The message of the Sphinx: a quest for the hidden legacy of mankind (11 page)

25. By mimicking the sky pattern of Orion’s belt in 10,500 BC the three great Pyramids of Giza mark a very significant moment in the 20,000-year precessional cycle of these stars—the lowest point in their slide up and down the meridian, when (as seen from the latitude of Giza) they culminated at an altitude of 9
degrees 20 minutes above the horizon (C). In 2500 BC they culminated at altitude 45 degrees (B). In our own epoch, 2000 AD (A) they are approaching the highest altitude that they will attain in their precessional cycle—58 degrees 06 minutes above the horizon at meridian transit.

It will never fall lower,
the epoch of 10,500 BC marks the nadir of the star’s precessionally induced slide up and down the meridian (just as the epoch of AD 2500 marks its zenith). Like a slowly moving lever in a narrow vertical slot, it takes 12,960 years to descend from top to bottom, and a further 12,960 years to ascend from bottom to top again.
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By exactly mimicking the disposition of the belt stars in the sky in 10,500 BC the layout of the Pyramids on the ground thus not only signifies a specific epoch but also rather precisely and surgically marks the
beginning
of a precessional half-cycle.

Lion on the ground, lion in the sky

As was pointed out in
Fingerprints, of the Gods,
the same role is played by the Great Sphinx—which gazes directly at the equinoctial rising point of the sun in any and every epoch, past, present and future, for ever.

26. Artist’s impression showing the precessional cycle of Orion’s belt up and down the meridian. The pattern of the stars in 10,500 BC marks the beginning, or ‘First Time’, of the cycle. It is this pattern that is reproduced on the ground by the three great Pyramids of Giza.

27. The rising points and trajectory of Orion’s belt in (A) 2000 AD, (B) 2500 BC, (C) 10,500 BC.

This orientation provides us with an astronomical basis for dating the monument because it is known that the attention of astronomers in ancient times was particularly focused on the zodiacal constellation—considered to define the astrological ‘Age’—that rose just ahead of the sun in the eastern sky at dawn on the spring equinox.
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The same phenomenon of the earth’s axial precession that affects the altitude of stars at the meridian also affects these famous constellations—Leo, Cancer, Gemini, Taurus, Aries, Pisces, Aquarius, etc., etc—the co-ordinates of which, in relation to the rising point of the equinoctial sun, undergo slow but continuous precessionally induced changes. The result is a hard-to-observe astronomical phenomenon, known as the precession of the equinoxes, which manifests as a gradual circulation of the equinoctial point around all twelve ‘houses’ of the zodiac. In the words of historians of science Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend, whose essay
Hamlet’s Mill
is a ground-breaking study of archaic precessional mythology:

The constellation that rose in the east just before the sun (that is, rose heliacally) marked the ‘place’ where the sun rested ... It was known as the sun’s ‘carrier’, and as the main ‘pillar’ of the sky. ... The sun’s position among the constellations at the vernal [spring] equinox was the pointer that indicated the ‘hours’ of the precessional cycle—very long hours indeed, the equinoctial sun occupying each zodiacal constellation for just under 2200 years.
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In our own epoch the sun on the spring equinox rises against the stellar background of the constellation of Pisces, as it has done for approximately the last 2000 years. The ‘Age of Pisces’, however, is now approaching its end and the vernal sun will soon pass out of the sector of the Fishes and begin to rise against the new background of Aquarius. To be precise, it takes exactly 2160 years for the equinoctial point to pass completely through one constellation or ‘house’ of the zodiac.

With this process in mind, let us now reverse Santillana and von Dechend’s ‘precessional clock’. Passing back through the Age of Pisces (and the Age of Aries that preceded it) we find that in the epoch of 2500 BC, when the Sphinx is conventionally assumed to have been built, it was the constellation of Taurus that housed the sun on the spring equinox.

It is here that the crux of the problem lies. To state the case briefly:

1.
       
The Sphinx, as we have seen, is an equinoctial marker—or ‘pointer’.

2.
       
On a site that is as profoundly
astronomical
as Giza one would naturally expect an equinoctial monument dating from the ‘Age of Taurus’ either to have been built in the shape of a bull, or at any rate to symbolize a bull. The Sphinx, however, is emphatically
leonine
in form.

3.
       
It is a simple fact of precession that one must go back to the ‘Age of Leo’ beginning at around 10,500 BC, in order to obtain the ‘correct’ sky-ground symbolism. This, as it turns out, is the only epoch in which the due-east-facing Sphinx would have manifested exactly the right symbolic alignment on exactly the right day—watching the vernal sun rising in the dawn sky against the background of his own celestial counterpart.
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To clarify this latter notion, let us return to our computer simulation of the skies over Giza in 10,500 BC, instructing the program to recreate the positions of the sun and stars just before dawn on the spring equinox in that epoch. And let us set our direction of view due east in line with the gaze of the Sphinx. Indeed, with the aid of a little virtual reality and poetic license, let us imagine that we are standing between the paws of the Sphinx itself at that date—a date that we already know accords rather well with the
geology
of the monument.

What we would see, occupying the portion of the sky into which the sun is about to rise, would be the splendid zodiacal constellation of Leo—a constellation that very strongly resembles its namesake the lion and thus also the leonine Sphinx.

28. In the pre-dawn on the vernal equinox in 10,500 BC, with the sun some 12 degrees below the horizon, the Great Sphinx would have gazed directly at his own celestial counterpart, the constellation of Leo—which experienced what astronomers call its heliacal rising at this moment.

29. Superimposed images of the rising of Leo in 2500 BC, when the Great Sphinx is presumed by archaeologists to have been built, and in 10,500 BC. It is only in this latter epoch that the perfect sky-ground correlation is attained, at the heliacal rising of Leo, when the Sphinx would have gazed directly at his own celestial counterpart in the pre-dawn.

The minutes pass. The sky begins to lighten. Then, at the exact moment at which the top of the solar disc breaks over the horizon directly ahead of us we make a 90-degree right turn—so that we are now looking due south. There, culminating at the meridian at altitude 9 degrees 20’, we observe the three stars of Orion’s belt forming a pattern in the sky that is identical to the ground plan of the Giza Pyramids.

The question reduces to this: is it a coincidence, or more than a coincidence, that the Giza necropolis as it has reached us today out of the darkness of antiquity is still dominated by a huge equinoctial lion statue at the east of its ‘horizon’ and by three gigantic Pyramids disposed about its meridian in the distinctive manner of the three stars of Orion’s belt in 10,500 BC?

30. The moment of sunrise on the vernal equinox in 10,500 BC.
At
the exact moment that the top of the solar disc broke over the horizon due east in direct alignment with the gaze of the Sphinx the three stars of Orion’s belt culminated at the meridian in the pattern that is mimicked on the ground by the three great Pyramids. Sphinx and Pyramids thus appear to ‘work together’ as an architectural representation of this unique celestial conjunction.

And is it also a coincidence that the monuments in this amazing astronomical theme park manage to
work together—
almost as though geared like the cog-wheels of a clock—to
tell the same ‘time’?

Throughout the ancient world the moment of sunrise, and its conjunction with other celestial events, was always considered to be of great importance.
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At the spring equinox in 10,500 BC, as should by now be obvious, a particularly spectacular and statistically improbable conjunction took place—a conjunction involving the moment of sunrise, the constellation of Leo and the meridian transit of the three stars of Orion’s belt. It is this unique celestial conjunction (which furthermore marks the
beginning
of the ‘Age of Leo’ and the
beginning
of the upwards precessional cycle of the belt stars) that the Great Sphinx and the three Pyramids of Giza appear to model.