I have been thinking about the offerings that Khufu provides to the former Pharoahs that feature in the stories of the Westcar Papyrus. In the examples we have available to analyse, the offering is always the same for Pharoah Djoser, Nebka and Sneferu:
1,000 loaves of bread;
100 jars of beer;
1 ox; and
2 balls of incense.
Given the repetition of these numbers in the stories and the fact that repetition builds in redundancy into the stories, I think this sequence is of importance beyond a mere list of items to provision an alter. In Lull and Belmonte, Table 6.1, there is identified a constellation known as the Pair of Stars "sb3wy" which is identified to Castor and Pollux, the bright stars of Gemini. The pair of stars is represented in hieroglyphics simply as two stars - a symbol that in the later Demotic Script is thought to be connected to the number 60 and the symbol for degrees (refer to Ossendrijver and Winkler). I suggest the 2 balls of incense in this instance are representative of the pair of stars constellation.
The Ox, as I have written is written in singular jw3 without a feminine ending and as such represents a single male ox or bull. In Egyptian astronomy, the bull can represent:
1. Meskhetiu, the modern day Ursa Major as I have identified the bull in the story of Djedi to;
2. Taurus as represented in the Zodiac of Dendera; or
3. Saturn which according to Quack was known as "Horus bull of the sky".
While not discounting other options, Saturn becomes an interesting prospect - Saturn cycles through the houses of the zodiac approximately every 29 years and thus provides a cyclical marker. Curiously, on the dates that I have proposed, Saturn is housed by Gemini, so the Ox is near the Pair of Incense balls. This housing spans from -2797-06-18 to -2799-05-23 as simulated in Stellarium or 2798 BCE to 2800 BCE in Sky Safari Plus.
Another curious point here - the bread, beer and ox each have a common element. The Egyptians made their beer by fermenting their bread and, according to Erman, fattened their Oxen by feeding them bread dough. The Goddess Nut (nwt) is represented in hieroglyphs with a X1 loaf of bread and a jar, similar to the jar of beer. Nut is of course linked to the Milky Way. If we put this together, on the date in question, modelled in Stellarium, we see Saturn in Gemini with the cloudy Milky Way cutting a line very nearby:
Another curiosity happens in the great pyramid - at if we truncated the pyramid at 265 cubits height, the baselength would be 23.57 Royal Cubits which when multiplied by the 137.45 (close to the golden angle) you get to 3,240. These numbers represent the Babylonian System A for Saturn:
“Concerning Saturn. 4,25 (265) years corresponds to 4,16 (256) first appearances and to 9 rotations13 and to 54,0 (3240) degrees. “
A study of Babylonian planetary theory I. The outer planets Tieje de Jong
References
Mathieu Ossendrijver and Andreas Winkler, Chaldeans on the Nile: Two Egyptian Astronomical Procedure Texts with Babylonian Systems A1 and A2 for Mercury, p392
Joachim Friedrich Quack, The Planets in Ancient Egypt, Oxford Research, accessed from [
oxfordre.com]
Adolf Erman, Life in ancient Egypt, p438