In view of the tremendous popular interest in the Giza pyramids which has
been stimulated by Robert Bauval's Orion Correlation Theory,[1] it seems
desirable to consider whether Bauval's conjecture is compatible with my own
discovery of the coherent dimensional plan which
connects the three major Giza pyramids,[2] or whether there is any inherent
conflict between these two quite different concepts of an integrated Giza site
plan.
In the course of my friendly discussions with Robert Bauval which took
place while his book The Orion Mystery was being written, it became
evident that he thought that the concept of a correlation with the Belt Stars of
Orion explained the religious motivation for the disposition of the three
pyramids on the Giza plateau in general terms, while my own findings showed in
detail how the plan was actually executed on the ground; and Robert was
therefore kind enough to include references to my findings in The Orion
Mystery, as well as in his later co-authored books. In brief, it was
possible that the pyramid-builders had developed a mathematical construction
for the placing of the three pyramids, which was compatible with the pattern of
the Belt stars and specified the exact dimensions which had to be laid out.
For my part, however, I have never been convinced by the Orion correlation
theory, from the time that I first read Bauval's article on the subject in Discussions
in Egyptology back in 1989. Indeed, I have taken the view that his theory
depends on a misunderstanding of the religious and funerary beliefs of the
ancient Egyptians, as expressed in the Pyramid Texts of the Old Kingdom. There
is, after all, no evidence from the Pyramid Texts or elsewhere to support the
idea that the successive pyramids of the Fourth Dynasty were supposed to be
equated with different stars of the constellation of Orion; and I find the idea
conceptually implausible in view of the fact that the successive kings of the
Old Kingdom each wished to be identified with
S3h=Osiris in the afterlife, in precisely the same terms from one reign
to the next. Whether or not the word S3h in the Pyramid Texts referred
to a single star (as I believe) or a constellation, the whole essence of the
Egyptian concept of kingship was that of an unchanging recurrence of events, so
that each king became the embodiment of the god Horus during his earthly reign,
and in death succeeded to the throne of Osiris in the afterlife, just as his
predecessors had done before him.
Despite my theological objections to the
equation between S3h and the constellation of Orion which I have
described on another web page, I would not have discounted the Orion correlation
theory if a satisfactory correlation had been shown to exist; but this simply is
not the case. I find it surprising that Bauval should have attempted to equate
the relative dimensions of the three Giza pyramids with the relative
brightnesses of the stars in Orion's Belt, since when viewed in the night sky,
these stars appear almost equally bright, and indeed have similar astronomical
magnitudes. Certainly, Mintaka is less bright than the two other stars Alnilam
and Alnitak; but when seen in the sky and in photographs,[3] the difference is
not very noticeable, and can hardly account for the construction of the Third
Pyramid with only one-tenth of the volume of the Great Pyramid. The stars appear
naturally in the sky as points of light, and not at all as blobs of varying
sizes comparable to the bases of the three pyramids, as one might suppose from
the time-lapse photograph published by Bauval.[4]
Although it is agreed that the patterning of the stars in Orion's Belt
resembles the broad disposition of the Giza pyramids, the orientation of the
arrangement argues against a deliberate correlation, partly because the
alignment of the Belt stars when referred to the meridian must have diverged by
more than 30° from the corresponding alignment on the ground, at the epoch
of around 2500 BC. Bauval has tried to explain this discrepancy by supposing
that it was intended to reflect the situation which, due to the precession of
the Earth's axis of rotation, would have existed in 10,450 BC.[5] Still more
surprisingly, in order to obtain a correlation with the bend in the line of the
Belt stars, Bauval has been obliged to turn Orion upside-down, reversing the
positions of the stars from north to south. Thus whereas Mintaka is offset to
the north of a line joining Alnitak to Alnilam, the Third Pyramid is offset to
the south of a line joining the Great Pyramid to the Second Pyramid. Although
it has been claimed that this inversion was deliberate, I do not believe that
the pyramid-builders, who were acutely conscious of the natural orientations of
the star-fields, would have conceived of such a representation; and for this
reason alone I do not believe that a correlation between the Giza pyramids and
Orion's Belt was intended.
Three stars do not, in any case, make a constellation, and we must also
consider the larger plan which has been supposed by Bauval to encompass the
other major pyramids of the Fourth Dynasty. For the reason just cited, and
contrary to the impression that the pattern of the constellation of Orion had by
some means been projected directly onto the terrestial landscape beneath it,
Bauval has equated the northernmost pyramid at Abu Roash with the star Saiph to
the south of Orion's Belt, while also relating the Unfinished Pyramid at Zawiyet
el-Aryan to the south of Giza, with the northerly star Bellatrix. |
