Hi Graham,
Can I get diagram 4 too?
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
Hi Graham,
Inspecting Dorner's Fig.1 we see the corner stones each labelled as 1 cubit thick. This gives a scale to the drawing, and the pavement (4 and 5) looks to be just over a cubit thick. It seems the casing blocks extended down to rest on a layer of foundation blocks, with further blocks below at the corners. The pavement/socle was then built up around the pyramid, in the manner of so
by
robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
Hi Alex,
Dorner's drawing seems to be basically the same as Petrie. A pity he doesn't give a simple cross section. I've tried to draw such -
Please alert me if I have made any mistakes. I can see no indication of an 'inner pyramid', whatever that is.
Robin
by
robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
Hi Graham,
Yes I remain very confused about the base level of the Bent. Here once again is Petrie's picture of the situation (which I have redrawn according to my understanding). You might wish to edit this -
You write - "Even Dorner accepts that the bent pyramid intended width was 360 cubits. The 362c is the width he measured at the base of the casing stones. This he shows as
by
robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
A couple of years ago there was a discussion on this site about the Dashur pyramids and their base sizes. The bulk of egyptological references quote values around 0.523 to 0.525 metres for the length of the royal cubit, but Petrie decided that the Bent measured 360 cubits (at the level of the pavement) implying a cubit of 0.526 metres, which is outside the accepted range. Petrie's measure of
by
robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
Hi Alex,
I read your explanation and re-read your paper more carefully, and realised that in my clumsy way I was actually saying the same thing. Mea culpa. In your original paper you write - "Since the azimuths of the pyramids of the 4th dynasty (except the pyramid of Djedefre) exhibit a precessional dependence, all these pyramids are clearly oriented to the same star, which means in thei
by
robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
Hi Alex,
I'm afraid I did not understand your answer - "Four approximating lines which clearly exhibit procession dependence are strong evidence that at least four different stellar targets were used (see graph). Not too many variables if we consider only 7 stars of the Meskhetiu astermism, which mentioned in texts accompanying orientation ritual as target of king's observations
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
keeperzz Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> QuoteIf the changes in orientation of pyramids
> reflects precessional drift then this implies that
> the builders worked with a particular set of star
> targets in the north. But these stars cannot be
> identified because of the serious question of
> carbon dating that now emerges. Until this probl
by
robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
If the changes in orientation of pyramids reflects precessional drift then this implies that the builders worked with a particular set of star targets in the north. But these stars cannot be identified because of the serious question of carbon dating that now emerges. Until this problem is resolved we are left with speculation.
Much of this discussion has focussed on the question of the Khufu
by
robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
Hi Alex
Your comment that Mizar could be connected with Djoser's domain name reminded me of this proposition -
The Celestial River: Identifying the Ancient Egyptian Constellations. Alessandro Berio
- where the author proposes that nome names derive from constellation positions at the times of important festivals. You would be better placed to assess this proposition. It is intere
by
robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
Hi Alex
You wrote - "do you have any idea for what reason the Egyptians, who could make straight southern shafts (which have no obstacles on their way), nevertheless allowed significant fluctuations of the angle of inclination in some places?"
I suppose the meanderings near the chambers simply reflect construction difficulties. As for variations of angle it has been suggested th
by
robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
Hi Alexander
Some years back I came across a paper you had written about redating the pyramids and introduced it on this forum -
- unfortunately the idea was not well received and the discussion dissolved in rancour. Further enquiries made it clear that indeed most scholars reject radiocarbon dates because of the 'old wood problem', and it woulld appear that the the general c
by
robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
Hi Jim
You wrote - "I am pretty sure there is a typo in your earlier post about the exit heights of the KC shafts with over 100 inch difference where the 2 is supposed to be a 1. Petrie's diagram gives the north shaft at the bottom of 103 and the south shaft at the top of 103, and Petrie gives 25 inches for the height of course 103, so should be a bit less than 25 inches difference b
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
Hi Chris
To post pictures I now use 'Freeimage.host'. To make diagrams, though I am much happier using pencil and paint, I use photoshop and an older version of Turbocad. This last allegedly imports Autocad files, although a quick Google search reveals many users of the latest versions of Turbocad have various difficulties doing this, (but of course programs and operating systems are
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
Hi Chris
Many years back I printed out Gantenbrink's sectional diagrams of the shafts to find their general trending. The KC shaft axes appeared to converge at a point 22c horizontally from pyramid centre and 77 cubits above pyramid base, seemingly confirming Gantenbrink's shaft layout scheme (the intersection of shaft line and pyramid side being 154 cubits above base in this case) -
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
Byrd says - "Orion doesn't rise in the same position in the night sky throughout the year... just as the sun doesn't rise in the same place throughout the year". I wonder what proportion of participants on this forum would agree with this?
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
Thanks for the figures Chris. As for the diagram I was trying to show the rising of Orion at the same time as norther starshaft candidate stars were in vertical alignment in the north. I noted that egyptians depicted stars as 5-pointed and speculated that they were familiar with the pentagon and Phi ratio. The azimuth of Orion's rising appeared to echo this. It appears I was mistaken.
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
You state that the Emhotep value for QCN "was an average slope for the whole of the shaft, including the west-pointing portion". This is not very helpful - to reach the intended line of the shafts from the chamber walls the short sections of the westward-bending part vary all over the place, obviously to circumvent the Gallery. (IVth dynasty egyptians were remarkably 'orthogonal
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
Thank you Chris for this information. Until I can get an astronomy program up and running, would you also give the altitudes of Sirius and Kochab in 2560 BC ?
I have been supportive of the OCT for many years, largely because the Khufu shafts more or less point to meaningful stellar targets. I suppose I'm a bit like Noel Coward who, on being asked how to make a Martini, poured gin in a gl
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
I managed to find another image hosting site. Here is the plan of the passages -
In your previous post you stated - " The Project Djedi team released the results on their website at emhotep dot net back in 2011. They also released a paper in a journal whose name I can't remember at the moment". So I spent a few hours on the net. Hawass' site popped up, where he lays out
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
Hi Kanga
You seem to be sympathetic to the idea that Khufu was designed geometrically and that shaft angles were adusted to target stars which, at this epoch, serendipitiously had altitudes evoking the pyramid's geometry - as a way of linking the earth to stellar mythology I suppose.
Butler states that "the descending passages in the Meydum Pyramid, Bent Pyramid, Bent subsidiary
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
In his diagrams Petrie shows the floors of KC south shaft intersecting the casing just below the top of course 103, and KC north intersecting at the top of course 102. In the text he gives the height of the exits as 3248.4" and 3119.1" above pavement. (somewhere I read that Goyon gives different figures 3157" and 3127"). Gantenbrink states on his website - "As we verified
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
Well this is my present take, but glad to be corrected :-)
When the OCT was first proposed (indubitably discovered by Bauval, whatever the sequence of events that led him to this) it generated much interest, even amongst some egyptologists. Since then little has emerged to back it up, and scholars like Belmonte and Magli have shown that astronomically significant alignments, for example the or
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
I came across this paper discussing the dimensions of Hemiunu's tomb -
continued here -
- note that the author diverges into a discussion of the thick courses of Khufu casing.
I didn't get much from these articles. But it is interesting to note that Hemiunu's tomb is much larger than the regular mastabas of the Western Cemetery, most of which are said to date to the 5
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
Yes. The diagram shows that the correlation between the belt stars and pyramid centres is not in fact exact.
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
Fair enough. I skimmed the express article very quickly and got the impression that Bauval was involved with some kind of 'energy' theory, when that was in fact another author. He has indeed related many times his experiences in the early 80's including his eureka moment gazing at the belt stars (rather than a photo) and suddenly noticing the offset. Perhaps as you speculate Bauval
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
I find Bauval's account of how he came across the overhead photo of Giza in the Egyptian Museum rather confusing. Many years ago I was working as a part time illustrator and agreed to provide drawings for 'The Orion Mystery' and later 'Finger prints of the Gods' by Mr Hancock (a decision I now greatly regret). I remember that in 1979 I travelled to the Egyptian museum and
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
I managed to download the article from the first result in this google search ('gearslutz') -
It would seem that the authors have not actually made measurements at Giza, instead working from a mathematical model. And their aim is to study nanoparticles, not to suggest that the builders were manipulating electromagnetic fields - though I notice the fringe are all over it.
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
Here is the abstract -
Pretty difficult to form an opinion based on the abstract but there is some emphasis on the 'accumulation' of energy in the 'substrate' of the pyramid, and one wonders if this the case with other pyramids.
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
Yes indeed. I remember some years ago when you drew attention to the Khufu/Menkaure entrance level relation. You in turn might remember the diagram I presented as part of the ensuing discussion -
Pyramids do show evidence of modifications and it has been suggested that Khafre and Menkaure were originally planned to be smaller. This poses a problem to those like myself who propose that the
by
robin cook
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Ancient Egypt