Dr Spence may not have been aware of Petrie's survey of the Bent Pyramid, but if you were aware of Petrie's survey then it would have been better not to gloss over the matter by omisssion

I suppose Petrie would have described his determination as another ugly fact destroying another beautiful theory, but I don't want to give your theory a premature burial.

Petrie surveyed the Satellite Pyramid of the Bent Pyramid which was built at a similar time. He noted that the opposite sides were close to parallel which might well be explained by solar determination with a mean difference from east-west of less than plus 4 arc minutes for the north and south sides and a stellar determination with a mean difference of over 24 arc minutes of opposite sign from the north and south sides, so a true difference of 28 arc minutes or nearly half a degree.

This really does cause your theory a problem as it shows, as Petrie pointed out, that the work at Dahshur was inferior to Khufu's Pyramid and Khafre's pyramid, but better than Menkaure's pyramid. There has been so much debate on Menkaure's pyramid that it should perhaps be eliminated from your data set, or at least added to any graph with a question mark.

There is clearly a correlation between build standard and the precision of the orientation of the pyramids due north. The Satellite Pyramid of the Bent Pyramid may not have mattered as much as the Bent Pyramid.

I joined this forum hoping to convince others of my theory of the Bent Pyramid. I accessed Petrie's survey report in May 2009, and launched my website in June 2009. The website was updated in October 2009 with a circle with a circumference of 360 cubits projected by the Satellite Pyramid at the centre of the base square of the Bent Pyramid.

It still seems obvious to me that parts of the lower section of the Bent Pyramid had been built with a rise of 10 cubits for a run of 7 cubits, but as soon as the overly ambition design had to be abandoned then what remained of the lower section was completed at the seked 5 palms which yields a theoretical perimeter of 25,920 digits at a level of 90 cubits.

A few years ago I noticed that the distance between the mid-point of the east side of the Red Pyramid and the mid-point of the north side of the Bent Pyramid is very close to 25,920 palms, as derived from my model and in accord with reality, but others on this forum did not regard the pyramid builders as having the ability to survey a distance of 3700 cubits (under 2 kilometres) so precisely.

The Bent Pyramid was built to an incredibly high standard but cedar beams inside the pyramid indicate that there were signs of movement, potentially structural failure, which may have been the reason that the architect chose to finish the pyramid at a less ambitious slope at the seked of 7.5 palms resulting in a theoretical height of 198 cubits. (This is the height of the Great Pyramid above the level of the floor of the King's Chamber. In my model of the sarcophagus this level is ground level in the virtual picture of Khufu's Horizon.)

The problem with my model of the Bent Pyramid is that it adopted Petrie's base side length of the pyramid as 360 cubits, and others on this forum thought that Dorner's survey should be preferred over Petrie's survey.

Luca Miatello regarded the base side length of the Red Pyramid as 420 cubits and the height as 198 cubits for a rather unusual seked of 7 + 1/3 1/11 palms. Photos of the Red Pyramid, possibly including those of Jon Bodsworth on this forum, show the awful state of Red Pyramid as if its original external dimensions and orientation might be beyond recovery, but I would be delighted if the original size and shape of the Red Pyramid could be proved to be as Miatello proposed.

I would, however, be surprised if the orientation of the Red Pyramid is recoverable accurately enough to merit inclusion in your hypothesis, which is a problem as the same applies to so many pyramids.

My model of the Bent Pyramid defines both the distance of the Red Pyramid from the Bent Pyramid, peak to peak, and the bearing of the Red Pyramid west of due north, peak to peak. I have the distance and the angle but if I present my model then others are free to claim that my determinations of the actual distance and azimuth were influenced by my theoretical model. The angle gives the peak to peak distance and the peak to peak distance gives the angle for the constraint of 25,920 palms, as above, and both these additional factors are locked together by a geometric device, possibly obvious given such a big clue.

Can you determine the bearing and distance of the Red Pyramid from the Bent Pyramid aiming for determinations accurate to a metre and 0.01 degrees?

My model of the Bent Pyramid and Red Pyramid might now be obvious to others, or rather after such determinations, but again my model suffers from the problem that we have to accept Petrie's opinion on the length of the Dahshur cubit as 20.72 inches from the Bent Pyramid and 20.65 inches from its Satellite Pyramid. I selected a value of 20.70 inches to give a heavier weighting to the determination from the Bent Pyramid.

I had some correspondence with Jane Sellers some years ago who promoted the view that the ancient Egyptians were aware of the precession of the equinoxes. My model suggests a cycle of 25,920 years.

If it can be shown that the number 25,920 can be substantiated in an obvious way then perhaps this will help with your theory. It seems likely that the shift in the position of stars rising on the horizon was connected to the shift in the position of stars with respect to the pole of the night sky.

If a king wanted to identify with a particular star then it might have been regarded as important to determine its position at a particular moment in time, and even a lifetime is a relatively small period of say 72 years (25.920/360 years) compared to the cycle of 25,920 years.

Mark



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 02/12/2020 03:27PM by Mark Heaton.