“It has been pointed out, time without number, that the inscriptions indicate that by far the most important astronomical event in Egyptian history was the rising of Sirius…” Sir J. Norman Lockyer, The Dawn of Astronomy, London 1894, p. 197.
“The year and calendar were determined by the Nile and by the stars. New Year was in mid July, when the river began to rise for the inundation; this coinc
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Robert Bauval
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Ancient Egypt
At this time of year here at latitude 30 N (Giza) is when the heliacal risings of Orion and Sirius take place.
Orion has already begun to rise heliacally, and Sirius will rise heliacally on the 6th August, although it probably won't be visible from the Cairo region till 10th August due to light and air pollution.
I cycle at dawn from my home to the open desert beyond Nazlat al Salman
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Robert Bauval
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Ancient Egypt
I agree.
The topic is veering off in a dangerous and non-productive direction again.
Here's a couple of other quotes by experts who agree with the orthodox reality:
Dr Zahi Hawass: "Scholars first suggested that these air channels were for ventilation, but Badawy believed that the channels provided a passage for the king's spirit to ascend to the astral regions. Thi
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Dave L
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Ancient Egypt
That is quite correct. There was quite an interest by the Freemasons for these shafts.
Chris Tedder has done a very good research on this matter. See here:
But the Freemasons's used wrong data and, as I understand it, allocated the alignment of Sirius (a) to being perpendicular to the slope of the south face of the pyramid (b) being in alignment with the south shaft of the king
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Robert Bauval
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Ancient Egypt
Worth noting the Masons since Albert Pike associate Sirius with Anubis...
When Isis first found the body, where it had floated ashore near Byblos, a shrub of erica or tamarisk near it had, by the virtue of the body, shot up into a tree around it, and protected it; and hence our sprig of acacia. Isis was also aided in her search by Anubis, in the shape of a dog. He was Sirius or the Dog-S
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Morph
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Ancient Egypt
Hi Robert,
> There is little doubt that the Great Pyramid is,
> as all other pyramids in Egypt are, a funerary
> monument with a symbolic 'function': to act as the
> agency for the king's soul to join the stars
> through ritualistic means. The stars involved are
> the circumpolars in the north and Orion and
> Sirius/Canis Major in the south. The star-s
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Hermione
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Ancient Egypt
Hi Robert,
I agree with what you say, but its worth remembering the shafts were correctly interpreted as having a stellar/ritual aspect long before Badawy.
I have seen a drawing from a late 19th century masonic book iirc which shows the south 'King's' Chamber shaft pointing at Sirius. This was before the inclinations had been measured accurately, but after the shafts had bee
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Dave L
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Ancient Egypt
Dave L Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Hi Hermione.
>
> The flaw in your argument is that we know what the
> pyramid is and what it was for.
>
There is little doubt that the Great Pyramid is, as all other pyramids in Egypt are, a funerary monument with a symbolic 'function': to act as the agency for the king's soul to join th
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Robert Bauval
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Ancient Egypt
As Abydos was seen as marking the place of entrance into the Underworld, the journey facilitated by Anubis and Wapwawet, there wasn't any direct cultic association with Osiris until the XIIth Dynasty, but the journey toward the stellar place of Sah/Osiris of the spirit began at Abydos....probably relative in symbolic terms to Canis Major/Sirius (Anubis) and Minor(Wapwawet).
[130.9
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Morph
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Ancient Egypt
Three aspects of the disappearance of stars should be noted:
1. stars disappear when they set below the western horizon - this phenomena necessitated an explanation that was incorporated into AE funerary rituals.
2. stars had to 'travel' from the western horizon back to the eastern horizon - this phenomena necessitated explanations that were incorporated into AE afterlife belief
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Chris Tedder
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Ancient Egypt
Hi Ken,
I'll have to own up I suppose - I borrowed the phrase from Dr. I.R.S. Edwards who in his revised edition of 'The Pyramids of Egypt' (1985), he added information about the stellar theme suggested by Badawy in 1954: ".....Once every 24 hours the three stars in Orion's belt passed at culmination over the shaft. We learn from the Pyramid Texts that Orion and S
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Chris Tedder
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Ancient Egypt
>I now wonder if the 'dog' in Cocteau's statement about the Sphinx is in
>reference to Sirius, the Dog Star. If so, then the same idea also came to >Robert Temple (The Sirius Mystery).
Seeing as the Sphinx is undoubtedly a Lion and is therefore Solar, I think Cocteau was taking some poetic licence.
-Joe.
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Joe_S
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Ancient Egypt
Not to get too far off-track, but the Isis and Horus == Madonna and Jesus argument has a lot of problems. There are as many differences as there are similarities. The three wise men of Orion's belt preceeding Sirius is an interesting idea in that the Wise Men are thought by some to have been Zoroastrian priests (due to them being described as Magii from the East) and the star Sirius is impor
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Joe_S
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Ancient Egypt
Ken B Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Hi Joe,
>
> Thanks for tracking that down. Perhaps Cocteau
> was on one of his opium highs when he wrote that.
> It seems he clearly had a vision of the three Giza
> pyramids being the Orion belt stars decades before
> Robert.
> I don't have my copy of The Orion Mystery anymore,
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Robert Bauval
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Ancient Egypt
Bauval himself speaks of this association of Orion and the Three Wisemen.
THE EGYPTIAN STAR OF BETHLEHEM
Excerpt from the book Secret Chamber
© Robert G. Bauval
"Thus Isis and the child Horus were metamorphosed into the Madonna and child Jesus, and the star Sirius became the 'Star of the East' which the wise men saw and heralded the birth of Jesus. Much later, three wis
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Greg Reeder
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Ancient Egypt
RB: Badawy also wrote his article jointly with
> Virginia Trimble in 1964, where it is proposed
> that the southern shaft of the King Chamber in the
> Great Pyramid was directed to Orion's belt, which
> they identified as Sah (or part of Sah) and
> Osiris.
>
> SC: From having made the above quote, Robert, I
> take this to mean that you accept it as an
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Robert Bauval
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Ancient Egypt
Scott Creighton Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> RB: Badawy also wrote his article jointly with
> Virginia Trimble in 1964, where it is proposed
> that the southern shaft of the King Chamber in the
> Great Pyramid was directed to Orion's belt, which
> they identified as Sah (or part of Sah) and
> Osiris.
>
> SC: From having ma
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Robert Bauval
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Ancient Egypt
Sepdet and Sah are paired. If you want to build a case for Alpha Bootis to be Sah you will need to show how this star is paired with Sirius. Good luck!
Yes the two (Sah and Sopdet) will ever rise or fall together Ken, bit i don't agree that Sah must be paired with Sirius. On the Denderah zodiac it is the constellation Virgo that is represented by Isis, and i think it is Spica th
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Morph
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Ancient Egypt
RB: Badawy also wrote his article jointly with Virginia Trimble in 1964, where it is proposed that the southern shaft of the King Chamber in the Great Pyramid was directed to Orion's belt, which they identified as Sah (or part of Sah) and Osiris.
SC: From having made the above quote, Robert, I take this to mean that you accept it as an argument from 'authority'?
Now, let me q
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Scott Creighton
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Ancient Egypt
Hi,
Sepdet and Sah are paired. If you want to build a case for Alpha Bootis to be Sah you will need to show how this star is paired with Sirius. Good luck!
Ken
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Ken B
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Ancient Egypt
RB: The 'toe star'/single star idea by Legon is a red herring and quite erroneous. I do not know of any Egyptologist or archaeoastronomer who support the 'Sah'/single star. It is obvious that 'Sah' contains several stars and was thought of as a 'striding man'; the Decans lists show this very well, as Otto Neugebauer and Richard Parker demonstrated long ago.
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Scott Creighton
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Ancient Egypt
Hi Morph,
about,
>how obvious is all this that it
>is Orion...???...you have Ursa Major
>followed by Sah then Sopdet. In natural
>terms the constellations that follow
>Ursa Major are Arcturus and Virgo.
"All this" is imo not about the modern constellation of Orion. The imagery shows the sky goddess Nut holding up the sky sign with text indicating 'one s
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Ken B
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Ancient Egypt
Hi,
In the context of this topic, which presumably deals with Orion, Osiris, the sky god Sah and directional orientation, I would like to point out evidence from 1st Intermediate Period iconography and text*.
To begin, please go here, to see and read what I think could shed some light on this matter. This, as indicated, is one of the coffin lids of the Assyut (or whichever spelling you pre
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Ken B
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Ancient Egypt
"The most enduring of the mythic cycles was that of Osiris, the god of immortality. The origins of Osiris are obscure, and the meaning of his name uncertain, but he was probably known at an early period, although the first mention of his name occurs only in the fifth dynasty. His origins was probably the city of Djedu (Busiris) in the Nile Delta, but because of his association with the dead
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Robert Bauval
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Ancient Egypt
There does appear to be something wrong, i can see how A1 at 21* would correspond to Dubhe, but that's not the angle on the diagram, which shows 31~36* indicated as Dubhe, Sirius is about right as C1 at 125*. but that doesn't correspond with what i see on the second linked diagram i posted, and i'm not sure which alignements there correspond to the ones on the diagram Robert presen
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Morph
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Ancient Egypt
There seems to be something wrong with the grid on their diagram because their written data is as follows :
"The six megalithic alignments extend across the sediments of the Playa and contain a total of 24 megaliths or megalithic scatters. Like the spokes on a wheel each alignment radiates outward from the complex structure A (Figure 16.17 and Table 1). The distant horizon is composed of
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Graham Chase
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Ancient Egypt
I took a look at those positions using Skyglobe and i get Dubhe at 21* NE relevant date and Lat/Long, i get the Belt Stars of Orion at between 118 to 120*, and Sirius at 126*
So the suggestion of Dubhe seems way out to me, i do get Arcturus rising at 31* (which had shifted to 36* at time of Giza), Orions belt is also wrong for the given date.
Morph.
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Morph
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Ancient Egypt
Hi Dave L
A new board? Where?...
Best
RB
PS: BTW, my next book 'Sirius Tising', much involves the Nabta Playa.
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Robert Bauval
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Ancient Egypt
“Ancient remains only recently discovered in the Sahara Desert 100 km (or 60 miles) west of Abu Simbel in southern Egypt may represent the earliest existing evidence for religious structures in Africa. They may also provide a possible starting point for the evolution of what would become, in time, the temples of Egypt.”
Richard H. Wilkinson, The Complete Temples of Ancient Egypt, Thames and
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Robert Bauval
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Ancient Egypt