Hi Robin,

I am glad that our points of view are gradually converging and I agree with big part of what you have written.

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while the root 2 division of the height of Khufu to locate the floor of the King's chamber (thus 'rotating' the pyramid through 45 degrees)

Can you explain this?

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Could it be that, while acknowledging the connection to Orion the passage angle was 'formalized' to 45 degrees?

I reviewed all the available data from Gantenbrink and Petrie several times and found an interesting detail, which I will write about in the next post.

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On the other hand the shape of Ursa Minor is similar to that of Ursa Major and I should think ancient Egyptians noticed this

It is possible, but there is no evidence for this. Doubts are reinforced by the fact that four of the seven stars of Ursa Minor are fainter than 4th magnitude and only two (Polaris and Kochab) are equal in brightness to the stars of the Big Dipper, therefore the seven stars of Ursa Minor do not form an easily identifiable asterism, unlike the stars of the Big Dipper, which is the most remarkable object of the northern sky.

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But while we do not know the significance of Kochab in the stellar mythology it is interesting that in 2560 BC its moment of culmination (at altitude almost 40 degrees and in line with the Djedi estimate) coincides with the rising of Orion (at azimuth 118 degrees) on the eastern horizon. So it is conceivable that the selection of Kochab as a polar target acted as a marker to the birth of the real object of veneration at this date, Orion.

This is exactly what I am talking about: for the Egyptians, it was not Kochab itself that was important, but the rise of Sah, which is indicated by the culmination of Kochab. If one does not know this correlation, then the choice of the target for the QCN shaft is difficult to explain.
It is very good that we have come to a unanimous opinion on this issue, since there is one detail, which can also be useful in the issue of dating the Khufu pyramid.

If you examine in Stellarium (and I urge you to open Stellarium in order to see clearly what I will be talking about) the starry sky visible from the Giza plateau in 2560BC, you can see that at the moment of the culmination of Kochab, Orion's belt appears on the eastern horizon and the altitude of the lower of three belt's stars (Alnitak) is 0° 15'. Can we assume that the Orion's belt was visible to the observer under such conditions? No, the Alnitak's altitude is insufficient for observations, because firstly, to observe such a low located star, an ideally flat relief is needed, and secondly, the atmosphere significantly affects the stars near the horizon (Alnitak's brightness at this altitude was reduced by atmosphere from 1.85m to 5.65m and this can be seen in Stellarium).

It should also be remembered that speaking about the king's rebirth in the sky, we are talking about the heliacal rise of Sah (heliacal rise is the rise of asterism in the rays of the rising Sun, when asterism is first time seen before sunrise after a long period of invisibility), therefore the stars rise in the brightening sky, what also noticeably interferes to observation.

Summarizing what has been said, we can unequivocally conclude that under these conditions, at the moment of the culmination of Kochab in 2560 BC, the Orion's belt could not be fully visible. The connection between the culmination of Kochab and the rebirth of the king did not exist at that time.

If we move back in time, then because of the precession of the stars, the Orion's belt would have the greater altitude at the moment of Kochab's culmination, the more we recede into the past.

For clarity, I compiled a table of dates and the corresponding altitudes of Alnitak as the lowest of the three stars of the belt. Since the azimuth of the QCN shaft is unknown to me, we can take it equal to the average azimuth of the sides of the pyramid's core masonry (since the pyramid is not oriented exactly along the meridian, strictly speaking through the shaft one can "observe" not the culmination of Kochab but the trajectory point along the azimuth of -5' 30"; data in the third column).



Which of the dates thus can be considered correct so that the observer could see Kochab's culmination at the same time with the full visibility of heliacal rise of Sah?

In this article [articles.adsabs.harvard.edu], the author calculates the visibility conditions for the heliacal rise of Sirius, and we can use his data: “For those few researchers who consider the question (such as Aveni and Lockyer), Sirius is always taken to be visible to the horizon at heliacal rise. But this is easily disproven since the extinction (0.35 magnitudes per air mass) at the horizon (with the equivalent of roughly 40 air masses) will dim Sirius by 14 magnitudes. Even one degree above the horizon (with 26 air masses) and a good extinction (0.26 magnitudes per air mass), Sirius will still only be barely visible even under a dark night sky. In general, the altitude of best visibility will be a trade-off between sky brightness and extinction. For the particular case of Sirius, the altitude of Sirius at the heliacal rise will be around 6° while the altitude of the Sun will be around —5°.”

Even if we consider only 3° (and not 6°) as the necessary altitude of Alnitak as a condition for its visibility during a heliacal rise, then this corresponds to dates older than 2700BC, which is significantly older than historical expectations for the dates of Khufu's reign.

What you think about this?

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But of all the correlations you offer to support the earlier dating, the deciding factor is the carbon dating problem.

I agree. However, I believe that the correspondence of the graph on the azimuths of the pyramids with the graph on the precessional shift of the stars, which I found, is an equally strong argument.

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Are any other Egyptologists challenging the conventional dating on this basis?

Egyptologists are unaware in the intricacies of radiocarbon dating, and therefore cannot dispute anything on this basis.

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By the way, regarding your proposal for measuring the horizontal position of 'the Aq of Meskhetiu' it seems to need more work to create the contrivance you have proposed than using a simple plumb bob and letting gravity do the work.

But my hypothesis is supported by images and descriptions of the stretching of the cord ceremony, while the “simultaneous transit” method does not have any ancient documentary support and therefore completely hypothetical.

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As for Djoser's box the question arises - why did they choose different angles for the eyeholes?

This is a good question, although you may not consider it a serious one. And I have an answer to it.

If we consider the following photo of Djoser's serdab



then we can see that:
1) the left orifice is drilled less accurately than the right one;
2) the left orifice is located at the junction of the blocks (who could have decide of drilling at the junction of the blocks?), while the right one is in the center of the block, both vertically and horizontally;
3) the right orifice is displaced to the left relative to the N-S axis of the serdab, while the left orifice is even more to the left, closer to the north-east corner of the serdab (another photo).

These features suggest that, possible, initially only one right orifice was drilled in the serdab, and the left one was added later to implement the correspondence “two orifices for two eyes” by people who no longer understood the purpose of the orifice and therefore drilled the second one with different inclination.

Since the parameters of the orifices were accurately measured by Belmonte and they were named in his article as "left" and "right", I contacted him to clarify whether the left orifice is eastern one, and the right orifice is western one, or vice versa (that is, they are named relative to the S-N axis, which corresponds to the position of the surveyer outside the serdab or vice versa). Belmonte replied that he did not remember exactly, since the survey was long ago, but it is most likely that the orifices were named in relation to his position as an observer outside the serdab. This means that his "left" orifice is a sloppy eastern one, and his "right" orifice, which points to Mizar, is a western one, located in the center of the block.

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More seriously why are there no indications in pyramids between Djoser and Khufu of similar relations to the stars?

I'll think about this.

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Let's hope that soon the KC shaft level contradiction is cleared up and you get your radiocarbon results and some of these questions can be resolved.

I cannot get any radiocarbon results, since they already exist in the form of research by the group of Bonani and Haas, but other scientists cannot find the courage to correctly interpret these results. The lack of further research in this area regarding the Old Kingdom (a few samples examined by the Oxford radiocarbonists can be ignored due to their very small number) confirms that the results by Bonani and Haas are correct (otherwise they would have long been disproved by examining a representative set of samples) and no one wants to risk his scientific reputation re-examine this "dangerous" topic.

I apologize for the large post, it was impossible to explain in short words what I wanted to say.

Alex.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/03/2020 06:57PM by keeperzz.