Am I right in thinking that more stone was required to build King Sneferu's twin pyramids at Dahshur than for the pyramids or pyramid of any other ruler?
There has been an enormous amount of speculation on the Great Pyramid ever since Piazzi claimed that the alignment to true north was as little as 5 arc minutes in error, and that the pyramid is less than 2 arc miuntes from exactly 30 deg
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Mark Heaton
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Ancient Egypt
King Sneferu ordered two huge pyramids at Dahshur. This project required most of the available resources of Egypt, and the builders took great care to align these pyramids to true north.
It is the absence of a cultural context to explain this that allows us to advance the most likely cultural context that would explain this!
The distance between these pyramids is conspicuous, as noted prev
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Mark Heaton
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Ancient Egypt
Thanks Greg,
From the article :
"However, we should also bear in mind the possibility that the ceremonies linked to the Hebsed and the foundation rituals associated with its celebration may have also been determined by the lunar calendar."
This is possible because of the antiquity of the event from before the dynastic period.
But it also mentions that the lunar calendar start
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GChase
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Ancient Egypt
One view (your simple theory) does not preclude another (my complex theory), especially when both are complementary.
The architect presents the same picture again and again in different ways.
The internal virtual mechanism of the Upper Chambers of the pyramid may be likened to the cogs of a modern clock, and we should search for the simple picture of the hands on the face of clock.
Your
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Mark Heaton
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Ancient Egypt
That sounds like a very complicated way to track the days and years !
I mentioned earlier that I agree that the QC was about keeping time, or Maat if you like, and coordinating the calendars.
I offer a more intuitive solution.
The best way to observe the stellar years at the time of the GP was to watch the rotations of the circumpolar stars.
In particular the bright star Kocab at culmi
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GChase
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Ancient Egypt
Mark Heaton Wrote:
The heliacal
> rising of Sirius tracked the solar year. This
> event shifted at the rate of one Egyptian week of
> 10 days every 40 years, from which we can
> calculate that AE surely contemplated a cycle of
> 1,460 years for Sirius to complete a cycle of 365
> days.
>
> Mark
They only contemplated the cycle ?
Not so long a
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Geotio
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Ancient Egypt
In my opinion the Grand Gallery can be thought of as a ladder, but that ladder is not the stairway to heaven. I was influenced by the drawing of the tomb on page 31 of 'The Pyramids' as mentioned previously, not as a conclusion, but as a tentative model.
The King's Chamber may be regarded as the theatre of translation in which a ceremony, perhaps like the opening of the mouth, w
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Mark Heaton
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Ancient Egypt
I have been working on this concept for many years.
The king's ka statue was probably hidden at the end of a secret passage under the floor of the Grand Gallery, so the same may apply to the king's khat.
The geometric relationships unify the system of upper chambers, and predict chambers above and below the King's Chamber.
It is possible to invent many mathematical theorie
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Mark Heaton
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Ancient Egypt
Mark Heaton Wrote:
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> I can't imagine anything much simpler than a claim
> that the height of the Great Pyramid, at 280 royal
> cubits, represented 280 years, and that 1,460
> royal cubits represented 1,460 years at a level
> that coincides with a peculiar structural anomaly
> in the Grand Gallery.
It is a si
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Geotio
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Ancient Egypt
I expect that this forum will be interested in debating your hypothesis.
Good reasons must, of force, give way to better, so I can't say that my theory is better than yours, but it may be that our theories are not mutually exclusive.
I once designed an extension with a Niche in the end wall, and the Niche was offset from the peak of the room. The peaked ceiling was finished in cedar, a
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Mark Heaton
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Ancient Egypt
I can't imagine anything much simpler than a claim that the height of the Great Pyramid, at 280 royal cubits, represented 280 years, and that 1,460 royal cubits represented 1,460 years at a level that coincides with a peculiar structural anomaly in the Grand Gallery.
A solar cycle of 1,460 years was apparent independent of the stars because the Egyptian calendar year of 365 days had no le
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Mark Heaton
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Ancient Egypt
Mark Heaton Wrote:
If true, then
> bang goes your theory, because the sons could
> never be as great as their father, and acknowledge
> this in their titles.
"If true " . What theory would that be ?
The concept of Latitude in AE , the exaggerated claims for AE astronomy, the 309 month /25 year calendar dates to no earlier than 375 BC , accurate cardinal alignments a
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Geotio
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Ancient Egypt
On a previous post you mentioned that the mathematics of ratios was very simple with reference to Djedfre. Make your mind up.
Forty solar years was seen as forty calendar years and one Egyptian week of 10 days. It was obvious that the solar year was longer than the calendar year by one day every four years.
Sirius was a marker of the solar year, and shifted slowly in relation to the calenda
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Mark Heaton
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Ancient Egypt
“There is no reason to consider that years or days were represented at all , particularly 280 years , when what it represented was the number of days when Sirius was invisible in a period of 1460 years .”
Not only is the particular cubit / time period association tortuous and incredibly unlikely there are no other examples in the culture or period .
What matters in relation to metrologi
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Geotio
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Ancient Egypt
Both components are 'represented':
280 years in the height
1,460 years at the symbolic level
I would not have suggested that the height was symbolic had I not found the symbolic level.
The Grand Gallery was built in an extremely secure part of the pyramid, and was never intended to be seen. There was no intention to 'represent' a level to anyone but Khufu in his after
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Mark Heaton
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Ancient Egypt
Mark Heaton Wrote:
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> It would be unusual and difficult to represent 280
> years as 102,200 days.
>
> The period of 280 years is an obvious choice
> because it can be represented as 280 royal
> cubits .
There is no reason to consider that years or days were represented at all , particularly 280 years , when wh
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Geotio
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Ancient Egypt
Its not a good idea to use the word tautological in relation to pseudo science just in case you have missed the point.
A tautomer is a chemical isomer that can easily change from one form into another. Its important to appreciate that the elemental composition is exactly the same, but that there is a difference in functional groups which affect the chemical properties.
The simple arithmeti
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Mark Heaton
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Ancient Egypt
I would agree with you to some extent.
I am reading more widely than previous, and sometimes a question crops up that does not fit under the topic of Great Pyramid, but the question had occurred to me because of the Great Pyramid, so its not surprising that we end up discussing the Great Pyramid.
I would, however, have been content if the subject of the Great Pyramid had not surfaced, so it
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Mark Heaton
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Ancient Egypt
Mark Heaton Wrote:
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> This is, of course, a digression from 'ergo height
> of Great Pyramid'. You always seem to find a track
> away from the main point.
Have a look at responses to errors and problems they can only occur after you post and are thus “on track” , if you evade or ignore problems then you might also
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Geotio
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Ancient Egypt
Awesome ingenuity, but still very hard work, and that's why we don't find a replica of Khufu's sarcophagus in any museum.
I think I am right in saying that I saw a replica of a Coptic Church inside the Louvre. If any museum could build a replica of the King's Chamber of the Great Pyramid, complete with sarcophagus, then it would be a popular visitor attraction, especially i
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Mark Heaton
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Ancient Egypt
This is, of course, a digression from 'ergo height of Great Pyramid'. You always seem to find a track away from the main point.
'Heliacal' is an adjective meaning coincident with that of the sun, or as nearly as could be observed, so for simplicity of language I have drawn attention to the approximate time of day. If you are arguing that Sirius can be observed just after d
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Mark Heaton
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Ancient Egypt
Mark Heaton Wrote:
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> The first annual appearance of Sirius marked the
> solar year as the brightest star in the night sky.
And the helical rising of a star or planet ,in this case ,Sirius , is not an indication of the sun about to rise as you had suggested .
> BTW there were 309 lunar months in 25 calendar
> years in t
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Geotio
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Ancient Egypt
The first annual appearance of Sirius marked the solar year as the brightest star in the night sky. Sirius is not affected by precession in the same way as other stars.
BTW there were 309 lunar months in 25 calendar years in the Pyramid Age, and there is absolutely no reason why AE could not have counted 309 lunar months in 25 calendar years. This would not have required any tools, just the a
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Mark Heaton
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Ancient Egypt
Mark Heaton Wrote:
The first annual
> appearance of Sirius just before dawn marked the
> fact that the sun was about to rise above the
> horizon. That's why its called the heliacal rising
> of Sirius.
The Helical rising of a star or planet is not an indication of the sun about to rise , the indication of the rising sun is something else entirely , and experienced every
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Geotio
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Ancient Egypt
I agree with Petrie that the original intended base-side length was 440 royal cubits, and that the design height was 280 royal cubits. Cole was satisfied that Petrie had determined the size and shape of the Great Pyramid correctly.
I have stressed many times that Sirius was merely a marker of the solar year. The first annual appearance of Sirius just before dawn marked the fact that the sun wa
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Mark Heaton
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Ancient Egypt
So let's gather together the facts that we know from our discussion:
1. The number seventy was more important than the number forty in AE.
2. The height of a pyramid was considered by the architect, not just the slope and the base side-length.
(This was required to calculate the volume of the pyramid, and is surely the dimension that is of interest to most when contemplating a very t
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Mark Heaton
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Ancient Egypt
Prof. Ikram refers to Herodotus and Egyptian sources. It is 70 days in Herodotus in the section I found.
According to Ikram on page 57 'The length of time that mummification took seems to have been fairly standard throughout Egyptian history.
The 'forty days' for embalming in Genesis is conspicuous because of so many other periods of forty days in the Bible, but it may not be
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Mark Heaton
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Ancient Egypt
On further reflection the concept of a Sothic 'week' of forty years makes sense.
There were 36 1/2 weeks of 10 days in the Egyptian calendar year of 365 days.
So we would expect 36 1/2 'weeks' in the Sothic Year of 1,460 solar years.
On this basis the Sothic 'week' was forty solar years.
It is rather elegant that the hypothetical Sothic 'week' i
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Mark Heaton
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Ancient Egypt
lander Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Sam Wrote:
>
> > ------------------------------
> >
> > Yes, just as most others stand facing
> sunrise. The
> > suns apparent motion being east to west. You
> are
> > facing the "source". Where all the power
> > originates.
>
>
> How is this
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Sam
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Ancient Egypt
KHAFRE'S MYSTERIOUS STRUCTURE EXPLAINED
At Giza there is a massive structure which sat symmetrically behind his pyramid on the ridge. Petrie called them galleries and thought at that time they might be workmen's barracks. They were equally spaced and very precise.
Some years ago I guessed they might be some sort of scale which I assumed were for sighting when building the pyramid
by
GChase
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Ancient Egypt