Hi Pistol,
In his presentation of the Giza Scanning Survey -
- Kawae discusses the famous 'notch' located in the northeast arris, and notes that the masonry underlying the surface blocks (or 'fill' of the pyramid) is composed of coarse and unlevelled blocks, a striking contrast to Houdin's elegant 'turning chambers' at each corner of his internal spira
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
Interesting findings on the composition, variety, and placing of Khufu core blocks -
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
Hi Sam,
I read it here -
I'm looking forward to her 'Ancient Egyptian Sky Lore' to arrive. Meanwhile I stumble upon other unorthodox propositions like this -
Alessandro Berio - 'The Celestial River: Identifying the Ancient Egyptian Constellations'.
He writes -
'This paper proposes that a new opportunity has arisen for deciphering the ancient Egy
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
To repeat my question, how did the system work? One imagines a method for increasing mechanical advantage, for example wrapping the ropes around the poles with a hauling team walking downhill, or perhaps a stepwise system involving both haulage and levers. Since this ramp is from the time of Khufu does this pole and step method provide new insights into how Khufu was built?
(How thick were these
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
Fascinating. I wonder how the pole/step system worked?
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
My understanding of the situation is this - The mean axis of the E and W sides of Khufu is 3' west of true north, the axis of the passage system is similar, and presumably the builders were confident that they had with precision identified the naval of the heavens. Meanwhile the risings of heavenly bodies along the eastern horizon, according to Conman, determined the calendar and the rituals
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
I went to download 'Ancient Egyptian Sky Lore: Rethinking the Conventional Wisdom' but Academia apparently wants to share my contact list (?). So I read 'The Egyptian Origins of Planetary Hypsomata'. (Are any scholarly reviews of this paper available?)
I'm no expert but I found Joanne Conman's thesis convincing - that the AE defined their calendar from the timing
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
Regarding the similar orientation of the Kentkawes complex and the Wall of the crow, Lehner explains this as a reflection of the general trend of the wadi that cuts across the plateau -
- he gives the orientation of the Wall of the crow as 5.5° to 6° from east.
He writes - " The central canal basin shares the counterclockwise orientation of the Wall of the Crow, which is shared by
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
Hi Waggy,
I'll be long dead when the model becomes available :-( But your excellent work goes far to compensate for this).
Whereas the south wadi might well have exercised a constraint on orientation one may still ask why Khentkawes was not oriented to the cardinal points? And it does seem that the Wall of the Crow follows this orientation. But what are the azimuths of these features?
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
If I remember correctly, about 30 years ago Lehner commented that Hetepheres aligns with the east side of Khufu. (What are the coordinates of the former?). But what of its 'skewed' orientation - was this simply to fit the terrain or is there some other reason?
At any rate, I notice that this orientation is the same as the Wall of the Crow -
The reconstructed dimensions of Heteph
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
Re : numerical proportions in Egyptian architecture and iconography. Miatello has some interesting things to say in his paper on the Grand Gallery* -
Elsewhere I have come across passing remarks mentioning numerical groupings in texts, but I know of no comprehensive work dealing with the subject. Certainly this potential key to understanding should not be ignored.
*I am not quite clear
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
72 cubits is the module (as 3 X 24 and 33 + 39) of the layout of the upper passages, whose point of origin is the intersection of upper and lower floorlines. Passage junctions were determined by the application of a template derived from the pyramid proportion 14/11 and the double square (11-14-14, etc). The design proceeds in a logical way and gives the locations of many features. So can we now
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
Kanga Wrote:
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> The GG has whole cubit run and rise values, so the
> seked is fairly easy to calculate for a competent
> mathematician.
No it doesn't. The theoretical run (according to the 11 : 14 + 14 dissection of the quantity 280) is 78.974 cubits. The gallery as built is somewhat less than this around 78.91. But it
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
Coincidental or not, Phi rectangles (or more correctly, rectangles with Fibonacci proportions) are displayed in the pyramid layout. First, Chris Tedder described two such rectangles linking pyramid centres -
In addition an argument for Fibonacci proportions in the 'limestone based layout' can be made -
- admittedly the east/west relations require Butler's estimate of
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
The origins of the map that the GPMP distributed remain obscure. Belatedly it was realised that this map is in error. For the time being we rely on the only published survey, by Petrie.
The GPMP is devoted to painstaking archaeology and it is likely to be a long time before definitive survey results are available for Khafre interior and Menkaure. However, where Petrie's results have been
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
L Cooper Wrote:
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> I am, of course, partial to my own squaring the
> circle theory on the subject - which makes use of
> the 11/14 and 8/9 ratios in creating the central
> diagrammatic construction for each pyramid. I
> believe that other considerations were then
> addressed within this over-arching scheme - such
&g
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
L Cooper Wrote:
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> It seems pretty clear that the length of the royal
> cubit was not necessarily considered to be an
> absolute when it came to building design and
> construction. There were a number of other design
> imperatives at play in any given construction, all
> of which needed to be incorporated. It was no
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
Lehner commented that Khufu built on the edge of the plateau to 'make room' for his successors. Lightbody, citing Legon, argued for a Pi relation in the circuit of the rectangle defined by the NE corner of Khufu and the SW corner of Menkaure. This measures approximately root three to root two (X 1000 cubits).
Legon's analyses are more rigorous and explain the geometric positioni
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
It is interesting to note that Khufu and Khafre's coffers may, without great injury to the survey data, be described in terms of simple proportion.
Khufu -
Khafre -
Was there some system to coffer design? I don't know of any study of coffer proportions in the OK, but there are certainly many candidates, like this red granite sarcophagus for a Giza prince -
Meanwh
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
It has been noticed that the Bent and Red heights are about the same and the notion that the two pyramids were designed together has been around for some time, most recently picked up by Monnier. My suggested solution is this (profile above, plan below) -
With reference to earlier posts, beginning from the enclosure wall of side 560, the base of the Bent is derived as 362, and the Red base
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
Petrie's figure for the base is sensibly the same as Dorner's larger base - yielding 362 for a cubit in the normal range (the Khufu cubit works well). So both surveyors apparently measured the same prominent feature, which Petrie at least defines as 'the base'. And his other measures (eg. 90 to the bend) relate to this. From which of his levels does Dorner give the height of t
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
So to summarise, Dorner establishes two base levels - one the base of some inner construction, and the one important here, the top of the pavement? For this latter Dorner gives a figure near to 362. But Petrie's arrangement also gives 362 for the base (if a cubit in the normal range is employed), so it would seem that Petrie and Dorner both measured the same thing. If this was not the top of
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
I traced Petrie's sketch as basis for discussion -
Top is pavement level. Below this the edge of a corner casing stone which rests on a corner foundation block. (There would have been four of these sunk to different depths, as at Khufu - and probably further foundation blocks below, as Waggy writes). (I think there can be some confusion here with some referring to this platform as
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
Hi Graham,
Perhaps if you could offer a drawing of the situation I might more easily understand what you are getting at. You wrote - "The drawing you showed is labelled 'Section of Corner of Pyramid' but is actually only the NW corner". Maybe, but it is the only drawing that Petrie considered he needed to provide - it shows the casing descending below the pavement to a foun
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
I don't see the problem. Petrie writes - "At the N.W. the original socket with sharp edge to the bed; and pavement upon it, showing the pavement level". The rest of it an account of his efforts to trace out the base.
Petrie's drawing shows in sequence the marly bedrock, a foundation block, a corner casing stone resting on this, and the pavement brought up to the pyramid
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
GChase Wrote:
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> Re your comment "Dividing Petrie's measure for the
> base at this level by 360 yields a cubit outside
> the normal range. "
>
> Petrie gave the mean side length as 7459 inches
> (see 'A Season in Egypt')
> Dividing by 20.62 for the cubit gives 361.7
> cubits.
>
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
This discussion seems to have become bogged down because of uncertainties in the length of the cubit. I'm sure I'm not the only one who would appreciate seeing a modern authoritive source giving a consensus opinion of the length of the royal cubit in the Old Kingdom, if such exists. Meanwhile the bulk of egyptological references quote values around 52.3 to 52.5 cm, and it is often impli
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
In "The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh" Petrie writes -
"For the cubit I had deduced ... from a quantity of material, good, bad, and indifferent, 20.64 as the best result that I could get; about a dozen of the actual cubit rods that are known yield 20.65; and now from the earliest monuments we find that the cubit first used is 20.62, and the mean value from the seven buildings na
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
Hi Mark,
Petrie gives a mean of 189.46m for the Bent base at pavement level. He decided the base was intended at 360 cubits. But this requires a cubit of 0.5262m, which is well outside the usual range of 0.523 to 0.524 m. A base of 362 on the other hand gives the cubit as 0.5234, which is well within the usual range. (I was led astray myself before I knew what the situation was).
The base
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt
Hi Waggy
The problem with Monnier's explanation, as I tried to show, is that it lacks precision. One of the reasons for this arises from the assumption that both pyramids were intended to be 200 cubits high, and in this case the discrepancy at the bend is more than a cubit. However, if the situation is more closely examined it indeed begs the question of whether the Bent was designed as s
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robin cook
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Ancient Egypt