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The ancient monuments of Egypt have always inspired awe and a
sense of mystery, as they were intended to do. And they were
just as popular with tourists and sightseers in ancient times as
they are now. Visiting the Pyramids and the Sphinx was a
must for wealthy Romans.
The Pyramids
Since ancient times, monuments such as the Pyramids have inspired
speculation about their occult significance and paranormal powers.
The three great Pyramids of Ancient Egypt, the only survivors of
the original Seven Wonders of the World, are found in Giza, just
outside modern day Cairo. They were probably built between
2600 and 2500 BC, as tombs for the pharaohs.
The biggest of Egypt's three pyramids, the Great Pyramid of Cheops
(aka Khufu), is also the most mysterious, inspiring a whole field
of study known as pyramidology. Pyramidology is the study of
the secret wisdom that some people believe is encoded within the
structure of the pyramids.
Claims made for the Great Pyramid of Cheops include that its
height divided by the area of its base gives the precise value of
the mathematical constant pi, that its perimeter gives the
length of the year, and that its height multiplied by 10^9 is
equal to the distance between the Earth and the sun. Its
dimensions have also been used to calculate the date of the end of
the word and the Second Coming of Christ. In practice,
claims made about the Great Pyramid have usually rested on fudged
measurements, many of which are only approximate as the top of the
structure is missing.
Pyramids at the cutting edge
During the 1930s a French tourist discovered that the corpses of
small animals inside the Great Pyramid seemed to be strangely well
preserved. This observation has led to the discovery of
"pyramid power" - the inexplicable effects that a pyramid, of any
size, seems to produce on things placed inside it.
There is evidence that even small cardboard pyramids seem to be
able to sharpen dull razor blades and preserve food. A Czech
inventor, Karel Drbal, has been granted a patent for manufacturing
styrofoam pyramids for use as razor sharpeners.
The Sphinx
The current academic consensus is that the Sphinx, the great
statue of a human-headed lion that sits near the Pyramids of Giza,
was probably built around 2,550 BC, and that its face is that of
the Pharaoh Khafre who ruled at this time. In 1991 Boston
University geologist Robert Schoch sparked a raging controversy
when he suggested that the Sphinx dated from at least 5,000 BC and
was possibly much older.
Patterns of weathering on the Sphinx suggest that parts of it were
eroded by water. But the area has been desert since before
3,000 BC. Conventional Egyptologists (scholars who study
ancient Egyptian civilization) have argued that Schoch is wrong
about evidence of water erosion, but others have taken up his
ideas enthusiastically, suggesting that the Sphinx dates back to
10,500 BC and was constructed by an advanced civilization,
possibly by survivors of Atlantis.
The Mystery
This is an aerial picture of the Memphite
Necropolis Site at Giza, south-west of Cairo. Look carefully at
the way the Pyramids are aligned. At first glance they seem to be
imperfectly positioned. Classical Egyptologists maintain that this
was either a mistake or a result of the terrain in the Giza
Plateau. Compare this to the image of the Belt Stars of Orion and
things become a little clearer. Far from being a mistake, the
Pyramids are aligned almost exactly as the Belt Stars appear!
Although Virginia Trimble and Alexander Badawy first noticed that
the "air" shafts in the King's Pyramid pointed towards the
constellation of Orion, Bauval was the first to notice that the
alignment of the Pyramids was a very precise mirror image of the
Belt Stars of Orion. He called this the Correlation Theory, which
forms the backbone of his current research.
The Correlation Theory
During the Eighties Bauval was working on a
big construction project in Saudi Arabia in his other guise as an
engineer. In the evenings he was in the habit of taking his family
and friends out into the desert for a barbecue. Late one night
when the family had all gone to sleep Bauval and a friend sat
talking around the fire. His friend, also an engineer but an
amateur astronomer, pointed out the constellation of Orion rising
over the dunes. He mentioned in passing that the stars seem to be
imperfectly aligned, not forming a straight diagonal, but with one
star offset slightly. To the engineer's eye this was merely
annoying, but as he explained Bauval felt a jolt through his spine
-- the star's alignment almost matched the Pyramids at Giza!
The Importance of Astronomy
Astronomy is fundamental to Bauval's
Correlation Theory. Over a cycle of 26 000 years the Earth wobbles
slightly on its axis and this leads to an apparent change in the
position of the stars. This phenomenon is known as Precession --
the stars precess one another in Declination, their relative
position in the sky. This is best described with the aid of the
adjacent diagram.
As the Earth wobbles the Pole Star that marks the approximate
Celestial Pole changes. Polaris marks the spot now, but at the
time of the Pyramids it was marked by Thuban in the constellation
of Draconis. In 12 000 AD Vega in the constellation of Lyra will
mark the Pole.
A further change in the stars' actual position is caused by the
expanding Universe. Stars are not stationary in space -- they have
what is termed Proper Motion. Some stars are moving towards Earth
while others are moving away. Groups of related stars like the
Belt Stars of Orion tend to move together through space.
The rate of change of a star's position from the observer's
location is a function, among other things, of its distance. Stars
that are very distant appear to move more slowly. This is the case
with the Belt Stars which lie approximately 1400 light years from
Earth. Thus, over the centuries, they have changed in Declination
dramatically, causing them to rise and set at widely differing
times. They retain their characteristic shape, however, because of
their distance.
It is vitally important to understand that the sky looked
different at the time of the Pyramids. The overall shape of the
Belt Stars has remained remarkably similar although many other
parts of the sky have changed dramatically. Thanks to
sophisticated computer software it is possible to project the sky
back in time, enabling Bauval to verify and build upon his theory.
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Answering
Mysteries
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