Alex to Kanga: “Do you have a logical explanation for why the ancient Egyptians could create shafts in which only the outer parts are directed towards stellar targets (while other parts of the shafts have other angles)? Why exactly the outer parts, and not, for example, the inner parts or the whole shafts?”


Supposing you are watering the garden with a hosepipe. Would you arrange the whole length of the hosepipe in a straight line with whatever part of the garden you want to water? - I don’t think so. You just pick up the nozzle at the end of the hosepipe and point it at the ‘target’ - all that matters is that you accurately point the nozzle - whatever bends and curves the hosepipe makes behind you is irrelevant.

The shafts are thought by some to be model passageways for the ‘spirit’ of the King to ascend to significant areas of the sky. The architect had to make sure that as the ‘spirit’ of the king exits his pyramid, he would see his destination and head in the right direction. Thats why the angle of incline for the final section is crucial, which means we can use it to determine a possible date for the design.

Gatenbrink: “The "Mankiller" tunnel is accessible from the outside of the Pyramid, so we could manually measure the angle of shaft inclination through this section. The average angle is 31.20°, determined by 5 measurements made over a length of 11 m.”

The top of the shaft is straight and more or less follows the north/south axis of the pyramid which is slightly skewed 2….4 arc minutes west of north. This slight deviation from true north has negligible affect on the observed altitude of Thuban and also the date which is c. 2588 BC.

Petrie has 31.55 degs for the last 9.5m, which gives a date of c. 2526 BC.

According to Gantenbrink, the upper southern shaft has an average angle of incline for the final 42m of 45 degs, which means an alignment to the 3-star asterism in Orion was c. 2555 BC.

Chris