The message of the Sphinx: a quest for the hidden legacy of mankind (31 page)

When we met Virginia Trimble we immediately realized we were in the presence of an acute and formidable thinker. Alexander Badawy had passed away in the late 1980s yet she remained undaunted. She had concluded that the shafts were astronomically aligned, she said, and that they had an astronomical function, because logic and evidence dictated that this was the case.

Trimble’s views have won general acceptance amongst senior astronomers. To give one recent example, Dr. Mary Bruck of Edinburgh, writing in
the Journal of the British Astronomical Association
in 1995, had this to say about the shafts: ‘Their alignments are ... compatible with the hypothesis that they indicate the culmination of certain important stars around the 25th century BC ... The addition of a Sirius shaft [southern shaft of the Queen’s Chamber] to the Orion one strongly supports the claim that they have an astronomical significance.’
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Thought-tools

We suggest that one of the major objectives of the unseen academy, whose members were known as the ‘Followers of Horus’, was to ‘fix’ the epoch of 2500 BC (i.e. 4500 years before the present) by using the Great Pyramid, its precisely angled shafts, and the stars of Orion’s belt. We suggest that they envisaged those stars rather like the gauge of a gigantic sliding scale set across the south meridian. Once this ‘thought-tool’ was in place all they needed to do in order to determine a date either in the past or in the future was mentally to ‘slide’ the belt up or down the meridian from the ‘zero point’ targeted by the southern shaft of the King’s Chamber.

We also suggest that a second and somewhat similar ‘thought-tool’ was attached to the ecliptic (the apparent annual path of the sun through the twelve constellations of the zodiac). Here the gauge was the vernal point. By mentally sliding it to the left (east) or to the right (west) of a ‘fixed’ marker on the ecliptic the ‘Followers of Horus’ would once again have been able to determine and denominate either a past date or a date in the future ...

In our own epoch,
circa
AD 2000, the vernal point is poised to enter the sign or ‘Age’ of Aquarius. For a little over 2000 years it has been passing through Pisces (160 BC to AD 2000) and before that it was in Aries (2320 BC to 160 BC). In the Pyramid Age the vernal point slowly swept through Taurus (4480 BC to 2320 BC). Going further back we reach the ‘Ages’ of Gemini (6640 BC to 4480 BC) and then Cancer (8800 BC to 6640 BC). After six ‘Great Months’ we reach the Age of Leo (10,960 BC to 8800 BC).

Now imagine that we find an ancient document at Giza which states that it was composed when the vernal point was in the sign of the Ram—i.e. when the sun on the spring equinox rose against the stellar background of the constellation of Aries. Armed with this information all that we can do is
roughly
bracket the document’s date as being somewhere between 2320 BC and 160 BC, What we need in order to arrive at a more precise chronology is some means to ‘fine-tune’ the vernal point. It is here that the specific utility of the sliding scale at the meridian becomes apparent because if the ancient document not only stated which zodiacal sign housed the vernal point but also advised that the lowest star of Orion’s belt crossed the meridian at an altitude of 50 degrees above the horizon then we would be able, using precession, to calculate with great accuracy that the date in question must be very near 1400 BC.
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The Pyramid Age occurred when the vernal point was in Taurus and, as we have seen, the fine-tuning permitted by the 45-degree angle of the Great Pyramid’s ‘Orion shaft’ draws particular attention to the date of 2500 BC. With this date, 4500 years before the present, we can use precession to calculate the exact position of the vernal point—which, as the reader will recall, was near the head of the Hyades-Taurus at that time, close to the right (i.e. west) bank of the Milky Way.

The reader will also not have forgotten that this is the ‘address’ given in the Pyramid Texts as the starting point for the cosmic journey of the solar Horus-King. It is here that he receives his instructions to board the solar-bark and ‘sail’ across the Milky Way towards the ‘horizon’ to meet up with Horakhti. His direction of travel is, therefore, eastwards, i.e. to the left of the vernal point. In terms of the chronology of the ‘Great Year’ of precession (as distinct from the solar year), this means that the Horus-King is now poised to travel back in time towards the age of Leo-Horakhti and to a specific spot on the ecliptic path—‘The Splendid Place of the “First Time” ’ ... ‘the place more noble than any place’.
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But where is that place? How is the Horus-King (initiate, seeker) to find it in the 2160-year, 30-degree swathe that the constellation of Leo occupies on the ecliptic?

The answer is that he would have to use the gauge of Orion’s belt at the meridian to fine-tune the exact place of the vernal point and hence also to arrive at an exact date. In his mind’s eye he would have to slide the belt ‘down’ the meridian to its ‘First Time’ and then see how far to the east that operation had ‘pushed’ the vernal point along the ecliptic.

Wherever that place was would be the celestial destination that the ‘Followers of Horus’ were urging him to reach.

And it would, of course, have its counterpart on the ground at Giza, in the vicinity of the lion-bodied Sphinx.

Chapter 17

The Place of the ‘First Time’

‘Know that we would be universal scientists if it were given to us to inhabit the sacred land of Egypt ...’

Manetho, Egyptian high priest, third century BC

‘I have come to this place more noble than any place ...’

Pyramid Texts

The epoch of the ‘First Time’,
Zep Tepi,
was frequently referred to as the ‘First Time of Horus’, the ‘First Time of Re’ and the ‘First Time of Osiris’.
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The implication of this terminology is that the position of the (vernal) sun along the ecliptic path, which denoted the ‘First Time’, was also seen to be marked—perhaps ‘controlled’ would be a better word—by the position of Osiris-Orion at the meridian.

As we have seen, the ancient brotherhood of astronomer-priests who designed the Great Pyramid, and who were later responsible for the compilation of the Pyramid Texts, were well aware of Orion’s slow precessional drift ‘upwards’—‘northwards’ in the allegorical language of the texts—when the constellation was sighted at the meridian over long periods of time. They also knew that they were ‘fixing’ a specific location to which the ‘body of the god’ had drifted (and a specific date in time—2500 BC in our calendar) when they targeted the meridian at 45 degrees with the southern shaft of the King’s Chamber. They knew, in other words, that the belt stars would rise to higher altitudes above the horizon (i.e. drift further ‘north’) in future epochs and, conversely, that they had been at lower altitudes (i.e. ‘further south’) in previous epochs. The reader will recall from Chapter 1 that the lowest (‘southernmost’) point in the entire precessional cycle of Orion’s belt—the ‘First Time of Osiris’ in allegorical terms—occurred in 10,500 BC. Most mysteriously, it is the precise disposition of these stars in the sky at that date that is frozen on the ground in the form of the three great Pyramids of Giza.

It was the mystery of this perfect meridian-to-meridian match, together with the equinoctial alignment of the lion-bodied Sphinx (and the vast antiquity of that monument as indicated by geology) that provoked us to undertake the present investigation. For while we did not dispute the orthodox Egyptological dating of the Pyramids to the epoch of 2500 BC, we had a strong intuition that their layout in the image of Orion’s belt some 8000 years earlier was most unlikely to have come about by chance.

We are now satisfied that chance was not involved. After factoring-in the data preserved in the vast storehouses of ancient Egyptian funerary ‘software’, it seems to us obvious that what was created—or rather
completed—
at Giza in 2500 BC was an entirely deliberate work of sky-ground dualism. It was a model (on a lavish scale intended to do justice to its cosmic original) of the ‘kingdom’ established by Osiris in the sky-
Duat
in the remote epoch ‘when his name became Orion’—i.e. in his ‘First Time’. It was also, for all time, the ‘Kingdom of Osiris’ on the ground—‘when his name became Sokar’ (in the lower
Duat,
i.e. the Memphite necropolis).

It may have been the case that the ground-plan of the three great Pyramids was
physically established
in 10,500 BC—perhaps in the form of low platforms. Or it may have been that precise astronomical records from that epoch were preserved and handed down to the astronomer-priests of Heliopolis by the ‘Followers of Horus’. Either way, we are still reasonably certain that the Pyramids themselves were largely built in 2500 BC when Egyptologists say they were. We are also sure, however, that the site was already vastly ancient by then and had been the domain of the ‘Followers’—the Sages, the ‘Senior Ones’—for the previous 8000 years.

We think the evidence suggests a continuous transmission of advanced scientific and engineering knowledge over that huge gulf of time, and thus the continuous presence in Egypt, from the Palaeolithic into the Dynastic Period, of highly enlightened and sophisticated individuals—those shadowy
Akhus
said in the texts to have possessed ‘a knowledge of divine origin’.

Fine-tuning Leo

The basis for this conjecture, above and beyond the astronomical alignments of the Giza necropolis, is the geological condition of the Sphinx which we have described in Part I. To state matters briefly:
the signs of intense precipitation-induced weathering visible to this day on the great monument itself, and on the rock-hewn trench surrounding it, are consistent with an age of more than 12,000 years.

The genesis date indicated by astronomy for the site as a whole is 10,500 BC. That is what the
layout
of the Pyramids says, even if they themselves are younger. And that, too, as we saw in Chapter 3, is what is proclaimed by the due-east orientation of the Sphinx. Its astronomical and leonine symbolism does not make any sense unless it was built as an equinoctial marker for the Age of Leo.

But
when,
exactly, in the Age of Leo? The constellation spans 30 degrees along the ecliptic and housed the sun on the vernal equinox from 10,960 BC to 8800 BC—a period of 2160 years. So when in that period?

There is no way to answer this question on the basis of the alignments of the Sphinx alone, or on the basis of what one may deduce from its alignments and its geology viewed together. What is needed is precisely what the ‘Followers of Horus’ provided us with—a thought-tool with which to fine-tune the date. That thought-tool is the sliding scale of Orion’s belt and the date that it fine-tunes for the Great Sphinx is 10,500 BC.

But it also does something else. As the scale ‘slides’ down the meridian it also ‘pushes’ the vernal point steadily eastwards along the ecliptic, bringing it to rest in 10,500 BC (the ‘bottom of the scale’)
at a specific stellar address that can be identified by precessional calculations.

In terms of the sky-ground dualism of the initiatory quest of the Horus-King, it is obvious that the vernal point’s ‘stellar address’ in 10,500 BC—i.e. its precise whereabouts on the ecliptic within the constellation of Leo—is likely to have a terrestrial analogue. Once we know what’s what with the sky, in other words, we should know where to look on the ground.

And would it be entirely unreasonable to suppose that what we would find there, if we had calculated
exactly
where to look, might turn out to be a physical entrance into that mythical ‘place more noble than any place’, the ‘Splendid Place of the “First Time” ’?

Setting stars

As though to reward such conjectures, like a one-armed bandit coughing up the jackpot, all the bells and lights of the Giza necropolis start ringing and flashing at once when the sliding scale of Orion’s belt is pushed down to its ‘First Time’ in 10,500 BC.

We already know from Chapter 3 that what the principal monuments seem to model is an unusual astronomical conjunction that occurred at the spring equinox in that distant epoch. Not only did the Great Sphinx gaze at his own celestial counterpart in the sky but also the moment of sunrise (at the point on the horizon targeted by the Sphinx’s gaze) coincided, to the second, with the meridian-transit of Orion’s belt (which is what the three Pyramids model).

If these were the only correspondences they would already be too detailed to be attributed to coincidence. But there is a great deal more. For example, immediately south of the third and smallest of the three great Pyramids is a group of three ‘satellite’ pyramids. Egyptologists generally refer to them as the ‘tombs’ of queens of the Pharaoh Menkaure. Since they contain no inscriptions, nor the slightest trace of human remains or funerary equipment, such an attribution can never be anything more than a matter of opinion. However these ‘satellite’ pyramids do have an unambiguous astronomical alignment: they form a row running east-west—the equinox sunrise-sunset direction.

The British geometrician and pyramid researcher, Robin Cook, has recently shown that these three satellite pyramids bear a designed relationship to the Giza necropolis as a whole.
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They appear to be located on the boundary of a circle, or artificial ‘horizon’, the focus of which is the Pyramid of Khafre and the circumference of which envelops the whole necropolis. An angle of 27 degrees west of south
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—corresponding to an azimuth of 207 degrees
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—seems to be defined by a straight line extending from the meridian axis of the Pyramid of Khafre to these three ‘satellite’ pyramids of Menkaure.
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In general the satellites give the impression of being ‘reduced models’ of the three Great Pyramids. What is notably different however, is that the latter lie at an angle of 45 degrees to the meridian, while the former run from east to west at right-angles to the meridian. This apparent architectural anomaly, together with their curious location at azimuth 207 degrees on the artificial ‘horizon’ of Giza, begs an obvious question: are we again looking at datable sky event frozen in architecture?

59. Epoch of 10,500 BC: setting of the three stars of Orion’s belt in line with the three satellite Pyramids on the southern rim of the Horizon of Giza.

The computer confirms that we are. In 10,500 BC, on the real horizon of Giza, the lowest of the three stars of Orion’s belt,
Al Nitak,
set at 27 degrees west of south—i.e. at azimuth 207 degrees. Moreover, the belt stars at that moment would have formed an axis running east-west—the alignment that is mimicked by the three satellite pyramids.

Sirius

Another bit of the 10,500 BC ‘jackpot of correspondences’ concerns the star Sirius, which symbolizes the very heart of the ancient Egyptian mystery.

All stars, including our own sun (and our solar system with it) move through space. Because of the vast distances involved, however (hundreds and often thousands of light-years), this ‘proper motion’ registers barely perceptible effects on the
positions in the sky
of the majority of stars as viewed from earth. Where these stars are concerned the only significant factor is precession (which, as we know, is a perceived ‘motion’ that is actually caused by a wobble on the axis of the earth).

Sirius is one of the major exceptions to this rule. As many readers will be aware, it is the brightest star in the sky. It is also one of the
nearest
stars to earth, being only 8.4 light-years away. Because of this proximity it registers a very large ‘proper motion’ in space relative to our own solar system—large enough to bring about observable changes in its celestial address,
over and above those caused by precession,
within just a few thousand years.

To be specific about this, the proper motion of Sirius is estimated to be in the range of 1.21 arc-seconds per year (about 1 degree every 3000 years). This means that for an epoch as far back as 10,500 BC, the change in its celestial co-ordinates resulting from proper motion could exceed 3 full degrees of arc, i.e. about six times the apparent diameter of the moon.
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Once this rapid and noticeable rate of movement is taken into account alongside the effects of precession, computer simulations indicate a rather intriguing state of affairs. Calculations show that when Sirius reached its ‘First Time’—i.e. its lowest altitude above the horizon—viewers at the latitude of Giza (30 degrees north) would have seen it resting exactly on the horizon. Moreover it was from this latitude,
and this latitude only,
that such a conjunction of star and horizon could be witnessed. The implication is that a special co-relationship exists between the latitude of Giza and the star Sirius at its ‘First Time’.
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60. Artist’s impression of the ‘First Time’ of Sirius, in the epoch of 10,500 BC, when the bright star of Isis would have been seen to be resting exactly on the horizon.

Because of its large proper motion there is uncertainty over when exactly the ‘First Time’ of Sirius would have occurred. There is no doubt, however, that it would have been somewhere between 11,500 and 10,500 BC.
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We wonder, therefore, whether the decision to establish the sacred site of Giza at 30 degrees north latitude could have been connected to this ‘First Time’ of Sirius? And we recall that in 1993 Rudolf Gantenbrink’s robot camera discovered a mysterious ‘door’ inside the Great Pyramid, more than 200 feet along the narrow southern shaft of the Queen’s Chamber.
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The shaft in which the ‘door’ was found was, of course, targeted on the meridian-transit of Sirius in 2500 BC.