The Orion Mystery

The three pyramids of Giza are a perfect reproduction of the 3 stars

of Orion’s belt:
 Like the pyramids, the three stars of Orion are not perfectly
aligned, the smallest of them is slightly offset to the East.
 All three are slanted in a Southwesterly direction (Note the
exact match in the animation).
 Their orientation to the Nile recreates Orion’s orientation to the
Milky Way.
 The layout of the pyramids, and their relative sizes were a
deliberate design plan, and not the result of three king’s
enormous egos as been preached as dogma by the so-called Egyptologists.
Robert Bauval has spent the last ten years investigating the pyramids themselves
and the Pyramid Texts, the oldest writings known to mankind.

He and Adrian Gilbert have uncovered for the first time the key to the plan that
governed the construction of the pyramids. They reveal in "The Orion Mystery" that
the pyramids were much more than just tombs: they were nothing less than
a replica of Heaven on Earth (The constellation of Orion, or known to the Egyptians
as Osiris).

With great astronomical precision, the pyramids were created to serve as

the pharaoh’s gateway to the stars.

The Giza/Orion Link

The Giza Plateau in the year 10,450 BC. This is a depiction of how the Sphinx and
the three Pyramids at Giza would align with Orion’s Belt in the year 10,450 BC.
(below image)

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The three Pyramids exactly simulate the stars Delta
Orionis [Mintaka], Epsilon [Alnilam], and Zeta [Alnitak] that comprise the Orion Belt.

During this era, the Age of Leo, The Sphinx, which originally may have fully
resembled a lion, would have been looking directly due east at it’s celestial
counterpart as it rose at dawn of the vernal equinox in 10,450 BC.

At the same time, the Nile would have corresponded with the Milky Way.

Other constructions in Egypt mirror key components of the Orion Constellation.

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Introduction to The Orion Mystery

Over the past 200 years great advances have been made in our understanding of
ancient Egyptian culture. From knowing virtually nothing we have now reached a
stage where we are able to translate directly from hieroglyphs.

But many mysteries remain largely unsolved:

 Why did the Egyptians build the pyramids?
 How did they achieve such amazing feats of architecture and engineering?
 When exactly were they built?
For many years classical Egyptologists maintained that the Pyramids were merely
grandiose tombs to commemorate dead Pharaohs, built by slave labour and laid
out in a relatively unstructured manner. However, recent work by Robert
Bauval has shed an intriguing new light on the issue.

He realized that the relative sizes, and detailed positioning of, the Giza
pyramids were a faithful mimicry of the stars forming the ’belt’ in the constellation
of Orion. In addition, it transpired that the supposed ’air shafts’ in the pyramids
actually pointed directly towards Orion, apparently with the aim of projecting the
soul of the deceased king out towards the constellation.

These discoveries alone re-wrote our understanding of the motivations for building
the pyramids and the state of technological advance of the ancient culture. But the
plot continues to thicken with a robotic camera sent into the shafts
recently enabling the discovery of a door to a previously unknown secret chamber
deep within the structure.

Rumors abound that imminent discoveries may even more radically change our
perception of ancient civilization...
 The correlation between the Giza Pyramids and Orion’s belt
 Egyptology and Egyptologists
 The Importance of Astronomy
 The Egyptian Star Religion
 Ancient Egyptian Culture and Society
 About Robert Bauval

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The correlation between the Giza Pyramids and
Orion’s belt

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!

Egyptology and Egyptologists

Great advances have been made in the study of the Ancient Egyptian Civilization in
the last two hundred years. In that time we have gone from having virtually no
knowledge whatsoever, to being able to translate directly from the hieroglyphs on
the walls of pyramids and temples with a high degree of accuracy.

This giant leap forward in knowledge was thanks to a very fortunate find by a group
of Napoleon Bonaparte’s soldiers as they secured Egypt for the French in 1798
and 1799.

During the late 18th and early 19th centuries Rashid (the
town known in the West as Rosetta) was an important
port, lying at the mouth of the Nile, where the Rashid
Tributary leaves for the Mediterranean Sea.

Napoleon knew well its significance in securing a port for

the supply of his troops as they swept across Egypt and
fought hard to win control.

Napoleon was a superb tactician -- he had no real desire

to wrest Egypt from the Mamluk Turks for commercial
reasons. He had only one intention as he pushed the
Turks East, and that was to cut off the supply and trade
route for the British to India.
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A party of French troops found a black basalt slab, near to the town of Rashid in
1799, inscribed in three languages.

The slab was a tribute to the Egyptian King Ptolemy V, with the original hieroglyph,
a more modern demotic script, and, the key to our knowledge of Ancient Egypt
today, a Greek translation alongside carved in 196 BCE.

The French returned control of Egypt to the English, and the Rosetta Stone (click
image left to enlarge), as it had become known, was taken to London, where it can
still be seen as a prize exhibit in the British Museum, in Bloomsbury.

On arriving in London, the Stone was studied intently by Thomas Young, a West-
country doctor and Egyptologist. Young had studied at London, Edinburgh,
Gottingen and Cambridge, qualifying as a physician in 1800.

From 1801 to 1803, Young was Professor of Natural Philosophy at the Royal
Institution, and it was here that much of his pioneering work on deciphering the
Stone was done. Between 1822 and 1824, the French Egyptologist Jean Francois
Champollion took up a close study of the Stone, and founded modern scientific
Egyptology.

These preliminary studies of the Stone allowed Egyptologists their first insight into
the mind of the Ancient Egyptians. Things that were once hidden and meaningless
began to become apparent, and this small seed of new knowledge soon allowed
much more accurate translations of the previously attractive but ill understood
hieroglyphics that adorned the walls of pyramids and tombs and temples all over
Egypt. Many of the old theories were overturned and replaced by conclusions
arrived at by scientific research.

Foremost among the "classical" Egyptologists is the late E. A. Wallis Budge, 1857-
1934.

Budge was Keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities at the British Museum, and
author of many books that form the basis of our understanding of Ancient Egypt. In
particular he is remembered for his work in translating the Book of the Dead, and
several hieroglyphic dictionaries, and self-teaching courses. Budge also translated
numerous texts directly from the walls of later Fourth and Fifth Dynasty tombs, and
cast an unbiased eye over many of the myths of the Egyptian deities and their
legends.

Much good work has been done over the last couple of centuries towards
understanding something of Ancient Egyptian culture. Some of the most
impressive work done in recent years, however, has to be the study of the
astronomical significance of the pyramids by Robert Bauval and Adrian
Gilbert.
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They published their preliminary findings in the excellent book "The Orion
Mystery" (click image right) published by Heinemann. They also made a
documentary TV program last year that first drew them to the world’s attention.

The views expressed in the book and documentaries were initially scorned by the
academic mainstream Egyptologists. However, as the evidence strengthens their
case, more and more people are coming on board and the "old school" are looking
increasingly isolated.

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 (image right).

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 Vegain 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.

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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 theBelt 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.

The Egyptian Star Religion

Classical Egyptologists believe that the Egyptians practiced a solar religion,

centering on the worship of Ra. This cult of Ra, centered around Heliopolis, the City
of the Sun, was no doubt important, but it seems as though it was an offshoot of a
much more ancient stellar religion.

All the evidence that is now coming to light suggests that Ra was merely one of the
instruments by which the King returned to the First Time, rather than his goal.
"O Shining One (Ra)! O Shining One! O Khepera! O Khepera! You are for the King
and the King is for you; you live for the King and the King lives for you."
(Pyramid Texts Utterance 662)

"Go aboard this boat of Ra to which the gods desire to draw near, aboard which the
gods desire to go, in which Ra rows to the horizon....... Raise yourself, O my father
Osiris the King, for you are alive!"
(Pyramid Texts Utterance 667)
The application of astronomy to the study of Ancient Egypt shows that the stars
were of the utmost importance as the destination of the King:
"O Great One of Atum (another attribute of Khepera, the creator), son of a great
one of Atum, the King is a Star in the sky among the gods."
(Pyramid Texts Utterance 586A)

"O King, you are this great star, the companion of Orion, who traverses the sky with
Orion, who navigates the Duat with Osiris; you ascend from the East of the sky,
being renewed at your due season......."
(Pyramid Texts Utterance 466)
The King was very important because he was the link between the gods and men,
and was accorded enormous respect in life and in death.

From the moment of his birth he was groomed and trained for his return to the First
Time. All his life, every aspect of it, was associated with his journey. He was taught
spells and incantations to secure a safe passage, many of which are collected in
the Book of the Dead and the Pyramid Texts.
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His sole aim in life was his successful return to the First Time, and the pyramids,
far from being a memorial or commemorative tomb, were the starting point of this
greatest of journeys. The geometry of the pyramids has been a source of confusion
for many years, as was the seemingly imperfect way in which they were laid out on
the Necropolis site.

The chain of command in Egypt was unbroken -- each King, though a living,
breathing being, was a renewal of the covenant which the gods made with man.
The dead King, though dead to this world, lived on in spirit as he made his way
back to the beginning, to the First Time.

His son, the new Horus King, took over his place as surely as the dead King has
taken his own, and ensured the continuation of the Great House, the Pr Aa.

Ancient Egyptian Culture and Society

Although we look these days at everything in isolation, for the Ancient Egyptians
this would have been unthinkable. What we now term as a holistic approach to life
was normal for the Egyptians.

In fact, the holistic approach was very common in our own Western culture until the
Industrial Revolution. At the end of the Eighteenth Century, life became fragmented
into production and consumption, supply and demand. Many people whose life was
on the land, and who were intimately acquainted with every aspect of life as a
cohesive and living whole (hence holistic) were made redundant by the new
machines.

The only work, and life, available to them meant going from the land to the towns
and cities. Instead of producing to meet their own needs, and then either bartering
or selling their surplus from a good year’s harvest, they were forced into wage
slavery -- to total dependence upon those who controlled the means of production.

In Ancient Egyptian times there was no wage slavery, rather a communal approach
to life, and a very stable society. Everyone had their place, their tasks, and co-
operated with others to ensure survival, peace and prosperity. The Biblical notion
of enforced slavery to the Pharaohs seems to be exaggerated, testified by the
meteoric rise in status of the Prophet Yusuf (Joseph) and his clan.

Knowledge of the logistics of building a pyramid like those at the Memphite

Necropolis at Giza put paid to the idea that they were built by ill-treated slave
labour.

The craftsmanship is of the highest degree -- it is still a mystery to this day how the
pyramids were built.
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About Robert Bauval

The pyramids have long fascinated Robert Bauval.

He is Egyptian, born in Al-Iskandariyya (Alexandria) to Belgian parents, and has

spent most of his life living and working in the Middle East. For many years he had
pondered over the significance of Sah, the constellation of Orion, and its link to the
pyramids. One night, while working in Saudi Arabia, he took his family and a
friend’s family up into the sand dunes of the Arabian desert for a camping
expedition.

Bauval knew that the seemingly inconsistent layout of the three Fourth Dynasty
pyramids at Giza was no accident, and had applied his own engineer’s mind, and
those of many friends to the problem. Most agreed that the alignment, though
unusual, was no accident, given the precise mathematical knowledge that the
Egyptians had.

His friend, a keen amateur astronomer, pointed out Orion, and mentioned, in
passing, that Mintaka, the smaller more easterly of the stars making up Orion’s belt
was offset slightly from the others. Immediately Bauval saw the answer - the three
Belt Stars were aligned in exactly the same way as the three pyramids!

Bauval checked the alignment in 2450 BCE by precessing the three Belt Stars
back, and found that, due to their close proximity in space, great distance from
Earth, and negligible proper motion, they looked exactly the same then as they do
today. Of course, they had changed in declination -- then they were just below the
celestial equator, at about -1 degree declination.

The pyramids were a mirror image, the Earthly representation of the Belt of Orion,
the destination of the dead King! The Egyptians were dualists -- everything they
thought and believed was a duality. Everything had its counterpart, cause and
effect, left and right, East and West, death and rebirth -- nothing was ever seen in
isolation.

They had constructed at Giza an exact replica of the Duat destination of the King.
Far from being a tomb, the pyramid was the starting point of the King’s journey
back to the stars from whence he came, back to the First Time.

Bauval initially made use of the astronomy program Skyglobe 3,5 for the PC.

Though too inaccurate for serious work - it does not take proper motion, nutation,
refraction, for example, into account - it was sufficient to clarify Bauval’s mind as to
the value of his discovery. Skyglobe 3,5 will plot the Milky Way on its charts if
requested, and doing so added further proof to Bauval’s theory.

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Giza is West of the Nile - putting the plane of our galaxy into the equation showed
that Orion is "West" of the Milky Way, in proportion to Giza and the Nile.

Orion the Hunter and Sirius the Dog Star

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TONIGHT FORAUGUST 26, 2012

The first hints of the changing of the seasons can now be seen in the predawn and
dawn sky: Orion the Hunter and Sirius the Dog Star. The very noticeable
constellation Orion the Hunter rises before dawn at this time of year, recognizable
for the short straight line of three stars that make up Orion’s Belt. And the sky’s
brightest star Sirius – sometimes called the Dog Star because it’s part of the
constellation Canis Major the Greater Dog – follows Orion into the sky at or close to
dawn. Have you noticed a very bright, madly twinkling star in the predawn sky?
Many do, at this time of year. That star is Sirius. It’s so bright that, when it’s low in
the sky, it shines with glints of red and flashes of blue – very noticeable!

Orion and the nearby star Sirius will become visible in the evening by northern
winter (or southern summer). But presently the Hunter and the Dog Star lord over
the southeastern sky at dawn’s first light.

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Orion was low in the west after sunset last spring, and, in early summer, this
constellation was behind the sun as seen from Earth. Orion only returned to visibility
in Earth’s sky about a month ago. (See our July 30 sky chart.) When a constellation
becomes visible again, after being behind the sun, it always appears in the east
before sunrise. Because – as Earth orbits the sun – all the stars rise two hours
earlier with each passing month, Orion is now higher at dawn than a month ago.

As seen from the Northern Hemisphere, Orion precedes Sirius the Dog Star into the
sky. After Orion first appears at morning dawn, you can count on Sirius to appear in
the morning sky a few weeks later. You should be able to see Sirius at or before
dawn right now – unless you live at far northern latitudes. But even there, it won’t be
much longer!

Starting now, look for Orion the Hunter and Sirius the Dog in the early morning sky!

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