a separate model? (Why didn't he create three different models for the three Kingdoms?)
3. Why didn’t his article contain important information regarding the estimation of the duration of the FIP within the framework of the constructed model? (I ran the Oxcal code published in the appendix to the article and received an estimate of the FIP duration from 80 to 224 years, while the Ramsey's dates for OK supports Beckerath’s assumption about ultra-short FIP - no more than 30 years).
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The east side is so close to the pole that it is reasonable to conclude that the objective was to align the pyramid to the pole of the night sky, not the pole star.
If you focus only on the Khufu Pyramid, then this is a reasonable assumption. If you look at all the pyramids of the Old Kingdom, you cannot explain the orientation of some of them within the framework of the hypothesis of orientation to the true north no matter how hard you try.
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It is not surprising that Egypt's most precisely built pyramid turns out to be the most precisely aligned to true north.
If the quality of the construction and orientation of the pyramids is associated only with the meticulousness of their creators, how do you explain the decline in quality of the pyramids after the construction of the large ones in Giza? Why did builders stop being scrupulous? Why they stoped to build the big pyramids?
I have the explanation.
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It seems very unlikely that Khufu laid the base for Khafre's pyramid because his chosen son finished his boat pit, but chose to build his pyramid elsewhere.
By the way, how do you explain such a large deviation of the Djedefre pyramid to the west? (It is oriented relative to cardinal directions 10 times worse (-48') than the Khufu (-3') and Khafre (-5') pyramids, which were built respectively before and after it). Could it be that the architects temporarily "forgot how" to find the north exactly, and then again "learned"?
Best,
Alex.