Hi Chris

To post pictures I now use 'Freeimage.host'. To make diagrams, though I am much happier using pencil and paint, I use photoshop and an older version of Turbocad. This last allegedly imports Autocad files, although a quick Google search reveals many users of the latest versions of Turbocad have various difficulties doing this, (but of course programs and operating systems are always changing and one just has to get used to it).

Years ago I played around with good old Skyglobe but it seems that there is no version that works on a 64 bit operating system. I was advised to download Stellarium (which I did but Windows reported as so often 'there seems to be a problem'. I'll have another go).

I must confess I was rather slapdash years back and I had many other interests needing attention (for a time I even entertained the 10,000 BC date before concluding it was a fantasy). Since then I haven't paid much attention to astronomy. Nevertheless I recall imagining that I had found a correlation between the rising of Orion and the vertical alignment of key stars in the north (in the diagram I sent you I mislabelled the Orion angle as 108 degrees when it should have course read 72 degrees). I should like to check what the situation was in 2560 BC - around the time when most authorities seem to agree Khufu was built.

At the risk of making a fool of myself again I dragged up these old images. I recall that you mentioned an alignment of pyramids along the desert edge -



Meanwhile I had noticed that the supposed correspondence between the belt stars and pyramids was not as Bauval and Hancock had claimed - neither in the pyramid epoch nor in 10450 BC. The layout orientation is achieved when Orion is hanging over the eastern horizon, at the same azimuth as your diagram -



Going further it seemed that this layout position was achieved when key stars were in vertical alignment to the north -



Today it seems that scholars are less enamoured with the concept of key stars in vertical alignment to explain pyramid orientation (see Dash, and Nell and Ruggles) but I remain sympathetic. We know vanishingly little of the significance of key stars in the egyptian stellar pantheon, despite a wealth of speculation, save for those mentioned in this thread. But with modern tools we can reconstruct the IVth dynasty sky and perhaps identify synchronous events - for example what is happening in the north when bright stars rise or cross the meridian, or are there any other prominent star pairs in vertical alignment over the horizon?

As for pyramid passages and shafts aimed at the sky (whether slightly 'bent' or not) we need to identify their targets. Djoser's box was designed at a specific angle (though reports vary in saying what this was) - so what was it pointing at? And then there is the Bent pyramid's west passage - if this has no target then does it mean that passages were designed geometrically (albeit 'polar' passages pointing vaguely to the north)? Shall we conclude that Khufu is an exception, a harmonius blend of geometry and astronomy, yet an abberation?

Robin