In PART 7, I wrote that the Sun temples of the fifth dynasty were used in Sed Festivals within the lifetime of the king - not in the afterlife, in spite of the temples being built on the west bank of the Nile. This is evidenced by the extensive Sed Festival scenes of Nuiserre’s sun temple.

Also note that one sun temple was built on top of a previous one (which was no longer needed after the death of a king. !).

As such, the sun temples are not really part of the topic of this article.

However, writers often claim that their purpose is ‘unknown’. I thought Robert Bauval’s ideas on the subject were interesting.

The sun temples with their obelisks at Abu Gorab, and at Iunu, both represented the sun itself.

He pointed out that the angle of the line from Iunu (On, Heliopolis) was 23.5 degrees. This was exactly the angle on the ground of the ecliptic path of the sun from where it rose on the eastern horizon.

And he noticed that if we regarded Iunu to be on the horizon, the sun would cross an angular distance of 90 degrees to be over the sun temple at Abu Gorab, i.e. a quarter of the cycle.

So, if we imagine that the Iunu obelisk represented the sun at the horizon on the summer solstice (9 th July, 2400BC, 4.50 am), then the obelisk at Abu Gorab represented the rising point of the sun at the equinox, i.e. due east, 90 (=1/4 cycle) days earlier (10th April 2400BC 6.00 am).

In travelling from the sun temple at Abu Gorab to the sun temple of Iunu, the king would have mimicked the rising point of the sun going from the equinox due east to the summer solstice at 28 degrees north of east.

On the way he would have crossed the Nile which mimicked crossing the Milky Way via the rising points.

The 90 days approximated to the period that Orion (representing Osiris) and Sirius, disappeared from the night sky. Sirius was ‘reborn’ at dawn at the summer solstice on the eastern horizon.

The journey of the king would thus be part of his rebirth ritual in his lifetime Sed Festival.