Mark Heaton Wrote:
> In my opinion the concept was of the sun rising as
> a sphere from primordial earth, so the Great
> Pyramid represented that sphere, because Khufu
> envisaged an after-life with the sun-god.

I very much like this comment.

All the maths go straight over my head so I cannot make any worthwhile comment on that aspect, however, I do have a very small amount of knowledge of the AE religion, and seeing all the maths end up as, essentially, the solar disk, makes sense. However, I can only mostly come at this from an 18th Dynasty perspective, and so am used to shouts and screams about not using anything from about one thousand years after G1 to make any explanation about it at all.

The fact of the king becoming one with Ra after death is not in doubt, though the way this is visually represented does not become evident until the 18th Dynasty and the Amduat. Yet even here, and in other books such as the "Book of Gates" the joining of Ra with Osiris, and the king, all previous kings, are seen as being a part of Ra, is rather vague, except in one case, though it still leaves much to the imagination. What I am refering to is the "resurection scene" on Tutankhamun's second shrine, part of the "Enigmatic Books", or "Books of the Solar-Osirian Unity", take your pick. Here we see a depiction of the king as Osiris, his head and feet are encircled by an ouroboros, and in his belly is a solar disc containing the ba of Ra, and from the disc extends a line pointing up at about a 50 degree angle.

The two ourobori and any reference to Osiris can be ignored because this is the first representation of an ourobous in AE, and Osiris is not attested to in the 4th Dynasty. Ra however did exist. What strikes me in this scene is the way he is within a solar disc, and that despite the Osirian iconography, the dead king is also here. So, in this rare depiction of the crucial moment of the resurection of Ra and the king, we have a solar disc. The physical point at which this event occurs, is, according to the Amduat, at Rosetau, and this can be seen as Giza. Standing at Giza you are halfway from horizon to horizon, and, in underworld terms, at midnight, the time of resurrection by the hours of the Amduat. The curiosity, not given a solid reason, is the line extending up from the solar disc. It does in fact level out and passes over a number of gods whose attributes are all those of the sun and light, their names for example are, "Shining One" and "One of the Beaming". They have been described as using the line as a rope to pull Ra out of a "womb", but they have their arms raised in obvious adoration, not pulling.

So, an enigmatic description made about a thousand years after G1 was built, and with not a single precedent over that period of time, except that we do not have the coffin of a single king dating to before the 18th Dynasty, sarcophagi, yes, but the "road map" was always on the coffin or papyrus rolls before the 18th Dynasty.

To me, and I'm trying not to join up to many dots, we have in G1 a point that co-incides with the point and time of ressurection, and may represent a solar disc, as well as beams of light and a "stairway to heaven". Then, and I'm sure this is a red herring, a line, or shaft of light in reality, coming out of the solar disc at the heart of resurection as depicted on a shrine of Tutankhamun, and we have shafts coming from the two chambers in G1. There is of course a diffenrence between the multiple shafts in G1 and the single shaft on the shrine, but who knows, IF there is a connection, the theology would have changed over a thousand year, not least the introduction of Osiris.