There had also to be religious or political motivation. Dr Wilkinson traced the rise of a professional civil service in seals, documents and grave inscriptions dating back almost to 3,BC, and the continuing evidence of Egyptian belief not only in an afterlife, but in death itself as a journey. Kate Spence, a Cambridge colleague, had demonstrated in a paper last year that from the first, the pyramids were all precisely oriented towards the northern stars. There were further clues in the names, which were crucially important in ancient Egyptian culture.
One pyramid was explicitly called "the gleaming". Another was called "the pyramid that is a star". From the 1st dynasty onwards - long before the pyramids were built - kings had founded estates to finance their tomb cults: one of these was explicitly called "Horus that is, the king rises as a star".
Tombs of the first dynasties were concealed by mounds of earth, seen as symbols of rebirth or resurrection. However, due to precession, the line joining Mizar and Kochab only drifted into precise alignment with the north pole in BC, then wandered away see graphic.
The orientation of successive pyramids faithfully tracks this drift, Spence says, explaining the rise and fall of north-south alignment precision. If Spence is right, it is now possible to use astronomical records to date the pyramids to the nearest five years. By Hazel Muir The ancient Egyptians used two bright stars in the Big Dipper and Little Dipper constellations to align their pyramids in a north-south direction, a British Egyptologist says.
Click here for a Shockwave movie 7 KB. Taking sightings of the Great Bear and Orion with an instrument called a merkhet similar to an astrolabe , astronomer-priests marked out the foundations of buildings with astonishing accuracy.
T he Great Pyramid at Giza provides an example. This remarkable building has a footprint of over 13 acres and consists of approximately 6.
They were roughly oriented, with horizontal sections and large stones blocking their exit. But despite a number of attempted shaft explorations, the mystery of their true purpose has persisted for more than half a century. But a surprise was waiting for them at the end of the tiny tunnel.
The robot was able to get a camera past the intentionally placed stone blocking the shaft, allowing it to discover a small chamber with elaborate symbols drawn on the floor.
But beyond that, there was a second stone the robot couldn't get around. The mystery of the Great Pyramid continues. Ultimately, the team cut their project short in Egypt after security concerns grew within the country. Those ideas are not at all controversial. Still, Nabta Playa is just 7, years old. There's also the much smaller structure called Gobekli Tepe in Turkey, which was built some 6, years before the pyramids, or roughly 12, years ago.
But researchers have yet to find any surefire evidence of celestial alignments there. In addition to most archaeologists already concluding the Orion Correlation Theory is a fringe idea, astronomers have also used computers to determine the past positions of many stars.
This made it easy for them to debunk the idea that the pyramids aligned with Orion's Belt some 10, years ago. Yet, there's still other popular commentators and authors of books on Egypt, like Graham Hancock, that suggest that the pyramids — and other marvels of the ancient world — are actually relics of a forgotten and technologically advanced ancient civilization.
They argue that such a civilization existed long before researchers have found any evidence for cultures that complex. Receive news, sky-event information, observing tips, and more from Astronomy's weekly email newsletter. View our Privacy Policy.
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