Architecture, Astronomy and Sacred Landscape

in Ancient Egypt
This book examines the interplay between astronomy and dy nastic power in the course of ancient
Egy ptian history, focusing on the fundamental role of astronomy in the creation of the py ramids
and the monumental temple and burial complexes. Bringing to bear the analy tical tools of
archaeoastronomy, a set of techniques and methods that enable modern scholars to better
understand the thought, religion and science of early civilisations, Giulio Magli provides in-depth
analy ses of the py ramid complexes at Giza, Abusir, Saqqara and Dahshur, as well as of the Early
Dy nastic necropolis at Aby dos and the magnificent New Kingdom Theban temples. Using a
variety of data retrieved from studies of the sky and measurements of the buildings, he
reconstructs the visual, sy mbolic and spiritual world of the ancient Egy ptians and thereby
establishes an intimate relationship among celestial cy cles, topography and architecture. He also
shows how they were deploy ed in the ideology of the Pharaoh’s power in the course of Egy ptian
history .

Giulio Magli is Full Professor at the Faculty of Civil Architecture of the Politecnico di Milano,
where he teaches the first archaeoastronomy course established in an Italian university. He holds
a PhD in astrophy sics, and his research today focuses on archaeoastronomy and the relationship
between architecture, landscape and astronomy in ancient Egy ptian, Incan and Bronze Age
Mediterranean cultures. In addition to his many papers in this field, he is the author of Mysteries
and Discoveries of Archaeoastronomy (2009) and is one of the co-authors of the recent UNESCO-
IAU thematic study on astronomy and cultural heritage. He has served as visiting scientist at the
Polish Academy of Sciences and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Bombay, India,
and has spoken at numerous international conferences on relativistic astrophy sics, as well as on
the role of astronomy in ancient cultures. His research in archaeoastronomy has been reported in
National Geographic and Discovery News and on CNN.
Architecture, Astronomy and Sacred Landscape
in Ancient Egypt

Giulio Magli

Politecnico di Milano
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© Giulio Magli 2013

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First published 2013

Printed in the United States of America
A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data
Magli, Giulio, 1964–
Architecture, astronomy and sacred landscape in ancient Egy pt / Giulio Magli.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-107-03208-8 (hardback)
1. Architecture, Egy ptian. 2. Archaeoastronomy – Egy pt. 3. Egy pt – Religion.
4. Egy pt – History – 332–30 BC 5. Egy pt – Antiquities. I. Title.
NA215.M33 2013
932′ .01–dc23 2012046779
ISBN 978-1-107-03208-8 Hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for
external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee
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 Contents

List of illustrations
List of photographs
Introduction

Part One
1 A land for eternity
1.1 A land for eternity
1.2 Equipped for eternity
1.3 The first monumental architecture of ancient Egy pt
1.4 The first sacred landscape of ancient Egy pt
Box 1. The apparent motion of the celestial bodies in the sky
2 A king who looks at the stars
2.1 From Aby dos to Saqqara
2.2 From mudbricks to stone
2.3 The Py ramid Texts and the sky
2.4 A king who looks at the stars
Box 2. Ancient Egy ptian astronomy
3 The lords of the horizon
3.1 The first Snefru project
3.2 Snefru is rising
3.3 The Great Py ramid
3.4 The Great Py ramid and the stars
3.5 The second great py ramid of Giza
3.6 The orientation of the fourth dy nasty py ramids
3.7 The horizon of Khufu
Box 3. The Seked and the py ramid’s slopes
4 A mirage from Heliopolis
4.1 A mirage from Heliopolis
4.2 The Menkaura project
4.3 The star py ramids and their enigmas
5 Sons of the sun god
5.1 A new horizon for Snefru
5.2 The stronghold of Ra
5.3 Close to the soul of Ra
5.4 The Niuserra project
5.5 Stars from Heliopolis
Box 4. Solar eclipses
6 The lost py ramid
6.1 The Unas project
 6.2 Teti and Userkara
6.3 In search of a lost py ramid
6.4 Py ramids and landscapes of power: A look back at the Old Kingdom

Part Two
7 Renaissance at the winter solstice
7.1 Renaissance at the winter solstice
7.2 Kings from the south
7.3 The topography of the bey ond
7.4 The Amenemhet III project
7.5 Sentinels of power
8 A valley for the kings
8.1 A new renaissance
8.2 A valley for the kings
8.3 The Hatshepsut projects
8.4 The sanctuary of the south
8.5 My face is y ours
9 The Horizon of the Aten
9.1 The dazzling sun disk
9.2 The Amarna sacred space
9.3 The Horizon of the Aten
9.4 A message of power
10 The last of the greats
10.1 A divine king …
10.2 … and his divine child
10.3 The temples of millions of y ears
10.4 The end of an era and its inheritance
Appendix
Chronology of the first 20 dynasties
Notes
References
Index
 Illustrations

1.1 Map of Egy pt

1.2 The sacred landscape at Aby dos
1.3 The roy al enclosures and the corresponding roy al tombs at Aby dos
2.1 Map of Saqqara
2.2 Map of the main elements of Djoser’s complex
2.3 The constellations close to the north celestial pole as seen from the area of Memphis in the
twenty -sixth century BC
3.1 Geographical location of the Snefru py ramids at Seila, Meidum and Dahshur and of the
twelfth dy nasty py ramids at Lisht, Lahun and Hawara
3.2 Plan and sections of the Bent Py ramid
3.3 Schematic map of the Giza necropolis
3.4 Schematic section of the Great Py ramid
3.5 A schematic representation of the astronomical alignments of the four shafts of the py ramid
of Khufu
3.6 Plan of the temples of the second py ramid of Giza
3.7 The simultaneous transit of Kochab and Mizar in the northern sky of Giza around 2500 BC
3.8 The astronomical alignments of the valley temples of the two main py ramids of Giza
4.1 The Giza axis
5.1 Inter-visibility between the py ramids of the Memphite area and Heliopolis
5.2 Schematic map of the Abu Gorab–Abu Sir area
6.1 Map of the monuments of Saqqara and Saqqara south
7.1 The area of Thebes, with the position of the two pairs of temples located, at the beginning of
the Middle Kingdom, as the northernmost and southernmost landmarks
7.2 The interior apartments of the py ramid of Amenemhet III at Hawara
7.3 Schematic map of the Dahshur central field
8.1 Map of western Thebes
8.2 Plan of Karnak and Luxor temples, connected by the Sphinx alley
9.1 Schematic map of the funerary landscape of King Akhenaten
10.1 Map of the Osireion, Aby dos
Box Figure 1.1 The azimuths of the sun at rising and setting for the latitudes of Egy pt
Box Figure 1.2 The motion of the stars in the sky as seen by an observer at Egy pt’s latitudes
Box Figure 1.3 The region of the north celestial pole as seen from Memphis about 2600 BC
Box Figure 1.4 The region of the north celestial pole as seen from Memphis today
All illustrations are by Emanuela Franzoni
 Photographs

1.1 Western Thebes. Depiction of the Opening of the Mouth ceremony from Tutankhamun’s
tomb in the Valley of the Kings
1.2 Aby dos. The Shunet el Zebib
2.1 Saqqara. The Djoser Step Py ramid
2.2 Saqqara. Py ramid Texts carved on the walls in the antechamber of the Teti py ramid
2.3 Saqqara. The Serdab of the Djoser Step Py ramid complex
2.4 Saqqara. A king who looks at the stars: Djoser’s statue viewed from one of the holes of the
Serdab
3.1 Meidum. The py ramid viewed from the east, with the funerary temple in the foreground
3.2 Dahshur. The Bent Py ramid
3.3 Dahshur. The north face of the Red Py ramid
3.4 Giza. A view from the east of the Great Py ramid (foreground), with Khufu’s queens’
py ramids on the left and Khafra’s and Menkaura’s in the background
3.5 Giza. A picture, taken from the north, of the west side of the second py ramid, with
Menkaura’s north face in the background
3.6 Giza. A front view of the Khafra valley complex
3.7 Giza. A view of the T-shaped granite hall of the Khafra valley temple
3.8 Giza. The ascending corridor inside the Khafra valley temple
3.9 Giza, summer solstice 2011
4.1 Giza. A photograph taken from the first of Menkaura’s queens’ py ramids, looking north-east
along the Giza axis
4.2 Giza. The Menkaura py ramid towers at the horizon when viewed from the causeway
4.3 Abu Roash. The view towards Giza on a clear day
4.4 Abu Roash. The huge pit of the unfinished Djedefra py ramid
5.1 Saqqara south. The Mastaba el Faraun viewed from the east
5.2 Saqqara south. The view towards Dahshur from the area of the Pepi I queens’ py ramids
5.3 Giza. The funerary monument of Queen Khentkaues
5.4 Abusir. The py ramid of Sahura seen from the causeway
5.5 Abusir. A photograph taken from the west side of the py ramid of Neferefra
5.6 Abusir. The py ramids of Neferirkara (right) and Niuserra (left) from the south-east
5.7 Abu Gorab. The sun temple of Niuserra
5.8 Abu Gorab. The view towards the Abu Sir py ramids of Sahura, Neferirkara and Niuserra
from the upper terrace of Niuserra’s sun temple
6.1 Saqqara. The py ramid of Unas seen from one of the boat pits located along the causeway
6.2 Saqqara. A picture taken from the south of the Unas py ramid (foreground)
6.3 Saqqara south. The remains of the Pepi I py ramid
7.1 El-Lahun. The py ramid of Senwosret II seen from the east
7.2 Dahshur. The offering temple of the Bent Py ramid, with the py ramid of Amenemhet III in
the background
7.3 Hawara. The py ramid of Amenemhet III
7.4 Dahshur. The py ramid of Amenemhet III seen from the valley temple of the Bent Py ramid
8.1 Western Thebes. The Valley of the Kings
8.2 Western Thebes. The terraces of the Hatshepsut temple at Deir el Bahri
8.3 Luxor. The Ramesses II py lon of the temple seen from the final section of the Alley of the
Sphinxes
8.4 Luxor. The axis of the Amenhotep III colonnade of the Luxor temple viewed from the back
end
8.5 Karnak. The temple axis at sunset
8.6 Giza. The sun sets behind the Sphinx
9.1 Western Thebes. The so-called Colossi of Memnon
9.2 Amarna. The (reconstructed) Small Temple of Aten
9.3 Amarna. The Akhet of the Aten (photograph courtesy of Marc Gabolde)
10.1 Aby dos. Light and shadow effects in the temple of Seti I
10.2 Aby dos. The Osireion
10.3 Abu Simbel. The innermost chapel of the temple of Ramesses II
10.4 Western Thebes. The colonnade hall of the Ramesseum
10.5 Western Thebes. The fallen colossus in the Ramesseum
10.6 Medinet Habu. The first py lon of the Ramesses III temple
10.7 Medinet Habu. The straight axis of the temple as viewed from the end chapel
10.8 Edfu. The Pharaoh and the goddess Seshat perform the ceremony of the Stretching of the
Cord (Ptolemaic epoch)
All photos by the author except Photo 9.3.
 Introduction

Few landscapes on earth are more spectacular than the verdant Nile Valley. Bordered by endless
desert, it is dotted with some of the most imposing monuments ever built by man: huge py ramids,
gigantic temples, and also strange structures which are difficult to classify, such as the huge tomb
of the Pharaoh Shepsekaf at Saqqara or the so-called Osireion at Aby dos. With the passing of the
centuries, and with the construction of so many monuments one after another, Egy pt gradually
became an extremely complex and extraordinarily beautiful landscape. This landscape was
modelled by men according to precise criteria to create a conceptual, sacred landscape which
was also a landscape of power since it was conceived and built to stand witness to the power and
divinity of the Pharaohs and to their claims on the afterlife.

This book is a journey in time and space, its aim being to visit this landscape and learn about
the ideas of its builders. Our visit will therefore be cognitive. This means that we shall be using
architecture as a starting point for penetrating the minds of those extraordinary people who built
such extraordinary monuments. We shall attempt to visit what remains of the ancient Egy ptians’
human-made landscape, searching for the builders’ feelings and thought processes in the tangible
records of their architectural achievements.

Probing the minds of ancient architects is no easy task. It means grasping their sy mbolic world.
This means religion, of course, but also knowledge: geometry, cosmology and so on. It means
understanding social organisation, as well as temporal power. Of course, a book positing a
cognitive approach to ancient Egy ptian architecture with such a variety of objectives would be,
quite simply, an insane project. It is therefore necessary to choose one suitable, specific key, and
an extremely powerful key to ancient Egy pt is astronomy, or rather archaeoastronomy. Modern
archaeoastronomy is the science devoted to the study of the knowledge of the sky in ancient times
as reflected in architecture and landscape. It is an indispensable tool in understanding Egy pt,
given that celestial matters were, for the ancient Egy ptians, deeply and intimately connected with
the most important thing of all: preserving Maat, the cosmic order, on Earth. Such an order was
anchored to the celestial cy cles: the cy cle of the sun, the calendar, the succession of the hours of
the night, and the reappearance of Sirius and of the other stars. It was the regularity and
predictability of the cosmic order, assured on earth by the existence of a living god, the Pharaoh,
that held the country together in the three great periods, or kingdoms, we shall see in this book.
The overriding importance of the sky meant that many of the buildings constructed in Egy pt from
very early times were themselves anchored to the celestial cy cles. For instance, funerary beliefs
regarding the afterlife of the deceased Pharaoh during the Old Kingdom were connected both
with the circumpolar stars and with the sun god. Thus the roy al tombs, the py ramids, in a sense
solar sy mbols themselves, were anchored to the points of the compass, and their annexed temples
contained solar alignments. Even today, such solar alignments are remarkably effective and give
rise to spectacular hierophanies on certain special day s of the y ear. The most impressive of these
is that occurring at Giza, at sunset on the day of the summer solstice, when the sun together with
the two giant py ramids re-creates the sy mbolic hierogly ph “horizon” or Akhet, which is also the
name of the Great Py ramid.

The main focus of study of archaeoastronomy is thus the analy sis of astronomical alignments
and their possible significance. The cognitive “astronomical” approach to ancient Egy pt I intend
to employ in this book, however, has a far broader scope. Indeed, the methods of
archaeoastronomy can be used to analy se conceptual landscapes even when their cognitive
aspects do not relate to the sky. In particular, topographical alignments to prominent natural
landmarks or sacred places may be studied. In some cases – as we shall see – they play a
fundamental role in understanding the main features of places as important as Western Thebes,
Giza and Amarna.

It goes without say ing that writing a book running chronologically through the cognitive
astronomical aspects of some two millennia of architecture would still be an insane project if
applied to our “Western” civilisation. It would entail following architecture as it undergoes an
enormous number of abrupt changes and inventions. However, the flow of human time in ancient
Egy pt was totally different from ours. As a consequence, sy mbols, patterns and even entire
landscapes were constantly re-created, renewed and reinterpreted without radical conceptual
changes throughout the whole of Egy ptian history .

The present book is the result of almost 15 y ears of scholarly research on this subject. My
original background is, however, in astrophy sics. As a phy sicist, I am among those who most
baulk at “hidden legacies”, “my sterious encodings” and so on, and one of the aims of this book is
to show that the sy mbolism of the sacred landscape in Egy pt is not hidden or esoterically
concealed, as an alarmingly vast nonscientific literature has sought to contend since the
nineteenth century. Quite the contrary, even today we can try to read many of the messages of
pride and power embodied in the architecture bequeathed to us by the Pharaohs. A note of
caution is warranted, though. Receiving messages from the ancient past presents us with a most
exciting intellectual challenge – the need to alter our mindsets, and try to think as they did.

Let us accept this challenge, then, and set out on our journey .
 Part One

The sky is clear, Sirius lives, I am a living one, the son of Sirius,
the two Enneads have cleansed themselves for me in Meskhety u, the Imperishable.
My house in the sky will not perish, my throne on earth will not be destroy ed.
My seat is with y ou, Ra, and I will not give it to any one else,
I will ascend to the sky to y ou.
Py ramid Texts (PT) 302, §§458, 461 (translation by R. Faulkner)
 1 A land for eternity

1.1 A land for eternity

Egy pt is a unique place. The land consists of a short strip of fertile terrain, crossed and vivified by
the river Nile, which flows in a south-to-north direction, enclosed as far as its huge delta by rock
embankments which keep at bay a seemingly endless desert (Figure 1.1). The only exception
along the river, the Fay oum oasis, nestles like a jewel on the west bank, some 100 kilometres south
of Cairo.
1.1. Map of Egy pt.

The climate of the country is arid. Rains are rare and usually arrive in the form of rapid
storms, but the land is fertile due to the nutritious alluvial soil washed up by the river in the annual
floods (today controlled by the Aswan Dam, built in the 1960s). This climate emerged
progressively about five millennia ago, more or less contemporaneously with the development of
the unified, “dy nastic” Egy pt which is the subject of the present book. The complex issue of the
history, culture and religion of Egy pt prior to its unification as a single kingdom will therefore be
merely alluded to here.

It is usual to divide the history of unified Egy pt into “dy nasties”, a distinction, however, which
does not really reflect the ancient Egy ptians’ way of sensing the flow of history. They felt,
rather, that each Pharaoh’s rule was a distinct historical period, while the division into dy nasties
was introduced by the Greek historian Manetho and (among other shortcomings) does not
necessarily correspond to a change in the parental succession of kings (the way in which a
Pharaoh acceded to kingship was not governed by immutable rules, although the eldest son of the
main, or “great”, queen seems to have been the preferred successor in many cases). In spite of
this, the succession of dy nasties does in many cases match up neatly with what we can gather
from archaeological and historical records concerning the main changes and events occurring in
Egy pt, and therefore its use is customary and will be followed here. As far as chronology is
concerned, we have a few documents and inscriptions recording lists of kings and their regnal
y ears, such as the Turin Papy rus (listing up to the seventeenth dy nasty ) and the Palermo Stone.
Found in 1866 at Memphis, it is actually a large piece of an original stela (usually called the
Roy al Annals) recording also important events, such as the foundation of buildings. However,
these documents are not sufficient – especially for the Old Kingdom – to establish with any
certainty the dates of the reigns of each individual Pharaoh (in some particular cases, their actual
succession is also the subject of debate). Several different chronologies have thus been elaborated
by scholars, which in some cases differ considerably in assigning accession dates and lengths of
reigns. Recent chronologies are those of Baines and Malek (1981), Von Beckerath ( 1997), Shaw
(2000), Dobson and Hilton (2004) and Hornung, Krauss and Warburton ( 2006). Fortunately, for
the purposes of the present book, knowing the fine details of the kings’ regnal y ears is not
imperative, with the exception of two cases, Shepsekaf and Akhenaten, which will subsequently
be discussed in depth. Therefore, I shall adhere strictly to one of these chronologies, that of
Baines and Malek (for the ease of the reader, kings’ regnal dates according to this chronology are
reported in the Appendix and will be mentioned when appropriate).

The Egy ptian state was formed through a process of population settlement and growth, with
progressively more people being attracted by the fertility of the land (Grimal 1994; Kemp 2005;
Shaw 2000). Probably, two kingdoms emerged in Lower and Upper Egy pt, respectively, and
were finally unified around 3200 BC under a single kingship.
 We have no way of knowing for sure the extent of such kingdoms and the details of the
historical process leading to a unified kingdom – the story of a hero king called Menes who
engineered the unification is perhaps only a tale recounted to Manetho. However, what is
important for us here is that the endlessly repeated, obsessive idea of “two lands reunited” is a
leitmotiv throughout the history of Egy pt. It is, in particular, a constant concern of the Pharaohs to
present themselves as the kings of Upper and Lower Egy pt, protected by the goddesses of Upper
and Lower Egy pt, wearing the white crown of Upper Egy pt and the red crown of Lower Egy pt,
and so on. Thus, something epic really must have occurred, which remained in the genetic
memory of the country. On one hand, the unification of the two lands under the same kingship
became an effective sy mbol of the Pharaoh’s power. On the other, the reversal of the unification
process, with the splitting of the two lands, was alway s a possibility (and indeed occurred in the
two intermediate periods), so that the obsessive reference to unification also created a sort of
superstitious attitude, insinuating that the only way of keeping order was to keep the country
united. This led to the presence of the “duality of the two lands” in countless official expressions
of power and, in particular, in architecture and landscape, as we shall see.

Whatever the origins of its formation, the kingdom of Egy pt enjoy ed a first period of
extraordinary success and prosperity, which lasted for some 700 y ears, during the periods
usually referred to as Early Dy nastic (dy nasties 1–2) and Old Kingdom (dy nasties 3–6). Salient
features of this development were the fertility of the land, an enlightened husbanding of resources
and effective administration, but also a process of cultural unification which took place very early
on, together with the introduction of writing. The capital – or better, the town which was the main
centre of power, and which will be called “capital” henceforth – was probably moved very early
from Aby dos to the Memphis area, although Aby dos remained a seminal cult centre.

The figure of the ruler was soon endowed with divine essence. In particular, a fundamental
duty that the Pharaohs assigned to themselves was that of keepers of the cosmic order. The
cosmic order, or Maat, was a key concept in Egy ptian mentality. One could attempt to define it
as a mixture of order, truth and justice, but it is easier to say just that Maat was the opposite of
Chaos: it was regularity. Maat regulated the world – in particular, the natural cy cles and hence the
calendar – and was actually identified with a goddess, daughter of the sun god Ra (in later times,
she would be responsible for weighing the hearts of deceased people against a feather in order to
decide if they were pure enough to be saved in the afterlife). The ideology associated with
kingship and power thus designated the king as an intermediary between the gods and humanity.
Indeed the Pharaoh himself was a living god; of course, he had to deal, sooner or later, with the
little problem of his own death. Clearly, this was bound to create a paradox as regards the
exercise of power, also because the doctrine of the living god was enshrined in the foundation of
the state, and suffused the entire political order. For this reason, the death and the resurrection of a
god, Osiris, gradually took hold as the basis of belief in the afterworld. One famous version of the
my th has it that Osiris once ruled Egy pt as a king but was fought, killed and dismembered by his
brother Seth, who scattered pieces of his body in various places. However, Osiris’ sister/wife, Isis,
with the help of their sister Nephthy s, gathered the pieces and brought him back to life. Osiris and
Isis could then have a son, Horus. Osiris became the god of the netherworld. Horus avenged his
father’s death by defeating Seth and – as the heir of Osiris – became the rightful king of Upper
and Lower Egy pt.

The mechanism of the my th is extremely effective in lay ing down a theology that lent itself to
the idea of divine kingship, since the deceased Pharaoh was equated with Osiris and, as a
consequence, his successor was equated with Horus. The key to such a mechanism was the
Pharaoh’s life in the afterworld, and therefore the monuments devoted to sy mbolising it became
increasingly grand and complex, and roy al funerary architecture underwent the amazing
evolution that we are going to examine. In Assman’s (2003) words: “the py ramids of Giza
convey the impression that not only the invention of building in stone but the very foundation of
the state itself is associated with the divinisation of the king”.

Understanding the nature and evolution of divine kingship in Egy pt is thus an undertaking that
runs alongside the task of exploring the ideology of roy al funerary architecture – which is the
precise aim of this book.

1.2 Equipped for eternity

The ancient Egy ptians’ ideas about death and the afterlife were formed at an early stage and
persisted through the whole course of the Egy ptian civilisation, the main noticeable change over
the centuries being a process of slow “democratisation” of the possibility of after-living. The
afterlife was, in fact, initially reserved to the Pharaoh, but later extended to a progressively larger
stratum of people.

Phy sical death, with the body naturally desiccated by the dry climate in ancient times and
later embalmed in a sophisticated manner, was the beginning of a magic second life. The
mummy, accompanied by the “canopic chest” – a box containing four jars for the viscera – was
therefore a sort of quintessential container. The afterworld and the world of human beings have
been “in contact” in all cultures and civilisations, and Egy pt was no exception. The contact was at
a purely magic level: for an ancient Egy ptian nothing would have been more absurd than seeing
a movie with a revived “walking mummy ”, since the afterworld was – pure and simple – another
world. Communications, though fundamental, were purely sy mbolic: the tombs had a “false
door”, and food offerings for the “soul” were left on the altars behind them. The Egy ptian soul
was actually made up of several distinct natures. The most important was Ka, rendered with the
raised arms hierogly ph . Ka was the vital force transferred through lineage – for the Pharaohs,
therefore, it came directly from the gods and, in particular during the fourth and fifth dy nasties,
from the sun god. The king, as the keeper of cosmic order, was in a sense the keeper of the Ka of
the whole nation. After death, the Ka needed to be reactivated in order to establish the
connections with the afterworld through the tomb. A crucial role was play ed also by another
“nature” of the soul, the personal soul or Ba . The Ba was endowed with the abilities of a living
human being (e.g., eating), which, however, could function only if the body were preserved.
Probably the most apt word to use in this context would be that the body and its Ba had to be
“enduring”, and indeed I shall come back to this word again in translating the names of the
py ramids, which – as we shall see – were the “machines” devoted to such a task.

A series of rituals were performed during mummification and funerals, relating to the
complex structure of the afterlife, and a series of periodic ceremonies were also required after
burial. The funerary temples served this function, many of which carried on the cult of their
deceased kings for centuries (as a consequence, in some cases the ancient kings became
worshipped as a sort of “local saint” to whom petitions could be made). I shall not enter here into
a detailed description of what we know of the funerary rituals but mention just one of them, the
one which seems to be most directly related to the sky. This is the “opening of the mouth” ( Photo
1.1), which is attested from the Old Kingdom to the Roman period. It was first performed on
statues of the deceased housed in a specially prepared room today called Serdab (from the
Arabic word) and, later, directly on the coffin or the mummy. There are many depictions of the
ritual, but perhaps the most famous is that featured in the tomb of Tutankhamun in the Valley of
the Kings at Thebes. The officiant, using special tools, touches the mouth and the ey es of the
subject, magically enabling it to receive food and drink, to breathe and to see. The magic
procedure might have been inspired by real procedures carried out by phy sicians at birth, such as
severing the umbilical cord and forcing the mouth of the baby to stimulate breathing. The ritual
implements used are known from both images and kits found as burial equipment in priests’
tombs; interestingly, such implements have also been found in foundation deposits of temples, as
if to augur eternal life for the “newborn” architecture. The main instrument was a forked stone or
metal blade, called a peseshkaf. Other instruments were adzes or adze-shaped blades, and serpent
stone blades.
Photo 1.1. Western Thebes. A depiction of the Opening of the Mouth ceremony from
Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings. The successor Ay ritually opens the mouth of the
mummy of the deceased with an adze which has the same shape as the constellation of the Bull’s
Foreleg (the Big Dipper), a group of “imperishable” stars and one of the main destinations of the
afterlife.

Once in the afterworld, the journey of the deceased was only at the beginning. Indeed he had
to ascend to Nut, the sky goddess, a personification of the sky. Nut is usually represented as
bending over the earth, with a stretched body. The head is in the west, ready to swallow the
setting sun and the stars, and the loins are in the east, where celestial objects rise. Reaching the
sky, the king finally becomes an Akh, a pure spirit in the ultimate, permanent state, a celestial
object which is a companion to Sirius, travels together with the sun god Ra, and has a permanent
seat among the circumpolar stars.

As we shall see, all such concepts will be incorporated marvellously into the architecture of the
most complex monument ever built by humanity, the Great Py ramid of Khufu. However,
written descriptions of them date to a slightly later period, that of Unas, the last king of the fifth
dy nasty , and are the so-called Py ramid Texts (Chapter 2).

1.3 The first monumental architecture of ancient Egypt

Imagine scores of people every y ear visiting a specific, apparently insignificant spot in the
middle of a desert bay, for millennia on end. Each of them carries pots for use in rituals, and the
pot shards pile up lay er by lay er over these millennia. A place like this could not be called in
Arabic any thing other than Umm el Qaab, the mother of pots.

Umm el Qaab is in fact the modern name of the Aby dos desert landing quay, enclosed
between the edge of the cultivation and the foothills of steep mountains, which had been used as a
cemetery since predy nastic times, and soon became one of the holiest places in Egy pt (Kaiser
and Drey er 1982). In about 3200 BC, it began to be used by the kings of the first dy nasty as the
roy al cemetery, and the last two kings of the second dy nasty were buried here too. Even when
roy al burials were definitively moved to the Memphis area, Aby dos remained one of the most
important sacred centers of Egy pt. In the Middle Kingdom, the tomb of the first dy nasty king
Djer was mistaken – or perhaps camouflaged by someone – for the true tomb of Osiris. A statue
of the god was added, as well as an entrance staircase for the ease of pilgrims arriving for a
festival in honour of the Lord of the Afterworld. So the site grew in importance and people began
to wish to be buried nearby, or to erect a memorial there, to the extent that a king of the thirteenth
dy nasty, Wegaf, was obliged to enact a law, delimiting, with the help of stone stelae, the
boundaries of the sacred land, on which it was prohibited to build further.

The area has been divided by archaeologists into two cemeteries, labelled U and B. Cemetery
U has been dated to the predy nastic era. It is here that the most ancient hierogly phs have been
found, inscribed on tablets in the tomb U-j, the burial of a fairly prominent person (Drey er 1998).
Cemetery B houses the roy al tombs of the first dy nasty. The structure of the tombs is based on a
large pit dug into the ground, lined with mudbrick walls. Inside the pit is a funerary apartment
consisting of a funerary chamber and additional chambers meant for storing funerary equipment
for the afterlife. In some tombs, such a chamber might have been a first version of a Serdab, the
room used for the statue of the king. Each tomb had “associated burials” of servants being
sacrificed on the king’s death, a practice which would cease at the end of the second dy nasty . The
pits were covered by low mounds; it is unfortunately unclear if, and to what extent, the mounds
signalled the presence of the tombs – perhaps there was a stone stela on top, or in front, of them.
 Some doubts persist about the first king buried here, who might have been Narmer; the next
burials are well attested to – we have the complete list up to Qa’a, the last king of the first dy nasty
(among them, one tomb is that of a queen, the king’s mother Merneith, next to that of her son,
Den, and seems to confirm a special roy al status for her). After Qa’a, for unknown reasons, the
first kings of the second dy nasty chose to be buried at Saqqara (see Chapter 2) instead of using the
Aby dos cemetery. This decision may have been motivated by the unrest which troubled the
reigns up to Peribsen, who returned to the old cemetery, followed by Khasekhemwy (ca. 2650
BC), the last of the kings of the second dy nasty and also the last king of the Old Kingdom to be
buried there (Petrie 1900, 1901; Kemp 1966).

Most, if not all, of the kings buried at Umm el Qaab also constructed, along with the tomb, a
monumental mudbrick building in a site about 1 kilometre north of the tombs, not far from the
temple of Khentiamentiu, the ancient god of the necropolis, who had been worshipped there since
the predy nastic period and was later identified with Osiris. However, all but one such building
were erased shortly after construction, for some unknown reason, possibly ritual. The foundations
of six erased enclosures have been recovered so far (Helck 1972; Kaiser 1969; O’Connor 1999);
two of them are anony mous, while the others are attributed (thanks to seals recovered in
association with them) to Merneith, Peribsen, Djer and Djet.1 Several secondary burial sites have
been found near the walls of the enclosures, providing reasonable evidence of human sacrifice in
connection with these structures, and showing their funerary nature. The enclosures form two
rows, ending with the only one still standing, which is also the last in chronological order:
Khasekhemwy ’s, today called Shunet el Zebib (Photo 1.2).
Photo 1.2. Aby dos. The Shunet el Zebib, the enormous mudbrick enclosure of King
Khasekhemwy , and the Aby dos desert quay viewed from the area of the ancient temple of
Khentiamentiu.

It is difficult to convey the impression given by this building, a veritable cathedral in the desert,
standing as the only visible witness to the grandiosity of the first Pharaohs. It is an imposing
monument, as its walls still reach 11 metres, and the sides run for 137 and 76 metres. It had two
entrances, one near the north corner and another near the east corner. Buried in the surroundings
of the enclosure (but perhaps pertaining to the erased one of Aha nearby ) was a fleet of as many
as 14 boats (the presence of boats associated with burials would become ty pical in Old Kingdom
py ramid complexes, where they are usually interpreted in association with the sun god, due to the
descriptions of the sun’s “voy ages” in funerary texts).

The king is credited also with the construction of the only other Early Dy nastic mudbrick
enclosure still extant in Egy pt, a sort of twin of the Shunet el Zebib. It is the so-called Fort located
at Nekhen (Hierakonpolis).2 The Fort is quite similar in conception to the Shunet but smaller,
measuring approximately 67 × 57 metres, with walls some 5 metres thick. It is decorated on its
exterior with a series of niches originally plastered in white; this “palace façade” decoration is
strictly associated with kingship and would subsequently be a constant feature of Egy ptian art.
Despite the modern name, this structure had absolutely no military function. Recent excavations
have shown that it enclosed a building entered through a richly ornate doorway, featuring two
columns supported by granite bases, which are among the earliest examples of the architectural
use of granite in Egy pt. The specific function of this building remains vague, but in any case it
was probably not funerary. But what about the Shunet and the other Aby dos enclosures? The
presence of subsidiary burials shows that these really are buildings related to the funerary cult of
the king, although not devoted to establishing the cult for times to come, for they were
sy stematically erased. Their interpretation is further complicated by the fact that, until recently,
the Aby dos enclosures were considered as predecessors of the py ramid complexes. This
stemmed from the fact that some remains of a structure inside the Shunet were taken to be a
mudbrick-coated mound. The position of this alleged mound was similar to that of the initial
mastaba (later “evolved” in the first py ramid) of the Djoser complex at Saqqara (see Chapter 2)
and therefore the enclosure, with its mound, was mistaken for a sort of evolutionary step towards
the py ramid complexes. The mound inside the Shunet was thought to be an image of a my thical
“primeval mound”. This interpretation clearly fulfilled a constant, possibly unconscious, need to
see in the evolution of human ideas – and, in particular, in architecture – a linear, slow and
reassuring progression. As a consequence, the idea that the enclosures were precursors of the
py ramid complexes was rapidly seized on in all major textbooks and scientific papers. Nothing,
however, could be more wrong than searching for linearity and gradual progression in something
which is by definition nonlinear and usually proceeds with unexpected, unpredictable zigzags:
human thought. And indeed, the reassuring idea of the enclosures being predecessors of the
py ramids was proved wrong as a result of further excavations (O’Connor 1999, 2009). In these
excavations, the alleged proto-py ramid base was revealed as the edge of a completely different
structure, a large brick-lined basin.

Both the necropolis and the enclosures area of Aby dos, when viewed in plan, immediately
convey a sense of order. The reason is that topographical and orientation rules were codified and
applied with few exceptions during the development of both. The main topographical rule was
that added elements had to “move” in a specific manner. The enclosures cluster along a three-
lane road which “proceeds” to the south-west. The tombs align first on a south-of-west row,
which later turns south-of-east.

Even more stringent was the orientation rule, applied to all enclosures and all tombs. Generally
speaking, we can say that it was inter-cardinal orientation. Inter-cardinal directions are those
corresponding to a halving of each quadrant of the compass, and thus are the directions bearing
azimuths 45°, 135°, 225° and 315° (see Section 1.1 of Box 1 for the definition of azimuth). For
instance, all the enclosures are strictly oriented with the longest sides along the inter-cardinal
direction south of east (azimuth 135°); in particular, the azimuth of the longest sides of the Shunet
el Zebib is 136°.3 The tombs are all oriented along or near the inter-cardinal directions east of
north or west of north (45° or 315°).

Clearly, this distribution of the monuments is by no means casual but reflects a precise
intention. It is therefore the first time in this book that we encounter an orientation pattern, an
important characteristic shared by an entire group of monuments forming a human-made
landscape. We are going to meet three main orientation patterns which remained operative
during the course of the whole history of ancient Egy pt: meridian, solstitial and indeed inter-
cardinal. Although monuments oriented in accordance with these patterns can occasionally be
found scattered in the whole country, there is no doubt that they have a regional origin and
characterisation: meridian orientation is associated with Saqqara (Memphis), winter solstice
orientation with Thebes, and the inter-cardinal one clearly characterises Aby dos, where it was
applied on innumerable occasions in the course of the centuries (for instance, for the orientation
of Old Kingdom mastabas and for the Ramesses II temple built some 1000 y ears later).
Unfortunately for us, inter-cardinal orientation is the first pattern we encounter, but also the most
difficult to explain.

Orienting the sides of a rectangular building at an angle of 45° with respect to the cardinal
directions is certainly a deliberate choice. If the building is square in plan, then the corners point
to the cardinal directions, as occurs in – and might have been influenced by – contemporary
Mesopotamian temples (Isler 2001). As a matter of fact, at Aby dos, Flinders Petrie ( 1901), while
excavating the roy al tombs, found hierogly ph marks signalling the north corners of some tombs.
However, as soon as a building becomes truly rectangular, this possibility is lost. Orientation
might be adjusted to still have a diagonal on the meridian, but this will work as a solution only for
special cases; for instance, the azimuth of the “Fort” at Hierakonpolis is 142° and, combined with
the proportions of the enclosure, this actually results in the longest diagonal oriented along the
meridian. Generally, however, the answer should be sought elsewhere. 4 The most likely origin
for this orientation pattern is in fact an astronomical one. In this context, an explanation has been
proposed that inter-cardinal orientation arose from the wish to “mediate” between the meridian
alignment to the north and the direction orthogonal to the Nile (Shaltout, Belmonte and Fekri
2007b). According to this idea, the Egy ptian architects would have first determined a meridian
line by making astronomical observations of circumpolar stars and then obtained the azimuth of
the main axis of the monuments by rotating this direction by 45° or 135°. Since the idea that the
Egy ptian temples were mainly oriented towards the Nile tends to be overplay ed in Egy ptological
literature, the hy pothesis is also a workaround to reconcile Nile orientation with the astronomical
one.5 In my view, however, this explanation is too far from what we know about the ancient
Egy ptian architect’s way of thinking. As we shall soon see, their messages were quite explicit
(although sometimes difficult to read today ) both in topographical orientations – for instance to
Heliopolis, or indeed to the Nile – and in astronomical ones. As a matter of fact, another, far
more natural astronomical interpretation exists.

Inter-cardinal directions are out of the solar and lunar ranges at all latitudes in Egy pt, so that
neither the sun nor the moon can (or could) ever rise or set along one of these directions.
However, an important celestial object which has suitable azimuths actually exists, and it is our
galaxy, the Milky Way. To countless cultures, its shape and diffuse luminosity recalled the image
of a celestial river slowly flowing like an arc in the sky (Krupp 1997), to the extent that for the
Incas the water flowing along the sacred river, the Urubamba, was the same as that flowing in the
sky (Urton 1982; Magli 2005b). Egy pt is certainly no exception. The importance of the Milky
Way in the Egy ptian firmament is clear from the Py ramid Texts, and many of its stars were
definitely observed and counted among the so-called Decans, the stars used to divide the hours of
the night (see Section 2.2 in Box 2). Of course, precession (Section 1.4 in Box 1) changes the
rising and setting positions of each single star of the Milky Way – and therefore of the Milky Way
itself. The brightest, southern part of our galaxy, however – containing the constellations we call
Centaurus and Crux, with the brilliant stars Rigil Kent, Hadar and Acrux – can be thought of as a
band approximately 10°–12° degrees wide which roughly maintained its presence at the inter-
cardinal azimuths (rising near 135° and setting near 225°, with a flat horizon) throughout the whole
of the ancient Egy ptian kingdoms (Magli 2011b). In addition, a brilliant part of the northern stars
of the Milky Way (in particular, Cy gnus, with the bright star Deneb) rose and set at the two
complementary azimuths (around 45° and around 225°), sharing similar azimuths also with the
very bright star Vega (Tables A.1 and A.2). Two particularly impressive examples of orientation
to the Milky Way we shall meet in this book are the axis connecting Heliopolis with the south-east
corner of the Giza py ramids and the processional path (later Alley of the Sphinxes) connecting
Karnak and Luxor, both oriented ~225° but separated in time by about 1000 y ears.

In both cases, the brightest part of the Milky Way was seen to set spectacularly, behind the
Great Py ramid in the first case and behind the py lon of the Luxor temple in the second.

1.4 The first sacred landscape of ancient Egypt

The roy al necropolis at Aby dos is the first example of a sacred space, or sacred landscape, that
we encounter in this book (Figure 1.2).
1.2. The sacred landscape at Aby dos: (1) roy al enclosures; (2) processional way ; (3) roy al
tombs of the first dy nasty ; (4) wadi; (5) mountain of Anubis; (6) Senwosret III tomb (a) and
temple (b); (7) Ahmose tomb (a) and py ramid (b).

The concept of sacred landscape is extremely simple and natural. It is so natural for us as
human beings that we risk not recognising its presence, as Mircea Eliade (Eliade 1959, 1971) said.
To understand it, let us start – as will be the case several times in this book – from a trivial fact.

Space belongs to man. Man’s space is, however, a flat space: the surface of the earth. It is by
nature homogeneous and indifferent to human thoughts and feelings, something that may strike
we human beings as being disagreeable. The possibilities of breaking away from this uniformity
come from conspicuous natural features of the landscape, such as rocks, rivers, mountains and so
on, or from human-made features. Another possibility is to search for a “third dimension”. On
one hand, we have caves, giving access to an underground dimension. On the other, of course, we
have the sky. As a consequence, the celestial realms have been watched, feared, exploited,
studied and finally framed together with human space in the worldview of every human
civilisation: cosmos.

Cosmos gives order, and order transforms space into sacred space. First of all, cosmos
provides orientation. A privileged axis, the axis mundi, springs naturally from the fact that the
stars rotate around the celestial pole (Rappenglueck 1999). It is the axis of the world that allows
the existence of directions, the “breaking” of spatial homogeneity. The direction determined at
the horizon by projecting the axis is naturally privileged for the simple reason that any one is able
to determine it. This privileged direction is associated with the stars and the pole, but also with the
sun at culmination to the south. The orthogonal, east to west direction can be found connecting the
rising and setting points of the sun or of a star over a flat horizon, for instance a levelled wall. In
short, the “world of man” is naturally divided into four equal quarters in accordance with the
celestial cy cles. As a result of this “cosmisation” process, the space itself becomes ordered, a
place which has a centre and which has been founded and prepared for human life: space
becomes sacred space. The historian of religion Mircea Eliade (Eliade 1959) was probably the
first to understand this mechanism in detail. He wrote: “The Experience of Sacred Space makes
possible the founding of the world: where the sacred manifests itself in space, the real unveils
itself, the world comes into existence.”

Power is of course deeply tied up with the cosmos, and so each sacred space, or sacred
landscape, is also a landscape of power. In a sense, the construction of a “cosmovision” is also the
foundation of temporal order; that is, power. Indeed, any one who was engaged in activities such
as tracking the annual solar cy cle, monitoring the cy cles of the night stars or establishing the
cardinal axes and their centre wielded enormous power (from an ethnographic point of view, the
holder of such “spiritual” power is the shaman, custodian of celestial things and mediator between
the human and the divine).

Order also derives from the connection between the celestial cy cles and those of the earth: the
flow of time. The cy cle of the sun, in particular, is tied up with that of the seasons, hence the
fertilisation of the earth and the “rebirth” of plants and fruit. Understanding and framing the flow
of time and giving it order also means that time has been “founded” and prepared for human life:
time becomes sacred time.

Rebirth, in particular, was associated by several cultures with the winter solstice, when the
rising sun at the horizon stops moving to the south and the length of day light stops decreasing. This
is not, however, the case with Early Dy nastic Egy pt, when the Egy ptian calendar was formulated
(see Section 2.1 of Box 2). Indeed, in the arid climate of Egy pt, the natural phenomenon that
allowed the “rebirth” of the crops was the inundation of the Nile. This is a gradual phenomenon
but usually begins at the end of June. Therefore, it is rather the summer solstice which was
identified as the harbinger of the renewal, the main standstill of the celestial cy cle; at that time
also, the concomitance with the heliacal rising of Sirius was noted.
 Once the cosmic order was established and way s to measure it devised, the need to control its
correct, cy clic evolution arose. Here, monumental architecture comes into play. It is indeed with
the human-made, modelled features of the sacred landscape – temples, tombs or even entire
towns – that the sacred is sy mbolised and, in a sense, controlled. A sacred place is thus also a
point of contact, a place where a hierophany – an explicit manifestation of the divine – occurs. In
the Old Kingdom, the sacred space was to be a sort of “exclusive” to the king, the increasing size
and perfection of his tomb being a reflection of his power. Starting from the Middle Kingdom,
however, the “divine” temples would acquire importance as phy sical residences of the gods. In
both cases, hierophanies remained fundamental in lending order, and power, to landscapes.

Since sacred space was bound up with the divine nature of the king, the sacred landscapes in
Egy pt were also funerary landscapes, for they were connected with the Pharaoh’s afterlife. In the
Egy ptian conception in particular, the places to the west, where the sun sets and begins a perilous
journey into the hours of the night, were associated from very early times with places of death,
and indeed it is on the west bank of the Nile that some of the most spectacular and complex
conceptual landscapes of humanity were devised and constructed.

As mentioned, the sacred landscape of the roy al necropolis at Aby dos is the first in
chronological order. Like any sacred landscape, it is an ordered one; as we already know, order is
based here on inter-cardinal orientation (Figure 1.3). Furthermore, a strict north to south
directionality informs the whole space. We can more easily follow it by considering the case of
Khasekhemwy, because he is the only king whose enclosure is still standing (for a reason we shall
try to understand in Chapter 2). The main elements of the complex are thus seen to be, from
north to south, the enclosure, a processional pathway, the roy al tomb, a wadi, and a hill to the east
of the wadi. The cultural landscape thus arises from an interplay between natural and human-
made elements (Richards 1999). The human-made part of the Khasekhemwy complex is made
up (going from north to south) of the huge funerary enclosure, which denotes the presence of the
king’s tomb and was probably devoted to rites in honour of the deceased; a processional route
running roughly along the meridian for some 1.5 kilometres leading to the tomb, probably used
by the king’s funeral cortège (and, in later times, crossed by scores of pilgrims visiting Osiris’
tomb); and finally the king’s burial place, nesting in the neat rows of the necropolis and perhaps
signalled by a stela or a low mound.
1.3. The roy al enclosures (left) and the corresponding roy al tombs (right) at Aby dos.
Monuments in chronological order (two enclosures are anony mous): (1) Narmer; (2) Aha; (3)
Djer; (4) Djet; (5) Merneith; (6) Den; (7) Anedjib; (8) Semerkhet; (9) Qa’a – (A) Peribsen, (B)
Khasekhemwy .

To the southern horizon of the necropolis, we have the natural elements. These are a huge wadi
opening into the Umm el Qaab bay, and a prominent cliff rising to the east of the wadi. The role
of both is sy mbolic; the wadi was a sort of “mouth of the afterworld” and, together with the cliff,
was connected with the sy mbolic hierogly ph -djew . This sign in fact represents two paired
peaks and a wadi in between. It is usually translated as “mountain”, although of course there are
no natural mountains in the Nile Valley but only the bluffs of the desert ridges, crossed by wadis.
The sign is extremely ancient, as it appears already in the seals found in the predy nastic tomb U-
j at Umm el Qaab, where a “King Elephant mountain” is mentioned (Drey er 1998). Its
connection with the afterlife and, in particular, with Aby dos is clear. Indeed, it appears explicitly
in the Aby dos name, which was -abw-djew, and in curious ritual objects (called Osiris’
reliquary ) associated with the Aby dos sacred center. Later, in the Middle Kingdom, it was to give
the name to the Aby dos necropolis of King Senwosret III (located under the hills to the south of
the ancient cemetery ), which was called -djew-Inpw, “Mountain of Anubis”, Anubis being
the jackal god associated with mummification (Wegner 2007a). Finally, in the New Kingdom, in
the funerary text called Book of the Gates, the afterworld would be entered specifically from a
gate located between a double “mountain of the west”.

As far as the Old Kingdom is concerned, we shall soon see how deeply this sy mbol was linked
to nothing less than the two most immense architectural projects humans have ever dared to
conceive.

Box 1. The apparent motion of the celestial bodies in the sky

1.1 Celestial coordinates

The earth rotates on its axis in 24 hours, and moves on an ellipse, with the sun at one
focus of it, completing a revolution in 365 day s, 5 hours and 49 minutes. As a result
of the earth’s motion, all celestial objects are seen as moving by an observer on the
earth’s surface. To understand this motion, it is essential to visualise the plane on
which the earth moves around the sun, the ecliptic. The earth’s axis is not
perpendicular to the ecliptic but inclined about 23½° with respect to it, an inclination
– called obliquity – which has only a very slow variation over the course of
millennia. The prolongation of the earth’s axis onto the celestial sphere individuates
a point in the sky : the north celestial pole (or the south pole, depending on the
hemisphere the observer is in; but Egy pt is in the northern one). Since the earth
revolves on its axis, we see all celestial objects as rotating around the celestial pole.

To describe the position of a celestial object, a sy stem of coordinates is needed.

The most natural one can be defined as follows. The perpendicular from celestial
north to the horizon defines the point we call geographical north. Once geographical
north is known, two coordinates, called azimuth and altitude, can be determined. To
obtain these for a given point P, imagine tracing the vertical plane which passes
through this point. This plane intersects the horizon of the observer at a point A; the
azimuth is the angle between north and point A on the horizon, counting positively
from north to east, and the altitude is the angle measured on the vertical circle from
A to P. In particular, the maximal altitude – or culmination – is reached by a star
when it passes the celestial meridian (the ideal projection of the observer’s
meridian into the sky ). A second sy stem of coordinates is also very useful; it can be
understood quite easily if one imagines measuring the latitude and longitude of a
point on the celestial sphere. The angular distance of the point from the celestial
equator “towards” the pole gives the analogue of the latitude and is called
declination; the analogue of the longitude is called right ascension.

1.2 The sun

The celestial movement we are most familiar with is that of our star, the sun. The
sun rises at a certain point on the eastern horizon, describes an arc in the sky
culminating at local noon, and sets at a certain point on the western horizon. The
azimuths of the rising and setting points vary each day, following a cy cle between
two standstills: a northernmost azimuth, which corresponds to the day of the
summer solstice, and a southernmost one, corresponding to the winter solstice (Box
Figure 1.1). At these two standstills, the sun rises only once a y ear: these are the
day s of maximal and minimal day light time and of maximal and minimal height of
the sun at culmination, respectively (since the tropic passes to the south of Aswan,
in Egy pt the sun never passes the zenith of an observer). At all other points in
between the solstices, the sun rises twice a y ear. In particular, the sun crosses the
celestial equator twice a y ear and therefore has vanishing declination; these day s
are termed the spring equinox and the autumn equinox. The motion of the sun
considered as a point at the horizon and measured throughout the y ear is very slow
around the solstices and very fast around the equinoxes.

Box 1.1. The azimuths of the sun at rising and setting for the latitudes of Egy pt.
(Cairo is used here as an example.)

1.3 The stars

Although there are billions of stars in the universe, we can see only a few thousand
of them with the naked ey e. The brightness of a star is measured in terms of
magnitude: the lower the magnitude, the brighter the star. By convention, each star
is given a name consisting of a progressive Greek letter followed by the name (or
abbreviation of it) of the corresponding constellation. A great number of stars,
however, have their own individual names. Among them, there are a few dozen
which are exceptionally bright; the five most brilliant are, in decreasing order,
Sirius, Canopus, Rigil Kent, Arcturus and Vega.

The motion of the stars (Box Figure 1.2) is simpler than that of the sun. The
celestial vault is in fact rigid; that is, as seen from the Earth, the relative distance
between the stars remains constant (only a few break this rule – Sirius, for example
– in that they have a significant motion with respect to the others, called proper
motion; however, their movement is in any case extremely slow in comparison
with the human life span). The stars situated sufficiently near the pole never set and
are termed circumpolar; they are visible for the whole night each night of the y ear.
Stars which rise and set sufficiently near the north may be visible for a certain time
each night of the y ear. The stars sufficiently near the opposite pole never rise and
hence are never visible. All other stars have a period of conjunction with the sun
during which they are invisible. Every day, stars rise a little earlier, so this period
ends with the star rising just before the sun and becoming visible again, for a brief
moment. This phenomenon is called heliacal rising. The day after heliacal rising,
the star will be visible a little longer, the next day a little longer than that, and so on,
as the time of rising starts to move towards the time of sunset. On a certain day of
the y ear, the rising is no longer visible, as the star is already seen at a certain height
when the sun sets. The setting time moves towards the hours of sunset up to the final
day, when the star can only be seen to set, shortly after sunset. This is called
heliacal setting. The cy cle of visibility /invisibility then resumes. This cy cle can be
defined in strict astronomical terms, but in practice it is very difficult to identify a
specific day of the y ear for the heliacal rising of a star, and it is better to think
alway s in terms of a span of a few day s (I shall not dwell here on the phy sical
effects – such as parallax and atmospheric refraction – which affect the
observation of the stars; for a complete discussion, see Aveni 2001).
Box 1.2. The motion of the stars in the sky as seen by an observer at Egy pt’s
latitudes.

1.4 Precession

Another motion of the earth, besides the daily rotation, which influences the motion
of all stars but is appreciable only over the centuries, is precession. Precession is the
rotation of the earth’s axis around the perpendicular to the ecliptic, which completes
a (almost closed) circle or revolution every 25,776 y ears. Since the sun moves on
the ecliptic, azimuths of the sun are not affected by precession (they vary slightly
over the course of millennia, but due to the variation of the obliquity of the ecliptic
itself). Taking precession into account is, however, essential for reconstructing the
skies as ancient cultures saw them, since it changes – slowly but inexorably – the
declination of all the other stars over the centuries. In particular, the north celestial
pole moves along a circle; in a certain epoch it may or may not pass near the
position of a brilliant star. What we call the “pole star” (Polaris) is actually the star
which the heavenly north pole is near today ; during the Old Kingdom the star
Thuban of the constellation Draco was an acceptable pole star (See Box Figure 1.3
and Box Figure 1.4), while in the Middle Kingdom and New Kingdom no pole star
existed at all (of course, in a few centuries Polaris too will cease to be a pole star).
One of the effects of precession is that it changes the background of the stars where
the sun rises on a fixed day of the solar y ear over millennia; in particular, of
course, this occurs at the spring equinox. From this comes the term “precession of
the equinoxes”, sometimes used as a sy nony m for precession. If, on one hand, this
specific effect might have been noticed by ancient cultures (the most convincing
case is that of India; see Kak 1994, 2000), on the other, there is no clear evidence
that any special significance was attached to it.

Box 1.3. The region of the north celestial pole as seen from Memphis about 2600
BC. The “pole star” is Thuban in the constellation Draco.
Box 1.4. The region of the north celestial pole as seen from Memphis today . The
north celestial pole is close to the familiar star Polaris.
 2 A king who looks at the stars

2.1 From Abydos to Saqqara

Saqqara is the plateau of the west bank of the Nile, south of modern Cairo, which overlooks the
area where the new capital of the kingdom, Memphis, was founded, probably during the first
dy nasty. Aby dos preserved its long-standing tradition of my thical and religious importance, a
result of the presence of both predy nastic and first dy nasty tombs of rulers and kings and also the
temple of the god Khentiamentiu – later Osiris – but rapidly lost its political clout. Memphis had
been fated to be the capital of Egy pt since the early second dy nasty and throughout the whole
Old Kingdom. Subsequently, it experienced periods of renewed importance during the twelfth
dy nasty and under several Pharaohs of the New Kingdom.

The ancient Egy ptians called Memphis the “White Wall”. It was located in a fairly strategic
position, which allowed good control of trade routes between the Nile Delta and Upper Egy pt;
sy mbolic motivations for the choice of the place may also have play ed a role (Love 2006). In
any case, although it is known with certainty that the area where the ancient capital stood was
near the eastern ridge of the Saqqara plateau, the precise location of the Early Dy nastic
settlement has never been found.

The shift of the capital to Memphis is signalled by a corresponding shift of the roy al tombs to
Saqqara (Figure 2.1). Indeed, at Umm el Qaab there is no evidence of roy al tombs for the first
half of the second dy nasty, while three roy al tombs have been unearthed in the Saqqara central
field, south of the Step Py ramid complex. Before discussing them, however, we must touch on a
delicate issue.

2.1. Map of Saqqara (numbering of the monuments is in chronological order): (1) Early
Dy nastic mastabas; (2) Gisr el Mudir and corner of the Ptahhotep enclosure; (3) Djoser Step
Py ramid; (4) py ramid of Sekhemkhet; (5) Mastaba el Faraun; (6) py ramid of Userkaf; (7)
py ramid of Djedkara; (8) py ramid of Unas; (9) py ramid of Teti; (10) py ramid of Pepi I; (11)
py ramid of Merenra; (12) py ramid of Pepi II.

Scattered in a theatrical manner on the ridge of the Saqqara plateau, and therefore forming a
sort of sky line for Early Dy nastic Memphis, are a series of elaborate monuments. They are
usually called mastabas, although their interior structure is more refined than the Old Kingdom
tombs usually sty led thus. Rather, the constructional techniques of these tombs are comparable to
those used in the roy al tombs at Umm el Qaab, and their size is in most cases greater. They are
identified with progressive numbers. The earliest appears to be the one numbered 3357, dated to
the reign of Aha; later, many others were built throughout the first dy nasty. Many such tombs
have special characteristics; for instance, Mastaba 3038 had an eight-step brick structure similar
to a small stepped py ramid, while Mastaba 3504 was surrounded by a sort of bench decorated
with clay models of bulls’ heads adorned with real horns. In most of these tombs, inscribed
materials have been recovered, such as tablets and other objects, which let us assign their
construction to the reign of a specific first dy nasty ruler. In a few of them, names of queens
and/or functionaries also appear. So, to whom do these tombs belong? This problem has been the
subject of substantial debate. Initially, a theory was put forward that the tombs at Umm el Qaab
were actually cenotaphs built by the kings in the holy place of Aby dos, and that the true first
dy nasty roy al tombs were these in Saqqara.

The concept of cenotaph will accompany us throughout the whole book. Cenotaphs can be
defined as sy mbolic, nonfunctional tombs aimed at ensuring the presence of the deceased king’s
spirit in places considered sacred or powerful (Lehner 1999). The problem is that, although it is
strongly suspected that many important structures and even huge py ramids built in Egy pt were
cenotaphs, few monuments can be assigned to this category with certainty. Among these is the
so-called Bab el Hosan. Discovered intact by Howard Carter on 10 March 1900, it is the cenotaph
of the great king of the eleventh dy nasty Mentuhotep II, located in a chamber at the end of an
underground structure on the terrace of his funerary complex at western Thebes (Chapter 7). In
the chamber were found a seated statue of the king about 2 metres high, completely wrapped in
linen and wearing the red crown of the north, as well as an empty wooden coffin.

The cenotaph theory for the Aby dos tombs is based on the notion that the Saqqara mastabas
are bigger and more elaborate. Objectors to such a theory reply that in Aby dos not only the
tombs but also the enclosures have to be added, thus creating even vaster funerary complexes. As
a consequence, it has been suggested that perhaps the mastabas of Saqqara are the true
cenotaphs. Finally, a sort of consensus was reached that the kings were buried in Aby dos, and that
the Saqqara mastabas are tombs of the elite; that is, they belong to the highest officials of state
administration in Memphis.

Although some names of officials actually appear in the Saqqara mastabas, their architecture
is so sophisticated that this theory looks doubtful. So what are they ? As a matter of fact, in recent
y ears the debate has become heated again (Cervello-Autuori 2002; Morris 2007; O’Connor 2005),
and y et another theory has been proposed, which looks to be the most sound. According to this
theory , the Saqqara mastabas are tombs of the royal family. By constructing the tombs like a stage
set, as a sort of sky line for the ancient capital, the kings assured their presence in the necropolis
with a tangible “piece” of their own blood, although they were buried in the old holy place at
Aby dos with all due piety. So, in a sense, these mastabas are really cenotaphs, but not meant to
house any “soul” of the king – they are simply intended to be a sign of his power in a powerful
place. Archaeoastronomy helps in corroborating this interpretation since, at least in my view, it is
certain that the mastabas cannot be roy al tombs, for the simple reason that they are oriented only
on the base of the topography of the “sky line” above Memphis, without any astronomical
sy mbolism. A funerary chamber which is not sy mbolically oriented cannot be the tomb – real,
sy mbolic, or whatever – of a king of the two lands. On the other hand, as sy mbols of power they
do not need to be sy mbolically oriented.

With the beginning of the second dy nasty, the kings really left Umm el Qaab and moved to
Saqqara for their burials. The three roy al tombs so far identified are located in an area which was
heavily rebuilt by the later Pharaoh Unas, so we cannot rule out that other roy al burials might be
found nearby in the future. Tomb A probably belongs to King Hotepsekhemwy and is the largest.
Its entrance can be seen as a straight tunnel very close to the east side of Unas. The corridor,
carefully cut into the rock, leads to the burial chamber and to an incredible number of storehouses
and subsidiary chambers, some of them still sealed with mudbrick walls and containing wine jars
and animal bones at the moment of discovery at the beginning of the twentieth century. Tomb B,
similar but slightly smaller than tomb A, probably belongs to Ninetjer. It is located to the east of
tomb A and lies under the causeway of the Unas complex and a mastaba tomb of one of his
dignitaries. A further tomb, Tomb C, has recently been discovered underneath the tomb of a New
Kingdom official. The identity of the occupant, however, is uncertain. No superstructure, if it
existed, has survived.

The entrance corridors of these tombs are oriented to true north. We thus encounter at Saqqara
a new orientation pattern: meridian orientation. This pattern will be our companion for almost the
whole book, and it also has – in this case without a shadow of a doubt, as we shall shortly see in
full detail – a strong astronomical connection.

Of course, the presence of the funerary enclosures at Aby dos, associated with burials both for
the kings of the first dy nasty and for the last kings of the second dy nasty, prompts the question as
to whether the rulers buried at Saqqara in between also built funerary enclosures. As a matter of
fact, the remains of two enigmatic precincts exist to the north-west of the roy al Saqqara tombs.
One, sometimes called the Ptahhotep enclosure due to its proximity to a later tomb of an official
with this name, is located to the west of the Step Py ramid. Only the south-west corner of this
enclosure is recognisable, and it is unclear if the structure was finished – or perhaps erased. The
other is the so-called Gisr el Mudir, a very large rectangular area (650 × 400 metres) delimited
by double-curtain stone walls filled with sand and rubble, astonishingly thick (more than 15
metres). Whatever it was meant to be, the design of this enclosure was probably not rectangular
but had a sort of indentation to the west, so that in plan the monument recalls the hierogly ph -h
(court enclosure, reed shelter), as does the “dry moat” of the Step Py ramid (see Section 2.2).
The Gisr el Mudir has not been studied satisfactorily, but in any case – unlike the Aby dos
enclosures – no subsidiary graves have been found to allow dating by means of pottery or
remains of kings’ seals. Late second dy nasty pottery associated with it has been recovered, but
nothing linking it to the owners of the roy al tombs in Saqqara. Given this situation, and bearing in
mind that King Khasekhemwy is credited in the Palermo Stone with the foundation of a stone
building (y ear 4 of his reign), the most recent investigators of the structure attribute it to this king.
However, the building referred to in the Roy al Annals (called Shelter of the Gods) is, at least in
my view, much more likely to be identified with the “palace” of the Hierakonpolis Fort. Indeed,
the passage in the Roy al Annals mentions, with regard to this building, the ceremony of
foundation called The Stretching of the Cord (see Chapter 3), and a granite door jamb
(unfortunately badly damaged) depicting the king while performing the ceremony has in fact
been found at Hierakonpolis (Engelbach 1934).

On a more general note, I have strong doubts about the Gisr el Mudir monument being from
the second dy nasty. An important factor in interpreting these two structures is in fact orientation.
The visible sides of the Ptahhotep enclosure appear to have been deliberately oriented to the
cardinal points with precision, like the roy al tombs. The Gisr el Mudir is instead oriented ~8° west
of north, as is the third dy nasty complex of Sekhemkhet. As we shall see, this corresponds to a
shift in the orientation pattern which is ty pical of – and limited to – the third dy nasty monuments.
Thus, the Ptahhotep enclosure is probably a second dy nasty monument, while the Gisr el Mudir is
a (perhaps unfinished) monument of the third dy nasty. This idea is confirmed by a set of
geometrical relationships which connect relevant features of these monuments (Swelim 1991). In
particular, it appears that the corner of the Ptahhotep enclosure was used as a handy station to
help survey measurements for the Gisr el Mudir and Djoser’s complex, both of which therefore
must have been constructed later.1

Does the orientation to true north, concomitant with the shift to the second dy nasty and the shift
to Saqqara, also mark a development in funerary ideas and beliefs? We cannot be sure. However,
orientation to true north was related to – and achieved with the help of – the stars close to the north
celestial pole, and a stellar component of the afterlife would shortly appear. A first clue in this
direction comes from the names of the roy al foundations and tombs. Roy al foundations were
“estates” established by each king of the first three dy nasties to support his mortuary cult. Some
of them would last for a considerable time, and Djoser’s would endure up to the end of the New
Kingdom. Each foundation had a name, formulated as a statement about the god Horus and thus
about the king, who was his embodiment on earth. By extension, their names can be given to the
king’s tomb, since the ideological justification for such roy al foundations was clearly divine
kingship. Many such names are known from seal impressions found in roy al and elite tombs of
the period (Kaplony 1963). The earliest is Horus who advances the mountain, from the reign of
Djer, followed by Horus flourishes (probably Djet’s), Merneith’s Horus first of the corporation (of
gods), Anedjib’s Horus star of the corporation, Semerkhet’s Horus holy of the corporation and
Qaa’s Horus the gold one of the corporation. The last three names of the first dy nasty thus use a
standardised formula. At the beginning of the second dy nasty, with the shift to Saqqara, the
formula changes. Hotepsekhemwy indeed called his domain Horus risen as a star. Those of
Nebra and Ninetjer are not known, while the general nonconformity of Peribsen’s reign is
reflected in the unusual name given to his domain, reading something like Boats of the sovereign.
Finally, Khasekhemwy and Djoser return to a stellar epithet: Horus, the star of souls and Horus,
the foremost star of the sky, respectively. Since Djoser’s tomb was also the first py ramid ever
constructed in Egy pt, this name appears in the first row of many lists of the known py ramid’s
names (see, for example, Quirke 2001). However, this unfortunately generated many rumours
about the fact that Djoser’s complex might be identified in some sense with a specific star,
something that, in view of the preceding discussion, looks very unlikely. Rather, these stellar
names show an evolving interest in the stars as destinations of the afterlife, an interest which
becomes abundantly clear with the Djoser complex.

2.2 From mudbrick to stone

The reign of Khasekhemwy marks a restoration of the king’s authority after what must have been
a turbulent period under Peribsen, and also marks the political transition to the third dy nasty. It is
with Khasekhemwy that the extensive use of stone in masonry begins; for instance, in the
construction of the funerary chamber of the king at Umm el Qaab. However, it was with his
successor, Netery het – who will be called here by his much more famous name given to him in
the New Kingdom, Djoser – that a real breakthrough in the history of architecture occurred in
that the passage from mudbrick architecture to stone architecture for the roy al funerary
complexes became definitive. It was Djoser, in fact, who commissioned one of the most famous
complexes of stone buildings in all of human history, the so-called Step Py ramid. An exhaustive
description of this wonderful monument is far bey ond the scope of the present book; however, it is
necessary for us to understand the way it was devised also because its claim to originality has
recently been strengthened by the discovery that it had no recognisable precursor in Aby dos.

From the exterior, Djoser’s complex ( Figure 2.2) presents itself as a huge enclosure
surrounded by a rectangular limestone wall 10.5 metres high and 1645 metres long. The wall is
positioned with the longest sides in an approximately north to south direction (see Section 2.3). It is
built with the double-curtain method, with an inner core and fine limestone casing. The outer
surface of the wall imitates woven mats and is decorated with niches and 14 false doorway s (the
significance of the number 14, if any , remains obscure, although the “numerology ” of the Djoser
complex has given rise to several strange theories). There was only one entrance, located near
the south-east corner, from which a spectacular “colonnade” hall whose columns are partly
sculpted in the masonry gives access to the inner south courty ard. The interior perimeter wall
contains a series of buildings, some of which are “dummies” (purely sy mbolic), while others are
a little more functional. The focus of attention is the first stone py ramid built in Egy pt, made up of
six superimposed terraces which reach a height of about 60 metres and a volume of more than
300,000 cubic metres. The py ramid covers a complex series of rock-cut galleries, which include
Djoser’s burial site. Looking at the eastern side of the py ramid, a curious arrangement of internal
blocks can be seen. It is soon clear that at least three different constructions were superimposed
one atop the other, the signatures of such constructions being readily recognisable in section. In
particular, a portion of stone blocks superimposed on inclined courses is clearly visible. According
to many scholars, the number of these stages – or rather, different buildings – was not three but as
many as six (Lauer 1936, 1962). At any rate, there is no doubt that the tomb was initially a one-
step building, which was enlarged and transformed into a stepped monument. What precisely the
initial building was is unclear, since it was squared, while standard mastabas were rectangular in
plan, so one might speculate that the project was never modified but followed a precise plan of
development. Whatever the truth, the py ramidal form enters into the history of Egy ptian
architecture for the first time. The py ramid would certainly acquire solar sy mbolism, but as far
as the Step Py ramid is concerned, a reasonably simple explanation seems to be that the objective
of the king was to stress the visibility of the monument, and this involved coming up with a new
solution for increasing the height: the step structure. As a matter of fact, visibility was assured
from a long distance, and even today the unmistakable silhouette of Djoser’s tomb is visible, on
clear day s, from the Abu Roash hills to the north as well as from the area of ancient Memphis to
the east. There is the distinct possibility that the py ramid also represented a “sty lised primeval
mound”, but this idea is not backed up by previous funerary architecture.
2.2. The main elements of Djoser’s complex: (1) Step Py ramid; (2) south tomb; (3) Heb-sed
court; (4) pavilions; (5) Serdab court and “northern temple”.

The underground chambers and corridors are quite complicated, with scores of galleries –
some of them may actually be older and pertain to an already existing roy al tomb – which were
found full of thousands of stone vessels. Most such objects were already old in Djoser’s time,
bearing the seals of first dy nasty kings. Djoser’s complex was thus also a sort of historical
repository, besides acting as a “new vocabulary ” of architectural archety pes to be handed down
to future generations.

The funerary chamber of Djoser, entirely built of granite, was located at the lower end of a
huge shaft. It was accessed by a circular opening on the ceiling, closed with a granite drum. The
ceilings were first covered with stars designed with the standard five-pointed hierogly ph , as
can be seen from fallen blocks scattered around (this kind of ceiling would be revived in the fifth
dy nasty ). In the galleries leading to the burial chamber, panels show the king running or standing
during the Sed festival, an event which also recurs obsessively in other parts of the complex.
 The Sed, or Heb-Sed, festival was a ritual aimed at the sy mbolic renovation of roy al powers,
both human and divine, and as such it was also connected with the king’s afterlife. Unfortunately,
we do not have a clear understanding of the ritual’s details, in spite of the fact that it maintained its
importance throughout the history of Egy pt. In any case, it appears that the first such festival was
usually held by the king after as many as 30 y ears of reign. After the first festival, however,
apparently the king had to celebrate another every three y ears. Although these rules were
sometimes broken or overlooked, their timing clearly raises the first my stery about the festival –
where such a long first period and such comparatively short subsequent periods had their origin –
something we simply do not know and which does not seem to be connected with any
recognisable astronomical cy cle. From what can be inferred from depictions, the rite itself
entailed the construction of specific structures and wooden shrines where the king could be
worshipped and where he could change dress in order to appear in different forms. A “run” along
a circuit sy mbolising the reunited country was another important part of the ritual, and sometimes
the kings are depicted running together with the Apis bull, the most important of the sacred
animals worshipped in Egy pt, associated with the god of Memphis, Ptah. (Ptah was a very
ancient creator god associated with craftsmanship; his bull was considered to be a manifestation
of the Pharaoh’s power, engendering strength and fertility .)

In the Step Py ramid complex, the Sed festival is alluded to in the structures of the southern
courty ard. These structures have been heavily restored, and I must confess that some of the
restorations strike me as somewhat dubious. In any case, the area consists of a rectangular court
flanked by chapels. Its connection with the Sed seems likely, as this area looks like a stone replica
of the structures built for the festival, as we know from the iconography. In the northernmost part,
another series of similar chapels has been found. We thus start encountering here a ty pical aspect
of the Djoser tomb: “duality ”. It is the repetition of similar structures, probably connected with
the Pharaohs’ obsession with being king of Upper and Lower Egy pt. Duality becomes blatant in
the section comprising the two buildings, the so-called north and south pavilions. They were
probably related to the two patron deities of the two lands and sy mbolised the northern and
southern parts of the reign. Like the chapels in the sed court, here also the buildings are mostly
nonfunctional; they are quite similar, but in the northern one there is an underground gallery
accessed from a shaft in the floor. Finally, the duality becomes quite astounding when one
realises that a copy of the tomb of the Pharaoh – but deprived of a py ramid – is present as well:
the so-called south tomb.

The south tomb, protected on the exterior by a frieze of cobras and located to the south of the
py ramid, is entered using a staircase. About halfway down, a room contained jars and the pieces
of a wooden baldachin. On the meridian of the centre of the py ramid, a huge shaft leads down to
the burial chamber, very similar to that of the py ramid and made of pink granite too, but smaller.
A copy of the gallery with panels representing the king is also present. In fact, the south tomb is
practically finished, and it is likely that it was completed even before the underground galleries of
the py ramid. But what was its function? The chamber is too small for a coffin, and consequently
several theories have been put forward. Among them, the most feasible is that the south tomb was
meant as a cenotaph for the king’s Ka, and thus housed a “double” of the Pharaoh in the form of a
statue.

The wall of the Step Py ramid complex was surrounded, more or less like a medieval castle, by
a huge trench. This “dry moat” is today filled and partly overbuilt by other monuments, but has
been documented archaeologically at a few points (Swelim 1991). If it was actually completed,
as satellite images seem to show, it was enormous, 750 × 600 metres, and in some parts as wide
as 40 metres and as deep as 26 metres. Its perimeter is not closed but resembles, like the Gisr el
Mudir, the hierogly phic sign representing a closed, battlemented precinct with two partly
overlapping sides. This “dry moat” might be the first example of a winding, sy mbolic structure
related to the afterworld, as would the interior apartments of many Middle Kingdom py ramids
later on (of course, a huge amount of material was quarried away from the moat and likely used
in the construction of the Djoser complex, so that the moat might also have had a more prosaic
functional purpose).

It is customary to assign the construction of the Step Py ramid (Photo 2.1) to an individual
called Imhotep. Certainly he was, among other titles, overseer of the works of the king and high
priest of Heliopolis. Unfortunately, his tomb, which logic dictates should not be far from Djoser’s,
has never been found. Therefore, we know little about his life, although a millenarian tradition
identifies him also as a phy sician, and in much later times his figure was worshipped as a patron
of healing. It is apparent that Imhotep, or whoever designed the Step Py ramid complex for him,
decided to “translate” a series of ancient architectural forms, which were usually executed with
perishable materials, into an eternal language: stone (actually, a combination of “archaism and
innovation” which was to recur several times in Egy ptian history ). The motivations behind these
choices are a difficult nut to crack. To try to gain a better understanding, we must add to ancient
architectural ideas the way in which they were realised and try to tie this in with corresponding
religious beliefs governing the Pharaoh’s afterworld.
Photo 2.1. Saqqara. The Step Py ramid of Djoser.

I will start from a trivial observation. For the first time in roy al funerary architecture, what is
plainly visible in the Djoser complex was also intended to exist perhaps in eternity, but certainly
in the immediate future and bey ond. On the contrary, the roy al complexes in Aby dos comprised
the “eternal” – but invisible – tomb and the visible, but ephemeral, enclosures. It is no coincidence
that Djoser did not order the destruction of the Shunet el Zebib, thereby allowing us to appreciate
this wonderful monument. Djoser decided to live in eternity together with his own monument, and
let the same fate be shared by the monument to his father.

The way in which the Djoser complex was bequeathed to eternity is quite complicated. We
might in fact say that the complex of the Step Py ramid, rather than being built, was progressively
sculpted in stone. Not only the py ramid itself was built in stages but also the other buildings of the
complex. For instance, the 1680 niches in the exterior walls were carved into the faces of the
already laid masonry. The complex thus enjoy ed a kind of “real life”, a sort of ageing, during
which important structures were first built and then transformed and/or partly buried directly by
their constructors. This happened, in particular, for the “dummy ” structures, those parts of the
complex which were not functional but only sy mbolic, such as the south tomb and the pavilions.
The submerging of dummy buildings must have been a way of sending them to the underworld.
Perhaps this was the new way, a substitute for the erasure of the roy al funerary enclosures. The
same might apply also to the envelopment of the first structure into the nucleus of the py ramid,
which resembles a sy mbolic operation assimilating the building into a fetish, in a sense similar to
what happened among the May a, where subsequent rebuilding of temples included their previous
stages as fetishes.

As far as the connection of the complex with sky -related notions about the afterlife is
concerned, the best place to visit is the north court. Here, a strange, small, apparently odd building
contains the answers we are searching for. Before discussing it, however, it is advisable to make a
detour some 300 metres to the south-west and some 300 y ears later.

2.3 The Pyramid Tex ts and the sky

To the south-west of the Step Py ramid complex lies the complex of King Unas, which was
constructed about three centuries later. We shall discuss the Unas project in Chapter 6. Here,
however, it is worth making an advance visit to the king’s burial chambers.

The underground structure of the Unas py ramid conforms to what will be a standardised
scheme: a descending corridor is followed by a horizontal passage, originally closed by granite
slabs. The passage opens into an antechamber, with a storeroom to the east and the burial
chamber to the west. A big surprise, however, awaits the newcomer, especially if she or he is
used to the ominous dumbness of the walls of all the previous py ramids of the fourth and fifth
dy nasties, where no text has ever been found. Here, on the walls of the burial chamber, of the
antechamber and of a section of the horizontal passage, carefully etched columns of hierogly ph
texts are meticulously inscribed. Even to people not acquainted with hierogly ph writings, the
obsessive repetition of the cartouche of the king and the frequency of the five-dot star sy mbol
strike the ey e.

These are among the most ancient religious texts known, and the earliest example known
among the Egy ptian funerary texts: the so-called Py ramid Texts (PT; see Photo 2.2). They are
of fundamental importance in understanding not just the Egy ptian religion but also many key
aspects of monumental architecture and its relationship with astronomy and landscape.
Photo 2.2. Saqqara. Py ramid Texts carved on the walls in the antechamber of the Teti
py ramid.

The Py ramid Texts consist of “spells” or “utterances”, different parts of which are present in
the different known sources (the texts are known from the Old Kingdom roy al py ramids of Unas,
Teti, Pepi I, Merenra I and Pepi II, and in those of the queens Wedjebten, Neith and Iput). The
first problem is dating. Although the texts first appear in the py ramid of Unas, the fact that they
do not make up an organic corpus, but rather a loose collection of disparate discourses, most likely
indicates that the material already dated from an earlier period, when it was transcribed. There is
therefore a wide consensus about an earlier dating for the texts, although establishing how far
back they go is problematic.

The Py ramid Texts are numbered according to their position, starting from the back wall of the
funerary chamber. It is not clear in which order they should be read, but it is clear that they
should be read, since columns begin with “Words to be declaimed”. We have no way of knowing
whether there were rituals to be performed simultaneously and what form such rituals might
have taken. There is no doubt, however, that the placement of the spells on the walls and the way
in which they are carved is not random: the texts “move” from inside the tomb outwards (Barta
1981; Baines 2004). We can imagine Unas’ Ba moving outside from the burial chamber,
pronouncing the appropriate spells at each step. The topography of the apartment roughly mimics
that of the afterworld described in the texts: the Osiris realm – the Duat, a complex place
endowed with guardians, water regions and marshy lands – is the burial chamber, while the
antechamber serves as Akhet, a transitional region between the Duat and the sky, just below the
horizon.

Besides rituals, the spells also contain my ths and invocations relating to the gods; furthermore,
there are magical protections against dangerous beings, and “glorifications” – that is, spells aimed
at assuring the “rebirth” of the deceased – which are the most interesting for us. The main
“subject” of the glorification texts is in fact the resurrection of the king and his ascent to the
afterlife. In this connection, the sky is cited continuously as a place of frenzied activity, and
various crowded areas of it are considered to be of great importance. Most significantly, there
are distinct destinations for being reborn. The journey is not easy, given that there are a number
of obstacles to be overcome, especially “doors”, often guarded by sentinels, which the deceased
can only pass through by correctly answering certain questions. The topography of the
afterworld is thus quite complicated, with multiple directions and corresponding destinations. Let
us examine them in some detail.

First of all, there is the region of imperishable stars which is described as follows (all
translations of the Py ramid Texts in the present book are taken from Faulkner 1998):
 I will cross to that side on which are the Imperishable Stars, that I may be among them. (PT
520, §1223)

The doors of the sky are opened for y ou, the doors of the firmament are thrown open for
y ou, (even) those which keep out the plebs. The Mooring post cries to y ou, the sun-folk call to
y ou, the Imperishable Stars wait on y ou.

(PT 463, §876)

What could the adjective “imperishable” as applied to a star possibly mean? To understand
what imperishable stars are, we start from a thing called Meskhetyu:

The Enneads have cleansed themselves for me in Meskhety u, the imperishable. My house in
the sky will not perish, my throne on earth will not perish.

(PT 302, §458)

Meskhety u is usually represented as a bull’s foreleg, a sy mbol which is often used also as
determinative (that is, a nonphonetic hierogly ph used to specify or explain the meanings of a
word) together with a star. From the conclusive evidence we have, there is no doubt that
Meskhety u was the constellation we call Ursa Major or – to be precise – the asterism of the
Plough or Big Dipper, made up of seven brilliant stars. Indeed it is relatively easy to imagine, as
the Egy ptians did, these seven stars arranged at the border of the bull’s foreleg . Why was
the Big Dipper “imperishable”? At the latitudes of Egy pt in the third millennium BC, this
constellation was (with a flat horizon) circumpolar; that is, none of its stars rose or set. From this
observation derives the standard interpretation, which I fully endorse here, that the imperishable
stars coincide with the circumpolar ones.

Among the circumpolar stars, and besides Meskhety u, there were two other fundamental
constellations in the northern skies, those constellations we call Ursa Minor and Draco. Draco was
particularly important during the Old Kingdom because it was at that time – due to precession –
hosting the north celestial pole, with a star, Thuban (alpha Draconis) very close to it. From later
documents, we know that the ancient Egy ptians saw in Draco (or perhaps in a slightly wider zone
around the pole) a female hippopotamus. She is usually depicted holding a post, which is perhaps
the Mooring Post cited in the Py ramid Texts and corresponds to the constellation Bootes and, in
particular, to the brilliant star Arcturus of the northern sky. As far as Ursa Minor is concerned, the
form of the Little Dipper is quite similar to that of the Big Dipper, and the Egy ptians had a way of
indicating the two as similar objects by referring to them as two celestial adzes (Figure 2.3).
There is hardly any doubt that these “adzes” had a terrestrial counterpart in the instruments used
by the priests in the Opening of the Mouth ritual. Therefore, this ceremony contained sy mbols of
rebirth which were replicas of realms of the afterworld. A fact worth noting in this context is that
sometimes the “adzes” are described as being made of iron:

I split open y our mouth for y ou with the adze of iron which split open the mouths of the gods.
O Horus, open the mouth of this King!

(PT 21, §13)

2.3. The constellations close to the north celestial pole as seen from the area of Memphis in the
twenty -sixth century BC. The pole is very close to a star of Draco, Thuban, and the two “adzes” –
Ursa Major and Ursa Minor – are circumpolar.

Just as the adze – a replica of the celestial one – is made of iron, so too the king’s bones are
iron, and his limbs are the stars:

This King ascended when y ou ascended, Osiris; his word and his double are bound for the
sky , the King’s bones are iron and the King’s members are the Imperishable Stars.

(PT 684, §2051)

The connection of iron with the sky may appear puzzling at a first glance. However, the iron
alluded to here is of meteoritic origin: it was not extracted but directly available in small quantities
because it had fallen to Earth – from the sky – in the form of iron meteorites. Without doubt the
arrival of these rare objects, in flames and accompanied by a thunderous boom, was interpreted
as a celestial message; it may be that the whole celestial sphere was thought to be made of the
same material as well.

A second celestial area which the king will reach is closer to the south and therefore inhabited
by stars that rise and set. And indeed also the king, as a star, is destined to rise and set there:

King, y ou are this great star, the companion of Orion, who traverses the sky with Orion,
navigates the Netherworld with Osiris; y ou ascend from the east of the sky , being renewed at
y our due season and rejuvenated at y our due time. (PT 466, §882)

You will regularly ascend with Orion from the eastern region of the sky, y ou will regularly
descend with Orion into the western region of the sky, y our third is Sirius, pure of thrones, it
is she who will guide both of y ou in the goodly roads which are in the sky in the Field of
Rushes.

(PT 442, §§821–822)

Here the stars of Orion, the Egy ptian’s Sah, and the most brilliant star of the firmament, Sirius,
Sopdet of the Egy ptians (or Sothis in Greek), are mentioned. Orion is depicted as a celestial
dimension of Osiris, and Sirius as his sister Isis. More difficult to decode is the fact that the king
becomes a star, a “Great Star” who traverses the sky with Orion. An important star which is
“close” to Orion is Aldebaran, the brightest star of Taurus, sometimes represented as being
supported by Orion’s right hand in later depictions. Yet it is also true that no mention of the
brightest star of the Egy ptian sky after Sirius, Canopus, seems to occur. Canopus did not rise
“with” Orion, but its heliacal setting occurred at a date included between that of the “lower”
bright star of Orion, Rigel, and the “upper” one, Betelgeuse, and some verses about these “stars of
the south” almost certainly refer to their heliacal setting. For example:

Orion is swallowed up by the Netherworld, Pure and living in the horizon. Sirius is swallowed
up by the Netherworld, Pure and living in the horizon. I am swallowed up by the
Netherworld, Pure and living in the horizon.

(PT 216, §151)

Finally, but no less important, there is the “solar” component of rebirth. The king joins Ra-
Atum (the creator version of the sun god) on the sun boat, becomes the “lord of the four pillars”
(that is, of the four cardinal points), and they cross the sky together:

Ra Atum, this King comes to y ou, an imperishable spirit, lord of the affairs of the place of
the four pillars; y our son comes to y ou, this King comes to y ou. May y ou traverse the sky,
being united in the darkness; may y ou rise in the horizon, in the place where it is well with
y ou.

(PT 217, §152)

Images of this kind, where the Ba of the death is assimilated into the sun, unites with Osiris at
night and acquires the ability to be reborn at dawn, were to dominate theology and funerary
beliefs in Egy pt for millennia.

Several other points are worth making with regard to the geography and the inhabitants of the
afterworld. In particular, the topography of the Py ramid Texts is completed by a “Winding
Waterway ” crossing the sky, which can be “flooded”, and by two regions called the “Field of
Offerings” and “Field of Reeds”. Clearly, a mirror image of the Nile landscape is perceptible
here, and I share the views of many who are convinced that the celestial waterway must be the
Milky Way , seen as the “celestial counterpart” of the Nile as well as one of the “personifications”
of Nut, the sky goddess (Wells 1992, 1994; Kozloff 1994). Indeed, as I have already mentioned,
many civilisations – for instance, pre-Columbian – have seen in the Milky Way a celestial river,
which can be used as a “shaman’s path” to the afterworld. Actually, if we look closer at the
Pharaoh’s attributes and his role after death as “head of the souls”, we can see that he shares
many of the “classical” characteristics of a shaman.2
2.4 A king who looks at the stars

Equipped with the Py ramid Texts, which as we have seen were most probably already extant at
Djoser’s time, we can now return to our starting point: the northern court of Djoser’s complex.

At the northern edge and along the north to south axis, a sort of elevated platform is located,
with a large socket perhaps meant for an altar or an obelisk. This might thus have been an altar
dedicated to the sun; however, the first evidence of erection of obelisks as solar sy mbols comes
from the fifth dy nasty. Along the north side of the py ramid, scant remains of what may have
been a first version of a “funerary temple” can also be seen. However, the undoubted focus of
the northern court is a small, apparently insignificant structure. It is a perfectly sealed chamber
of stone masonry, which looks like a box which has been hammered into the terrain at an angle
(actually it is the masonry which was deliberately laid into nonhorizontal courses) (Photo 2.3).

Photo 2.3. Saqqara. The Serdab of the Djoser Step Py ramid complex. Notice the holes which
correspond to the ey es of the statue inside.
 The front of the chamber has two small holes, and I will alway s remember the first time I
peered inside one of the holes and my gaze alighted on the stone ey es of Djoser’s statue, sealed in
the box 4600 y ears ago (the original statue is today in the Cairo Museum, but it has been replaced
with a replica). The box is thus Djoser’s Serdab, the special room devoted to containing the statue
of the deceased, which was magically endowed with “soul”, thanks to the Opening of the Mouth
ceremony. In some books, it is possible to read that the holes allow the statue of Djoser to observe
the rituals performed in his honour. Clearly, this is an unacceptable explanation, for the simple
reason that in such a case there would be no reason to construct the chamber at an angle.
Furthermore, it is easy to check by looking inside that the holes also form an angle, so in no way
can the statue be said to be looking in front of himself. The holes are a sort of sighting device,
aimed at focusing the attention of the spirit of the king residing in the statue (Photo 2.4). But
attention on what?
Photo 2.4. Saqqara. A king who looks at the stars: Djoser’s statue viewed from one of the holes
of the Serdab.

The azimuth of the Serdab follows that of the whole complex, which is not oriented along the
meridian but skewed ~4°. The walls are inclined ~12°, but the holes can be calculated to be of
different inclinations: only one follows the Serdab walls, at about 11½º, while the other is much
steeper, at about 20° (Bauval 2007; Shaltout, Belmonte and Fekri 2007 b). Now, the sky can be
traced back at Saqqara to the time of construction of the Step Py ramid to discover what Djoser’s
ey es were supposed to be looking at. Two points are identified in the sky, with approximate
coordinates (4°, 12°) and (4°, 20°); at a reference date of 2600 BC, two circumpolar stars –
Dubhe in Ursa Major and Kochab in Ursa Minor – were transiting through such points. There is
therefore little doubt that the solution to the Serdab riddle is written in the Py ramid Texts: the holes
were magic channels, allowing contact with the imperishable stars. And indeed, if we imagine the
contour of the “celestial adzes” superimposed on the two constellations, then we can see that
Dubhe and Kochab are actually located at the edges of the two instruments, fated to touch the
mouth of the deceased.

After Djoser, only two third dy nasty kings built a py ramidal complex. The first is located in
Saqqara, to the south-west of Djoser, while the second, for unknown reasons, was constructed at
Zawiet el Arian, slightly to the south of what was at that time an almost virgin site we call Giza.

The complex in Saqqara was built by King Sekhemkhet (Goneim 1957). Like Djoser’s
complex, it was surrounded by an enclosure wall decorated with alternate niches. The py ramid,
probably designed to reach 70 metres, with seven steps, was never finished. The interior
chambers follow a more regular plan than Djoser’s; the burial chamber, unfinished, was found
apparently undisturbed and with the alabaster sarcophagus of the king still sealed with the original
plaster. However, it was empty. The south tomb is also present in this complex, but no mummy
was found there either.

The step py ramid of Zawiet el Arian was probably built by King Khaba, whose name has
been found on several items recovered in tombs surrounding the remains of the py ramid. The
monument, today usually referred to as the “Lay er Py ramid”, is located close to the cultivation.
It is relatively small and was likely designed with five steps, of which some 16 metres remain. Its
substructure is very similar to Sekhemkhet’s, but no signs of a burial – either real or sy mbolic –
were found in it. The reason for the king’s decision to move the building site from Saqqara to this
place 7 kilometres to the north is a real my stery, especially if we consider that a relatively large
space was still available in Saqqara to the north-east and to the east of the Djoser Step Py ramid.

Unfortunately, the Serdab of these py ramids, if it was present, has never been rediscovered.
However, to understand their astronomical connections, we can analy se their orientations, which
are 12° west of north at Zawiet el Arian and 8° west of north for both Sekhemkhet and the Gisr el
Mudir which, as I mentioned before, is almost certainly a third dy nasty building as well (data by
the author). We can now look at the sky over Saqqara and Zawiet el Arian around 2600 BC to see
what happened at these azimuths (Figure 2.3). Once again, we find a connection with the stars
Kochab and Dubhe. Indeed, 12° west corresponds to the maximal elongation of Kochab (in other
words, it is the measure in degrees of the distance of the star from the north celestial pole), while
8° west corresponds quite well to a simultaneous transit of Kochab and Dubhe; that is, the special
configuration of these two stars in which they have both the same azimuth and one is “above” the
other (as we shall see, simultaneous transit at the meridian will be used to orient the py ramids of
the fourth dy nasty ).

In short, we can conclude that the third dy nasty py ramid complexes really were a
concentration of sy mbols, ideas and architectural forms, also from the astronomical point of
view. However, each complex was essentially self-contained. Contrary to what happened at the
roy al necropolis in Aby dos, where rules of the sacred space were codified and applied to all
tombs and enclosures in sequence, and contrary to what was to happen afterwards at Giza, there
is no overall notion of an ordered sacred space transmitted from the third dy nasty monuments.
Looking at an aerial view or map of the Saqqara central field (Figure 2.1), the Gisr el Mudir and
the two third dy nasty py ramid complexes look like docked ships, drifting around their poles. On
the other hand, the later py ramids close to Djoser (of Userkaf and Unas) give order to the
landscape in that they are rigorously oriented to true north and aligned along a north-east to south-
west axis.

Understanding the rules they conformed to and the reasons for the codification of these rules
will be one of our main tasks in the next three chapters.

Box 2. Ancient Egyptian astronomy

2.1 The Egyptian calendar

There has been considerable debate regarding the level of astronomical knowledge
possessed by the ancient Egy ptians, as well as on the structure and origin of
Egy ptian calendars. Many of the misconceptions, which have slowly been cleared
up only in recent y ears, originated in works by Neugebauer (1969, 1975) and
Neugebauer and Parker (1964), whose prejudices about the inferiority of the
Egy ptian astronomers as compared to their Baby lonian contemporaries were to
exert a detrimental influence on all subsequent research in this field for many
y ears (according to Otto Neugebauer, “Egy pt has no place in the history of
mathematical astronomy ”). Fortunately, for the purposes of the present book, it is
not necessary to consider these issues in any detail, as we shall need only the basic
facts.

It is certain that, although many Egy ptian feasts were anchored to lunar dates
and in predy nastic times a lunar calendar perhaps existed, very early on, during the
first two dy nasties, another calendar (usually defined as “civil”) was devised and
adopted (Depuy dt 1997, 2000; Krauss 1992; Spalinger 1996, 2002, 2008). The main
seasonal event in Egy pt was the flooding of the Nile, followed by the cultivation of
the fields and harvesting. Consequently, the y ear was divided into three seasons:
Akhet (flooding), Peret (growing) and Shemu (dry ). Each season was divided into
four months of thirty day s, every month into weeks of ten day s. Five epagomenal
day s were added to make up a fixed total of 365 day s. This calendar, whose origin
is not y et clear, is of course woefully inadequate in terms of representing the true
length of the solar y ear, since it does not include any leap y ears or other
adjustments. As a result, it “slips” almost one day every four y ears compared to
the true length of the solar y ear (365.2425 day s). It is obvious, at least in my view,
that the astronomers who codified the Egy ptian civil calendar were perfectly
aware of its glaring delay with respect to the solar cy cle. But this was simply not a
problem for them: they deliberately adopted a fixed number of day s per y ear, so
my point of view on the origin of the calendar is that they had already estimated
the length of the solar y ear with good approximation as a noninteger number of
day s (probably 365.25) but opted for an “ordered” y ear of fixed length. They
would certainly have noticed that the beginning of the flooding of the Nile, though a
gradual and variable phenomenon, usually occurred in concomitance with two
astronomical events that could be measured with relatively good precision (say a
few day s): the heliacal rising of Sirius, the brightest star and the brightest celestial
object after the sun, the moon and Venus, and the summer solstice. Due to the
peculiar nature of Sirius’s proper motion, the heliacal rising of this star has a
periodicity which is almost exactly equal to the average length of the Julian y ear,
365.25 day s.3 Thus, following the heliacal rising of Sirius was a fairly valid way of
following the solar y ear, since it took many centuries to notice the difference. Of
course, New Year’s Day 1 Akhet 1 – and thus the calendar – began to wander in
relation to the seasons and to the heliacal rising of Sirius as well, the latter
completing a cy cle in about 1461 y ears. (This is an approximate value which
assumes inter alia that observations were alway s made in the same part of the
country. Delicate and fundamental Egy ptological issues such as the consequences
on chronology are not discussed here. For a complete recent account of the
problems related to the Egy ptian calendar, see Belmonte 2009.)

2.2 The star-lore

In ancient times, astronomical observations were made with the naked ey e, aided
by simple – but effective – instruments. In fact, naked-ey e observations are
facilitated if a foresight, with a fork-like shape, is interposed. In Egy pt, it was called
Merkhet. It was a palm stem with a slit at the bottom of one side to be used as a
viewfinder. The instrument was completed by a level with a plumb line used by an
astronomer’s assistant to project celestial points (for instance, positions of
circumpolar stars) at the horizon level.

Egy ptian records of astronomical data have come down to us in the form of the
so-called decanal lists. The Decans were 36 celestial objects (mostly single stars,
but some were small groups of stars in proximity ) whose heliacal rising occurred in
successive Egy ptian weeks. The first Decan was Sirius. The following ones were
chosen from among the celestial objects that have a period of invisibility
comparable to that of Sirius, which means about 70 day s. They were used to
measure the nocturnal time in the following way. On the day of the heliacal rising
of a Decan, the last hour of the night of that day was identified through that Decan.
The day after, the rising of the same star took place a little before dawn, two day s
later even earlier, and so forth. After ten day s, another Decan was designated to
indicate the last hour of the night, and the previous Decan “slipped” into the hour
list, indicating the previous hour with its rising, and so on until the twelfth hour of the
night was reached and the Decan went out of the list. The decanal hours did not all
have the same duration: for the Egy ptians the night, the “period when it is dark”,
alway s lasted 12 hours, but these were of variable length. In the late New Kingdom,
the decanal lists were replaced by “stellar clocks”, known to us thanks to the frescos
on the walls of the tombs of the Pharaohs Ramesses VI, Ramesses VII and
Ramesses IX. Again, these are lists of stars associated (this time at transit) with the
hours of the night.

The decanal lists and the stellar clocks we know from coffins and tomb depictions
are clearly a transposition, in the funerary context, of long-standing, accurate
astronomical observations. We do not have the original data from which the artists
frescoing the coffins of the Middle Kingdom or the tombs in the Valley of the Kings
copied. Of course, the Egy ptian astronomers who compiled the data would have
accurately mapped the sky and measured the heliacal rising and the meridian
transit of many stars over many y ears, in order to be able to select 36 of them for
subdividing the hours of the night. Although the use of the Decans is documented
from the time of the late Old Kingdom, there are hints that regular observation of
bright stars started much earlier, and even that the origin of stellar and solar
astronomy in Egy pt may be traced as far back as the early fourth millennium BC.
These hints are based on astronomical alignments discovered at the site of Nabta
Play a in the Nubian desert (Malville et al. 1998; Brophy and Rosen 2005; Malville
et al. 2007).

As far as constellations are concerned, the Py ramid Texts ( Chapter 2) clearly

show that there already existed in the Old Kingdom the main constellations close to
the north celestial pole (the Big Dipper represented as a bull’s foreleg, the Little
Dipper, and a constellation including Draco, later identified as a standing female
hippopotamus) and that the bright stars of Orion and the star Sirius were identified
with Osiris and Isis, respectively . As far as we know, however, explicit depictions of
“starred” figures representing constellations appear together with the beginning of
pictographic depictions of the underworld in Middle Kingdom coffins, while quite
complete “astronomical guide maps” with many starred figures representing
dozens of constellations (for instance a lion – coinciding with our Leo – and a
goddess with a disk on her head, probably our Virgo) are present in New Kingdom
tombs and temples, the oldest and most famous one being perhaps that present in
the tomb of Hatshepsut’s architect Senenmut; most of these constellations have been
reliably identified (Pogo 1930; Belmonte 2001a; Belmonte and Lull 2006).
 3 The lords of the horizon

3.1 The first Snefru project

Snefru (2575–2551 BC), the first king of the fourth dy nasty, is without doubt the greatest builder in
the history of humanity. During his reign, labourers toiled to move some four million cubic
metres of stone; to make a comparison, for the Channel Tunnel about eight million cubic metres –
but mostly of soil – had to be excavated.

It is uncertain whether Snefru’s predecessor, Huni, was actually his father, so the dy nasty
changeover may not have reflected a true dy nastic one, but what is irrefutable is that Snefru’s
reign is outstanding for its staggering architectural innovation. It was in fact during Snefru’s reign
that step py ramids were abandoned in favour of geometrical py ramids and interior chambers
and corridors were first constructed in the body of these monuments. All of this occurred within
two distinct architectural projects, for a total of five py ramids (Figure 3.1).

3.1. Geographical location of the Snefru py ramids at Seila, Meidum and Dahshur and of the
twelfth dy nasty py ramids at Lisht, Lahun and Hawara.

The first project is located not far from the giant oasis of the Fay oum and consists of a huge
py ramid at Meidum and another smaller py ramid situated at Seila.1 At Meidum we immediately
come face to face with the principal innovations. These changes regard the exterior, since the
building was conceived, or at least adapted, to be the first flat-faced py ramid, and for the first
time the sides were oriented with very fine precision along the cardinal directions. However,
there also is a dramatic change in the architectural conception of the substructure, since corridors
and chambers possessing a mechanical contact with the nucleus of the monument appear here
for the first time. To attain this, a new technique for distributing the enormous weight of the
masonry was employ ed. Usually called a corbelled ceiling, it involves offsetting successive
courses of stones so that they project towards the interior until they meet. Furthermore – as we
learned just a few y ears ago – y et another new architectural technique was employ ed for the
first time at Meidum: that of the so-called relieving chambers. These are service galleries
constructed above flat ceilings to house weight-relieving vaults (the name is therefore somewhat
misleading). These galleries were no longer meant to be accessed after completion and were thus
sealed hermetically ; at Meidum, they run along and above the length of the inside passage up to
the point of contact with the funerary chamber (Dormion and Verdhurt 2000).

Meidum’s monument ( Photo 3.1) today looks like an enormous three-storey tower, almost 65
metres tall and 144 metres wide at its base, surrounded by a mound of flattened debris.
Originally, though, it was probably a step py ramid, but was later cased and transformed into a
flat-faced geometric py ramid; according to Petrie (1892), the slope was 14/11, the same as that
subsequently adopted for the Khufu py ramid (see Box 3 for a discussion of the py ramid’s slopes).
As is obvious from the present condition of the monument, the surfaces have been washed away,
probably as a result of the building being exploited as a quarry in later times. The interior is
accessed via a passage (this kind of passage will be called descending, from the point of view of
someone entering) which goes down, starting from the north face at a height of about 15 metres
and crossing the building diagonally. After levelling off to the horizontal, the passage widens into
two alternate rooms, which can probably be taken to be manoeuvre rooms for plugging blocks.
The burial chamber is accessed through a short ascending pit, today occupied by a modern
staircase. Huge original cedar logs of uncertain function can be seen here, enclosed in the walls
for 4600 y ears. The burial chamber is relatively small, 5.9 metres long and 2.65 metres wide, but
still it is exciting to stand inside and to imagine the tremendous weight of the py ramid, which the
architects succeeded in supporting so magnificently. The chamber, like all others built up to the
end of the fifth dy nasty, is bereft of any inscription or decoration. The attribution of the py ramid
to Snefru is based on Middle Kingdom inscriptions testify ing to the cult of the king that were found
in a small building placed on the east side. This building is the first example of a “funerary
temple”: a structure devoted to the cult of the deceased Pharaoh. The temple has a somewhat
curious plan, consisting of an S-shaped corridor which comes out into a small courty ard
containing two huge monolithic stelae. For some reason, the stelae were left uninscribed; their
tops were nevertheless visible to visitors ascending from the Nile, creating an odd effect, like two
twin rising objects on a levelled surface. Other elements of the Meidum complex which, like the
funerary temple, would become standard in later py ramid complexes are a large enclosure wall,
only traces of which survive, and a causeway, ascending from the cultivation limits. Perhaps a
further building which was to appear in later complexes, the so-called valley temple, was located
at the end of the causeway , but it has never been found.
Photo 3.1. Meidum. The py ramid viewed from the east, with the funerary temple in the
foreground.

As we mentioned, the Snefru architects constructed another py ramid along with Meidum.
Usually identified today as the Seila py ramid, it is located on a prominent hill in the desert to the
west of Meidum, overlooking the Fay oum oasis. It boasted four steps, with a base length of about
30 metres and a height of 21 metres. We know that it was built by Snefru because of a couple of
stelae originally located in a chapel to the east side that bear the name of the Pharaoh (Lesko
1988; Swelim 2010).

The py ramid does not have any kind of substructure, so it is neither a tomb nor a cenotaph.
Why was it constructed? In my view, the function of Seila is clear: it was conceived of as a
companion to Meidum. The two py ramids acted as outpost sentinels betokening roy al power and
authority in the approach to the north, from the Fay oum and from the Nile, respectively. The two
monuments appear to be strictly related: both are well-oriented to the cardinal points and both are
inter-visible (from Seila one has a view of the huge mole of Meidum even today ; the reverse
view is more problematic, but in ancient times visibility was certainly better and the monuments
are only 10 kilometres apart). In addition, Seila was probably meant to be placed on the same
parallel as Meidum. The azimuth of Seila from Meidum is in fact about 3° south of west. An error
of as much as 3° is enormous by fourth dy nasty standards – as the reader may know, and as we
shall soon be learning. However, while precise methods of meridian orientation using the motion
of the stars around the celestial pole were available, no such methods existed for the alignment to
a fixed point along the parallel (the parallel of the Meidum py ramid actually passes about 600
metres to the north of the Seila py ramid).

All things considered, we can say that Meidum and Seila were paired monuments, mainly
designed (or perhaps redesigned, as far as Meidum is concerned) to convey a message of power.
Probably the same function was fulfilled by six other py ramids deprived of substructures and
constructed in the same period (either by Snefru or by his predecessor Huni), usually called
“minor step py ramids” (see, for example, Drey er and Swelim 1982; Lehner 1999; Belmonte,
Shaltout and Fekri 2005). These py ramids – which are smaller than Seila, having a side base
around 18 metres – are scattered all over the country. Their locations, listed from the north, are:
Hebenu (the only py ramid ever constructed on the west bank), Sinki (about 5 kilometres south of
Aby dos), Nubt (between Dendera and Luxor), El Kula (some 6 kilometres north of
Hierakonpolis), El Ghenimy a (near Edfu) and Elephantine (Aswan).

In all probability, then, Snefru was not buried in Meidum. The py ramid was finished, or even
planned from the very beginning, as a cenotaph, a sy mbol. The burial place of Snefru was in
Dahshur, almost virgin territory at that time. Here the king built – again – not one but two
py ramids, which together created an extraordinary landscape of power and which today are to
be numbered among the noblest architectural masterpieces of all time.

3.2 Snefru is rising

Dahshur is a plateau located about 7 kilometres to the south of Saqqara. Here, amid the broody
tranquillity of the desert, two enormous artificial mountains dominate the landscape. The
southernmost one display s a strange, sudden softening in its inclination and is therefore usually
called the Bent Py ramid (Photo 3.2), while the other, located some 1800 metres to the north, is
called the Red Py ramid (Photo 3.3) due to the reddish hue of its limestone blocks.
Photo 3.2. Dahshur. The Bent Py ramid.
Photo 3.3. Dahshur. The north face of the Red Py ramid.

The Bent Py ramid is 189 metres wide at its base and 105 metres tall. The slope changes at 49
metres, with the initial inclination dropping off more than 10°. As a consequence of this bizarre
feature, it is usually described – in guidebooks and documentaries, but also in many scientific
publications – as an example of an imperfect py ramid, a sort of evolutionary stage (or should I
say missing link) in the march towards the ultimate perfection of the Great Py ramid at Giza.

As it happens, quite the opposite is true. Among other things, the Bent Py ramid’s limestone
casing blocks were so skilfully arranged on inclined beds that it is the only py ramid where looters
abandoned their attempts to remove them, after excavating only the north-west corner. 2
Accordingly, the Bent Py ramid is the only py ramid that can be seen today as they all must have
looked at the time of their construction – smooth. A visit to the Bent Py ramid is an unforgettable
experience; the monument stands alone in the desert, rarely visited by tourists. It is advisable to
walk around the whole perimeter to appreciate fully the incredible quantity of huge stones
employ ed as well as, in the areas free of sand, the levelled platform on which the monument
itself was built. Finally, one might linger for a while under the niche created by the removal of
the lower blocks at the north-west corner, safely sitting with huge, perfectly dressed, jutting stones
looming overhead, in the womb of one of the most marvellous monuments ever built by humans.
 The Bent Py ramid is also unique in that it has two distinct internal structures, which were
designed and built independently and are only connected by a narrow passageway (Figure 3.2).
The entrances to these structures are situated on the north and west faces. The north apartments
consist of a descending passage leading to a first corbelled chamber. From here, the inner
chamber – located higher and also corbelled – can be accessed. A side room contains a vertical
shaft located precisely under the apex of the py ramid. The west chamber is accessed from a
passage which, after levelling off to the horizontal, was blocked by a sy stem of two sliding slabs
(portcullis). The chamber is at a higher level than the first; when excavated, it was found partly
filled by a masonry and wood structure, of which some original cedar logs remain in place.
Quarry marks with Snefru cartouches, traced in red, were found on the blocks (Fakhry 1959).
3.2. Plan and sections of the Bent Py ramid.

The complex of the Bent Py ramid includes a small upper temple to the east, a causeway and,
for the first time, a valley temple. The upper temple houses two huge stelae similar to that at
Meidum, with an altar slab behind in the form of the hierogly ph -hetep (altar, offerings), a
sty lised loaf of bread on a reed mat. This is a simple example of the direct interplay between
hierogly ph sy mbols and actual architecture, of which many other examples are known. One of
these, as we shall see shortly, is actually the whole Snefru project in Dahshur; another is the fifth
dy nasty tombs of officers in Saqqara south, which have a plan resembling the hierogly ph group
-per-djet (house of eternity ) (Dobrev 2006).
 The valley temple of the Bent Py ramid is a rectangular stone building, with an open courty ard
and a gallery probably originally accommodating six statues of the king. Of the causeway, only
the foundations remain, but it is still an exciting experience to ascend it, above the dreamy peace
of the desert, beholding the huge monument as it gradually comes to occupy the horizon. The
longest ascending section is oriented at 240°, and this means that, for an observer looking along it,
the sun setting at the winter solstice was seen to disappear behind the py ramid; if the observer
positioned himself at the centre of the valley temple, he would have seen the sun “lean” at the
north-west corner, perhaps facilitating calendrical observations (Belmonte 2009).

To the south of the Bent Py ramid and on the same axis, another py ramid was erected. This is
some 30 metres high on its own, but it is dwarfed by the huge mass of the main one. It was
constructed with meticulous care, fitting the casing onto an artificial stone platform. However, its
casing courses were laid out horizontally (as would be the rule from then on) and therefore were
easily dismantled by looters. On the east side was a small chapel, here also with the familiar
couple of stelae. The chamber of the py ramid is too small for a burial, so what we have here is
the first example of a py ramid of the kind usually called “satellite” py ramids (Fakhry 1959).
Satellite py ramids exist in almost all later py ramidal complexes; judging from the finds in that of
the second Giza complex, they were meant for the burial of a statue designated to house the Ka,
the “vital spirit” of the deceased.

The north py ramid of Dahshur, or the Red Py ramid (Photo 3.3), is a little larger at the base
compared to its sister to the south, but the height is virtually identical due to the fact that the
chosen slope was lower and equal to that of the upper part of the south one, a first hint as to the
wish of the builders to transmit a unified message. Quarry marks have been found on some of its
blocks, dated to y ear 15 at the base and to later y ears at higher levels (Stadelmann 1987; Verner
2002b, 2006). It is unclear whether the y ears in question have to be doubled (because they might
refer to a “cattle count”, which was carried out every two y ears). In any case, existing attempts
to extrapolate from these marks a measure of the speed of construction (see, for example, Krauss
1996; Romer 2007) are clearly flawed from the phy sical point of view, as the velocity estimated
in these models would be impossible to achieve, even with modern means.3

The substructure of the py ramid is arranged as follows. The descending corridor arrives at the
ground level, where two marvellous, almost identical chambers with high corbelled roofs are
aligned north to south and connected by a short horizontal passage. In the south wall of the second
chamber, accessed by a staircase, another corridor leads to the final chamber, which is built
within the masonry of the py ramid and oriented east to west. The reason for the room being at a
higher level compared to the antechamber was probably structural, because the corbelled roof of
the last chamber would have exerted its pull on the relatively thin lay er of masonry located in
front of the corbelled roof of the antechamber (as we shall see, in the Great Py ramid a similar
problem was solved with the use of the “relieving chambers”).
 The annexes of the Red Py ramid visible today consist only of a chapel, or funerary temple,
placed to the east. The building was finished with mudbricks, and little remains today. In the
centre, a small platform with a sort of miniature py ramid can be seen. It is the pyramidion, the
capstone of the py ramid, which has been recovered in pieces nearby and reconstructed; almost
certainly all py ramids had one, although few of them have been found. The causeway probably
ran due east from the temple, but it has never been excavated; its projected course crosses the
building of the ticket office so, if a valley temple ever existed, it now lies smack under the only
modern building in the entire area.

As a matter of fact, what we do have in Dahshur is a double project which is even more
devilishly difficult to fathom than the first double project of Snefru, that of Meidum-Seila. I shall
now briefly summarise the standard explanation for it given in most authoritative publications
(e.g., Lehner 1999; Verner 2002a), with the proviso to the reader that I personally do not endorse
such an explanation (I shall go into this shortly ).

What is usually claimed is that the Bent Py ramid was constructed first, but was in danger of
collapsing on account of structural problems which arose during construction. As a result, the
slope was softened, but this expedient was somehow still considered to be unsafe, so it was
decided to go ahead and build a new py ramid. For many Egy ptologists, the Bent Py ramid was at
this point abandoned (or turned into a cenotaph; see Stadelmann 1985). To substantiate this
abandoning of the project, the following points are made. First, in the descending corridors of the
py ramid, a severe fracture can be seen. The fracture led to a displacement recognisable as a
conspicuous rift in the blocks. Furthermore, the casing has a number of cracks, many of which
were repaired in ancient times. Finally, the cedar beams still visible in internal chambers were
allegedly put in place for safety reasons. That’s it, pure and simple. As far as any thing else is
concerned, the “evolutionary stage”, the “failed py ramid”, the “false py ramid” and whatever
other names have been dreamed up for it in the literature, the south py ramid of Snefru at
Dahshur, well … it just stands there, with all its inner rooms perfectly sound and accessible 4600
y ears after being built. Now what?

Let us first of all understand what the cracks in the corridors mean. By comparing their
positions, it can be seen that they correspond to the same displacement that affected the entire
upper mass of blocks within the whole structure (Maragioglio and Rinaldi 1966). This is
sometimes attributed to the movement of an “addition” which was allegedly made by the
builders to an alleged first, smaller py ramid they constructed with a steeper slope, estimated
around 60°, which today, it is claimed, is enveloped like a Matrioska doll inside the visible one.
There are many phy sical reasons which, in my opinion, clearly show that this alleged “first
py ramid” never existed, but this is not the place to go into these technical details. What is
important is that, although the displacement was certainly a tremendous event – perhaps due to an
earthquake – the blocks rearranged themselves into a new position of equilibrium. The interior
corridors had been built so skilfully that they actually stood up. Even admitting that the builders
still felt the py ramid to be unsafe, it would have been illogical for them to add cedar beams in the
chambers and soften the slope while continuing to add weight. Therefore, the theory that the
change in slope was decided after the appearance of structural failure must be rejected on the
simple grounds that it is illogical. To be totally convinced, we might also observe that the theory
does not in any case explain why it was decided to abandon the py ramid after its completion with
the lower slope, since its condition of stability (exactly as it is today ) must then have been
patently obvious. Eliminating the impossible, there is only one option left. The two monuments
belong to a single project, conceived of by a single person, moved by a single aim: to represent
his power on earth and his rights to the afterlife, through the construction of an imposing sacred
landscape.

The presence of a unitary Snefru project of the Dahshur landscape is hinted at by an

impressive number of clues. First of all, the duality apparent in the site – two enormous py ramids
of equal height, two (and not three) slopes, two funerary apartments in the south py ramid, two
complexes of annexes with the valley temple of the “abandoned” Bent Py ramid showing no signs
of having been left unfinished or nonfunctioning. Moreover, a further sy mmetry was in play in
the slopes, since the py ramidion of the Red Py ramid has the same slope as the lower part of the
Bent Py ramid, so the two py ramids had to some extent specular slopes.4 What apparently breaks
the duality of the project is the presence of a single satellite py ramid, that of the Bent Py ramid
complex. However, this actually helps to prove that the project was a global one, because the Red
Py ramid would have had its own satellite if the “machinery ” of the king’s burial and afterlife had
been transferred lock, stock and barrel to the northern complex.

Duality in the funerary cult is hardly a novelty – a striking example is in Djoser’s complex,
with two tombs and a continual, almost obsessive reference to “the two lands”. The pairing of the
tombs may actually represent a tribute to the tradition of the Pharaoh as the ruler of unified
Upper and Lower Egy pt, although the change in the slope of the Bent Py ramid – which was, in all
probability, planned from the very beginning – remains in itself something of a my stery, being a
one-off solution never to be adopted again in the history of Egy ptian py ramids. The existence of
the west corridor and chamber is also unique, the sole possible resemblance being that Djoser’s
“south tomb” has the same orientation. The main task, though, is to try to understand the messages
convey ed by the two py ramids taken altogether; in other words, what is the meaning of the
Snefru funerary landscape at Dahshur?

More insight into this question is given by the fact that we know the names of the two py ramids.
From Snefru onward, indeed, each roy al py ramid complex will receive a name, which in most
cases has been passed on to us in the reliefs of the tombs of the officials and priest in charge of
the complexes. As we shall see, these names are of the utmost importance in understanding the
role of many of these complexes in the sacred landscapes of the Old Kingdom. The Red
Py ramid was called . The name is made up of the Snefru cartouche, the
hierogly ph -kha, which is usually translated as “shining”, and the py ramid determinative. So
the Red Py ramid was “Snefru shines”; however, -kha is more “literally ” (or I should say
ideographically ) the sun at rising, so I much prefer to render the name of the Red Py ramid as
“Snefru is rising”. The ancient name of the Bent Py ramid was the same as that of the Red
Py ramid, with the addition of a sign denoting “south” – or also “Upper Egy pt”:
. The Bent Py ramid was therefore called “the south pyramid – Snefru is
rising”.

As a whole, there can be little doubt that the project made up of the two py ramids was a
common one, called Snefru is rising. If we seek further confirmation, we might note that, as is
well known, the Snefru complex was referred to as that is, “The two
pyramids – Snefru is rising” – in a decree issued by the sixth dy nasty king Pepi I (around 2250
BC) regulating administration of the py ramid town in Dahshur and found on an inscribed stone not
far from the Red Py ramid (Moret 1917). A much lesser-known fact is that the complex had
already been referred to in this way in much earlier times. Indeed, in the false door of the tomb
of a high priest of the Snefru cult called Dware, who lived in the early fifth dy nasty (less than one
hundred y ears after Snefru), we learn that his main title was “overseer of ”
(Borchardt 1937).

So the funerary project of the king at Dahshur sy mbolised his eternal, sy mbolic “shining” or
“rising”. But where was this supposed to happen? The answer must be sought in the monuments
themselves; the Snefru py ramids were meant to form an artificial, sy mbolic horizon of two
mountains, a -djew sign. This is the same sign as the two paired peaks we already
encountered at Aby dos, connected with the roy al necropolis and located due south of it. The very
same effect in Dahshur is particularly striking when the site is seen from the Saqqara plateau; that
is, from the revered necropolis of the kings of the third dy nasty. The paired mountains of Snefru
identify him as the lord of the horizon for any one approaching the plateau along the ancient
pathway from Memphis, which ran along a wadi located a few hundred metres to the north of the
Step Py ramid and approached the Step Py ramid complex along its sides. This heady experience
can still be enjoy ed today, especially on clear day s, and is enhanced by the sight of the later
monument constructed by King Shepsekaf, who, as we shall see, placed his tomb precisely along
the line that starts at the horizon in between the two py ramids at Dahshur and crosses the Saqqara
central field at the ancient “entrance” area located near the Teti py ramid.

We might assert, then, that it is with the Snefru project at Dahshur that we begin to perceive an
increasing sy mbolic value of the py ramids. It is with this king that the py ramids became “gigantic
hierogly phs”, as Lehner (1999) put it. According to Assmann ( 2007), the very idea of creation
was tied up with writing in the Egy ptian mind; thus, in a sense, the py ramid becomes a “sign”
within a “written” sacred landscape. From this point of view, in the minds of the ancient
Egy ptians, a resemblance of py ramid sy mbolism with the idea of the primeval mound of
creation seems likely, since the dominant theology had meanwhile migrated to Heliopolis, where,
as we shall see in Chapter 4, the world was said to have been created on a primeval, py ramid-like
stone called the Ben-Ben. Yet Heliopolis was also the main cult centre of the sun, and indeed the
step whose construction was under way to complete the py ramid’s sy mbolic power is the explicit
connection of the monuments with the sun, which was to interact spectacularly with the py ramid
projects under Snefru’s son, Khufu. The py ramid becomes with Khufu an icon of glory for the
deceased living god’s union with his divine ancestors – most of all, the sun god – and the name of
the py ramid complex becomes a sort of added roy al name, a “name after death”. As an
apotheosis, the sun ray s shining on the py ramids, thanks to their “nontrivial” slopes (see Box 3),
will merge with the monuments themselves, creating dramatic effects, especially on day s in
proximity to the summer solstice.

A final observation in this identification of the king with his py ramid is that the py ramid
complexes can really be thought of as roy al houses, complete with gate (valley temple),
entrance corridor (causeway ), courty ard, reception and dining-offering hall (funerary temple),
and finally private apartments, ly ing under what will be called in the Py ramid Texts a “staircase”
for the king’s ascent to the afterlife (Lehner 1999). It might thus be feasible to call a py ramid a
“mansion” for the king, albeit a very special one. I shall therefore conclude this section by
discussing what amounts to, at least for me, almost definitive proof of the existence of an overall
project at Dahshur which has been known since 1866 but has apparently gone unnoticed (Citron
2003).

The readable passages of the Palermo Stone about Snefru’s reign contain two curious
references. In a regnal y ear, which is probably the fifth (or tenth if the cattle count was biennial),
we have the construction of the “wall of the Southland and Northland Houses-of-Snefru” (Breasted
1906; these are called “mansions” in Wilkinson 2000). One (or two) y ears later, the same
buildings are referred to with the erection of two structures called “Exalted is the White Crown of
Snefru upon the Southern Gate” and “Exalted is the Red Crown of Snefru upon the Northern Gate”.
In the literature, these buildings are usually identified with each other (as a single palace with two
gates) or interpreted as fortifications at the boundaries of the country, but in any case they are
assumed to be, archaeologically speaking, unknown.

So, we can summarise what the Palermo Stone tells us about Snefru’s buildings as follows:
there should be – y es, somewhere in Egy pt – a couple of buildings conceived of, planned and
built together celebrating the king as the sovereign of the two lands, one associated with the red
crown of the north, the other with the white crown of the south, of which we have no trace, but
which are so important as to be cited twice in the Roy al Annals, where, on the other hand, the
huge py ramids built by the same king are not mentioned.

I believe that, if we ascend to the Saqqara plateau and look south, bearing in mind that we are
not looking at an alleged “failed py ramid” and to its “evolution” – as so many in the past have
tried to convince us – but at the global modelling of the funerary landscape of one of the greatest
kings of Egy pt, then some idea of the identity of the utterly my sterious paired buildings of Snefru
cited in the Roy al Annals may come to us.

3.3 The Great Pyramid

It was on 2 February 1925 that the Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition to Giza discovered a
previously unnoticed stairway excavated in the rock on the east side of the Great Py ramid (Photo
3.4). The stairway led down to what appeared to be an undisturbed burial place. However, it was
not a tomb: no coffin, no mummy was buried in it. There was a canopic chest with human
remains, and also a sealed sarcophagus, but this was empty. Apart from this, the chamber was
crammed with sumptuous objects constituting the funerary equipment of a great queen. The
heart of the discoverer could not but fail to skip a beat on reading her name: she was the Mother
of the King of Upper and Lower Egy pt, Follower of Horus, Guide of the Ruler, Favourite One,
She Whose Every Word Is Done for Her, the Daughter of the God Body , Hetepheres.

Photo 3.4 Giza. A view from the east of the Great Py ramid (foreground), with Khufu’s queen’s
py ramids on the left and Khafra’s and Menkaura’s in the background.

Thanks to this discovery we at least know the name of that wife of Snefru who was Khufu’s
mother, and have an idea of what the funerary equipment of a roy al tomb of that period was like
(regarding the problem of the mummy ’s absence, see Lehner 1985b). Indeed, notwithstanding
the fact that Khufu is the owner of the most complex and huge stone monument ever built on
planet earth, his py ramid is lacking any kind of information about the king, apart from his name,
which in full was Khnum-Khufu: protected by Khnum, an archaic, creator ram god associated
with the annual flooding of the Nile and worshipped on the Elephantine Island (ironically, in the
py ramid the name appears only hastily sketched in red ochre in some stonemason’s marks). We
know hardly any thing about the phy sical appearance of the king – recognisable only from a tiny
statuette found at Aby dos by Petrie. Finally, no contemporary historic text has come down to us
with any description of the king. So if we wish to understand more about him, we must rely on
what he left us on the Giza plateau.

Time fears the pyramids, as an ancient Arab proverb has it. It is true: the fervid desire of Khufu
(2551–2528 BC) to live in eternity defies time at every dawn, when the huge mole of his tomb
emerges from the mists of modern Cairo. Since the first time I saw this spectacle many y ears
ago, Khufu’s py ramid has been associated in my mind with a verse by the Italian poet and Nobel
laureate Eugenio Montale: “scheggia fuori dal tempo, testimone/di una volonta’ fredda che non
passa” which sounds something like (my translation) “splinter out of time, witness/to a cold will
that shall never recede”. Our analy sis of this wonderful monument and its role in the sacred
funerary landscape of the Old Kingdom commences with two puzzles. Indeed, for some reason
that no one has ever bothered to try to understand, Khufu made two apparently strange choices
for his tomb. First, he chose the almost virgin soil of the Giza plateau instead of opting for
Dahshur, where the py ramids of his father stood. Second, at Giza, Khufu chose a rocky spur set
directly on the ridges of the plateau; in doing this he left the most favourable position free – which
of course was that of the still-to-come second py ramid of Giza (more precisely, some 100
metres to the east of it), where the plateau slopes gently, and from a higher point ( Figure 3.3). So,
I have only just embarked on the subject of the Great Py ramid and have already introduced two
topographical problems. We shall have others, to be sure, but let me stress that we shall also have
very reasonable solutions. By “reasonable” I mean solutions which were not only technically
attainable by the ancient Egy ptians but which are in line with (what we know of) their knowledge,
way of thinking, society and religion. Yet, as we shall see, these solutions can be found only by
taking into account the profound relationships between architecture, astronomy and landscape
ty pical of the Old Kingdom.
3.3. Schematic map of the Giza necropolis: (1) py ramid of Khufu; (2) py ramid of Khafra; (3)
py ramid of Menkaura; (4–6) funerary temples; (7–9) causeway s; (10) modern village of Nazet;
(11) valley temple of Khafra; (12) valley temple of Menkaura; (13) Sphinx; (14) Sphinx temple;
(15) satellite py ramid of Khafra; (16) Khentkaues tomb.

The “fact file” of Khufu’s “Great Py ramid” can be summarised as follows:

The base sides measure on average 230.35 metres, with a maximum deviation
 between the measures of different sides of less than 20 centimetres.
The slope is 14/11, from which it can be deduced that the original height was 146.6
metres.
The sides are parallel to the cardinal directions within the astonishing precision of
three minutes of arc; that is, one-twentieth of a degree.
The core consists of 210 horizontal courses of limestone blocks piled one on top of the
other, making a grand total of no less than 2,200,000 blocks (a small, rocky outcrop
was incorporated into the first lay ers of blocks, making it difficult to determine
exactly the volume of stones employ ed).
The casing consisted of thousands of huge blocks of white limestone extracted from
the quarries at Tura, on the opposite bank of the Nile. (Almost all of these casing
blocks were carried off in the Middle Ages.)

As a matter of fact, the Khufu py ramid is a new artificial mountain, successive to, and greater
than, the Snefru py ramids. This mountain is also provided with a sy stem of inner rooms, created
during the construction (Figure 3.4). Today, entry is effected by a passage probably hewn out by
looters. The original entrance was higher on the north face (slightly offset with respect to the
midline, for unknown reasons) and gave access to a descending passageway inclined 26°33′ .5
Proceeding straight down, the corridor leads to a chamber carved out of the bedrock, called the
Subterranean Chamber. This chamber was never dug out completely : the last part was only
excavated to half of its presumed height, with a central passageway. This way of sculpting out
cavities resembles the method used in Egy ptian quarries to extract stone blocks (Arnold 1991;
Clarcke and Engelbach 1990), and it is probably for this reason that the chamber is usually
defined as unfinished, although – of course – the half-quarry ing method was used to extract more
easily entire blocks, a thing which certainly was not done here.
3.4. Schematic section of the Great Py ramid: (1) original entrance; (2) looter’s hole; (3)
descending corridor; (4) subterranean chamber; (5) well; (6) Queen’s Chamber; (7) Great
Gallery ; (8) lower shafts; (9) King’s Chamber; (10) “relieving chambers”; (11) upper shafts. The
rock base is schematically shown as levelled, but its profile is actually unknown.

Halfway down the descending passageway, an ascending corridor veers off from a gap in the
ceiling, but it has been blocked since the time of construction by a “plug” made of a series of
huge blocks of granite. The looters’ entrance avoids these plugs, and allows us to cross alongside
them and start the ascent to the king’s apartment, but not before casting a sideway s glance at the
plugging blocks, which still seal off the corridor perfectly. The ascending passage rises inside the
py ramid and comes out in the so-called Grand Gallery . This high-ceilinged gallery is 46.6 metres
long and has the same slope as the ascending corridor, but, in contrast, is 2 metres wide, and its
corbelled ceiling reaches a height of 8.54 metres. The spell that the Grand Gallery casts over the
visitor is heightened by the fact that one emerges into it abruptly from the cramped passageway.
Originally, there was no break in the floor between the corridor and the gallery, so one would
have continued the ascent without noticing the branching off of a horizontal passage, presumably
covered by an inclined slab. This passage leads to the so-called Queen’s Chamber, which
measures 5.74 × 5.2 × 6.2 metres. The chamber possesses a projecting corbelled niche on the
east wall and two little rectangular openings of shafts, each the size of a handkerchief, visible on
the north and south walls; otherwise it is totally anony mous. The fact that the chamber was sealed
and that its niche was clearly meant to house a statue firmly supports its interpretation as Khufu’s
Serdab.

Coming back to the ascending corridor, we can go on with our ascent through the Grand
Gallery. It ends with a step block (usually called the great step), leading into another narrow
horizontal passageway. This passes through a small chamber which contained a complicated
locking sy stem of granite portcullises. Eventually this chamber takes us to Khufu’s burial
chamber, or the King’s Chamber. This room, 10.47 metres long, is a granite parallelepiped,
whose base is made up of two squares and whose height is nearly equal to half of the base
diagonal. Inside there is only Khufu’s granite sarcophagus, relatively small but still too substantial
to have been carried along the corridors, and thus evidently put in place before the completion of
the room’s ceiling. The coffin was carved with a core drill, although the difficulties in drilling
granite with copper tools – of course aided by abrasive sand – must have been enormous (the
work is almost perfect: we can see the traces of a slightly blurred perforation on one of the
edges). Besides the sarcophagus, the King’s Chamber is bleakly unadorned and “silent”. It was
very probably prefabricated, with all the blocks perfectly dressed and their joints tested, before
moving the stones to the course where it was actually constructed. Also here, as in the Queen’s
Chamber, two small holes are present on the north and south walls. They lead to shafts which,
unlike those in the Queen’s Chamber, exit the py ramid through the north and south faces,
respectively. These exits are almost at the same height (about 80 metres), and since this is much
higher than the level of the King’s Chamber, the shafts twist sharply upwards. There can be no
doubt that the construction of these seemingly straightforward structural elements was in fact an
extremely sophisticated and complex piece of work, continuing over many y ears, together with
the completion of successive horizontal courses of stones of the py ramid. Since the King’s
Chamber was not located on the central axis but was displaced slightly to the south, the
inclinations of the two channels are different; these inclinations were accurately maintained over
the y ears, from the time the most delicate part of the construction in the core of the monument
had been successfully carried out (actually, as we shall see, it was the displacement of the
chamber from the central axis that was chosen on the basis of the desired slopes of the shafts and
not vice versa).

Above the King’s Chamber, we find a series of four superimposed spaces, each roofed with
huge granite slabs; the upper cavity is covered by a pent limestone vault. These spaces are
usually called “relieving” chambers, but the name is misleading, as it was in Meidum, since of
course it is only the upper vault which distributes the weight. It is obvious that the builders were
well aware of this, since they used the pent vault without “relieving” chambers in the ceiling of
the Queen’s Chamber, even though an even greater weight was applied there. The function of the
chambers comes from another consideration. If the pent roof had been constructed directly over
the King’s Chamber, the stone slabs on the north side would have been leaning dangerously onto a
part of the py ramid in which few blocks of the core were located, followed by the gap caused by
the presence of the Great Gallery. Therefore it was deemed advisable to build the relief vault
higher up, and for this reason the intermediate chambers were constructed6 (a similar problem
had already been tackled by the Snefru architects inside the Red Py ramid, but there the solution
was to raise the level of the funerary chamber in relation to that of the second antechamber).

The relieving chambers were sealed off after construction; they are a part of the
preassembled project of the King’s Chamber. The lowest one, however, located directly on the
ceiling of the room, was again accessed by builders who excavated a rough tunnel, probably to
assess the conditions of the masonry after a few fissures appeared in the ceiling; this tunnel was
rediscovered by Nathaniel Davidson in 1765, while the upper chambers were accessed by
Howard Vy se, who, in 1837, devised his own rather drastic way of access (with gunpowder) until
he reached the vault. It is in the chambers discovered by Vy se that hierogly phs hastily traced in
red ochre can be seen. They bear the cartouche name of the king in the complete form Khnum-
Khufu – attested also at the quarries of Wadi Marghara, Sinai – and the names of the work gangs
in charge of moving the stones; for instance, “Powerful is the Great White Crown of Khnum-
Khufu”. In the lowest chamber, the absence of such quarry marks is puzzling. There is a quite
logical explanation, though: they were erased by builders during their on-the-spot inspections,
which occurred only in that chamber.7

The complex of annexes to the Khufu py ramid included a funerary temple on the east side;
unfortunately , today only the basalt paving stones are left of it, together with the sockets of granite
pillars. Along the east side of the py ramid, a huge, boat-shaped cavity excavated in the bedrock
can also be seen. These cavities (Khufu actually had at least five) were made to store boats. One
of these was recovered intact in 1954 and reassembled. The Khufu boats are certainly connected
with the sun. As we have seen, in the Py ramid Texts the sun god accommodates the deceased
Pharaoh on his boat (or “bark”, to use Faulkner’s more romantic term).

A causeway connected the funerary temple to the valley temple, located in an area today
covered by the Nazet el Saman village. Khufu’s causeway must surely have been a masterpiece,
its walls covered with fine relief carvings, of which a few have been discovered, reutilised in the
Middle Kingdom py ramids of Lisht. Little remains of it today ; one can only get as far as the
fence of the archaeological area and look down towards the village some 25 metres below, with a
few huge limestone blocks still scattered around.

On the east side of the Great Py ramid, three small py ramids were built, almost certainly for
Khufu’s queens. Recently, a further py ramid has been discovered in this area, near the south-east
corner of Khufu’s. It is quite a small monument, with a chamber excavated in the rock whose side
walls lean slightly inward, like a tent. The chamber is similar to that of the satellite py ramid of the
second Giza py ramid (see Section 3.5), and therefore this is almost certainly the satellite py ramid
of Khufu. Even so, both the position and the quality of the work suggest that it was not part of the
original project (Hawass 1996).

3.4 The Great Pyramid and the stars

The Great Py ramid is a magnificent engineering work, devised, designed and built in accordance
with a complex overall project. This project, however, included the construction of four puzzling
small shafts which required far from negligible extra effort to construct. Why was this done?

The answer is important for us, since it must be sought in the profound connection between the
monument and the stars. This is a first, fundamental piece of the huge topographical puzzle that is
the sacred landscape at Giza, and it is well nigh impossible to understand the Great Py ramid
without first lay ing down this piece. Unfortunately, screeds have been written on the subject of
“py ramids and stars”, most of which are, not to put too fine a point on it, simply nonsense. Duly
warned, I shall proceed with the utmost care and scrupulousness, even at the risk of being
repetitive.

The connection of Khufu’s tomb with the stars was made concrete in two way s: the astonishing
accuracy with which the sides were oriented along the cardinal directions – which could only
have been achieved through diligent star-watching – and the incorporation into the monument of
deftly constructed devices, the shafts. The orientation of the monument will be discussed later,
together with that of the other py ramids of the fourth dy nasty ; here we shall concentrate on the
shafts, which are a feature of the Great Py ramid alone.

We shall start with the King’s Chamber. Both its channels cross the py ramid diagonally, and
this proves that the idea that they could have been used as ventilation shafts during the
construction of the py ramid, put forward by many in the past, is simply absurd. Even admitting
such a need for ventilation, building a vertical shaft would have been far easier and more
effective for this purpose (perhaps this was the role of the vertical “chimney ” in the Bent
Py ramid). Besides, the fact that the shafts start from the north and the south sides of the
chambers, combined with the fact that the sides of the py ramid are oriented cardinally, means
that they are directed to specific points along the celestial meridian. Given that the afterlife was
so closely bound up with the sky, as we learned from the Py ramid Texts, it is natural to look at
what was happening (at the time of construction) at these particular points during the night
(Badawy 1964; Trimble 1964).

I shall use the most reliable data on the shafts’ slopes, provided by Rudolph Gantenbrink
(Gantenbrink 1999). They refer to the final parts of the channels, since before crossing the
“crowded” area in the core of the py ramid (where, for instance, the Grand Gallery had to be
avoided by the northern channels), the shafts were not linear, nor did they have a constant slope
(unfortunately, Gantenbrink’s data are incomplete for the northern lower shaft, but the results of
later exploration missions carried out there have not been published). If an astronomical
interpretation is to be sought, it would only have validity after the builders succeeded in attaining
the required slope, and indeed the slopes stabilise in the final parts of the conduits. In any event,
the calculations which follow should be taken with a pinch of salt (say, a tolerance of plus or
minus 1°) since nothing comparable to the astonishing accuracy the ancient Egy ptians attained in
orienting the sides of the py ramid is to be expected here. Furthermore, due to uncertainties in
chronology on one hand and the effects of precession on the other, we cannot use these data to
obtain more than a rough confirmation of the estimated date of construction.

Having said that, and fixing a reference date of 2550 BC, the following stellar connections for
the upper shafts hold (Figure 3.5). The north shaft is inclined at exit 31°12′ , which fits with the
upper culmination of the “pole star” of the epoch, Thuban, at 31°03′ .8 The southern shaft is
inclined 45°00′ and points towards the culmination of the central part of the constellation Orion,
the so-called Belt, comprising the three stars Al Nitak, Al Nilam and Mintaka, the latter being the
closest at 44°48′ .9

3.5. A schematic representation of the astronomical alignments of the four shafts of the
py ramid of Khufu. In reality , the shafts start with a horizontal section and exhibit several changes
of slope in their initial run.

There seems to me to be no doubt whatsoever that the upper shafts were stellar conduits
oriented towards stars which play ed a key role in the stellar religion of the Py ramid Texts. They
start, however, with a horizontal section and in no way could have been used as devices to watch
these stars; furthermore, as already mentioned, both have variations in slope up to a certain
height, so they are not, as is sometimes said, “pointing like guns” at their targets. They are a
purely symbolic architectural feature, intended to allow the spirit of the king to magically rejoin
the stars. Interestingly, this interpretation also answers the question as to why the King’s Chamber
was not built on the vertical from the apex. In fact, it is not possible to reconcile the following
three requirements: (1) the stellar, hence fixed, orientation of the shafts; (2) the egress of the
shafts at the same height; and (3) the chamber set on the axis. The first two requirements were
privileged with respect to the third. This was not necessary, though, for the Queen’s Chamber,
thanks to a lucky coincidence. As we have seen, the chamber is (I would say definitely ) the
Serdab of the Great Py ramid. Thus, we would also expect here some stellar significance for the
shafts and, in particular, it would not be surprising to find a connection with the same northern
stars we encountered in Djoser’s Serdab. However, the situation is much more complicated, since
the shafts do not exit and, furthermore, the inclination data obtained during the complete
exploration of the northern shaft have never been published. In any case, inclination of the
southern shaft, after an initial horizontal section, is well attested to as 39°36′ . This ties in with the
culmination of Sirius to the south at 38°28′ (Bauval 1993) (the channel actually points also to the
culmination of another bright star, Shaula, at 38°40′ ).

For the northern shaft, available data by Gantenbrink give a value between 33° and 40°, but
scattered pieces of information from the (never published) second exploration carried out by
National Geographic apparently favour the idea that the two lower channels also were projected
to stop at the same height, so that they are sy mmetrical. If this is the case, then the northern lower
shaft targets well the culmination of Kochab, occurring at 39°15’; in other words, by a curious
coincidence, Sirius and Kochab had similar altitudes at culmination in that period.

All in all, we have four channels, all pointing within 1° (in 2550 BC) to the upper culmination of
four stars which play a key role in the Py ramid Texts. One could now discuss ad infinitum the
precision of such alignments, the effects of precession on them, the most likely chronology they
point to and so on. Still, the fact remains that the star-channel interpretation is the only one which
agrees fully with what we know about Egy ptian architects and what we know about the stellar
component of the funerary beliefs. Any other attempt at an explanation fails, either because it is
illogical (the “air-shafts” theory ) or because it is inconsistent with what we know about aesthetics
and religion in Egy ptian architecture.10

A tough challenge remains, however: that of understanding why the lower shafts do not exit.

Up to the beginning of the 1990s, it was thought that the lower shafts had simply been left
unfinished by the builders, although nobody ever dared to probe them in depth. The exploration
was finally attempted by Rudolf Gantenbrink with the help of a small robot he called Upuaut, a
highly appropriate name taken from one of the Egy ptian deities who acted as guides in the
underworld. The exploration of the northern shaft encountered various difficulties and was
interrupted after about 17 metres. At the beginning of March 1993, Upuaut succeeded in
ascending the southern shaft, transmitting images to Gantenbrink’s team in the Queen’s Chamber.
I am in the habit of showing these images to my archaeoastronomy students, telling them that –
as a phy sicist – this is the only example of time-travelling into the past that I know of: the robot is
moving in a place that has lain undisturbed for 4500 y ears in the very heart of the most complex
building ever created. The final images show Upuaut advancing along a stretch of shaft built out
of fine limestone blocks and stopping in front of a slab of fine limestone fitted with two copper
handles. A second expedition was launched, with a new robot, by the National Geographic
Society in September 2002. On this occasion, the northern shaft was explored right up to its end,
where a quite similar door was discovered. In the southern shaft, a (undocumented) failed
attempt at opening the door caused the breakage of one of the handles. Then a drill was applied to
the door and a front-end camera was inserted to see inside, but only another slab was visible. To
date, a further expedition has been carried out with a new robot called Djedi, with the aim of
obtaining a comprehensive view of the minuscule “chamber” (the interior space behind the slab)
of the southern shaft (Hawass et al. 2010). This space turned out to be approximately 19
centimetres long. The pins on the door terminate on the rear face with tiny loops. An interesting
discovery was the presence of three red ochre signs on the floor, left by masons. They are
probably numbers written in cursive hierogly phs.

What is the meaning of these doors? What do we expect to find behind them? Up to the recent
Djedi exploration, I strongly suspected that the answer would be “nothing”. I regret to say that
after the new exploration I am even more convinced, since the presence of masons’ marks is a
strong hint that the “official” part of the py ramid ends at the door and what remains is for
“service”, not intended to be seen but equally not intended for sy mbolic use, like the “relieving
chambers” above the King’s Chamber. Actually the doors might be a representation of those
gates which feature so prominently in the Py ramid Texts and have to be crossed by the soul of
the deceased. As such, they would play an important role in making operational the “magic”
working of the Serdab; that is, the Queen’s Chamber.11

3.5 The second great pyramid of Giza

The second great py ramid of Giza lies not far from Khufu’s, and their diagonals run nearly along
the same line. It is a colossal monument which seems even bigger than the first, since it was built
on a slightly more elevated area of the plateau and is steeper. Actually it is a little smaller – 143
metres tall, with base side 215 metres. The first courses were cased with heavy blocks of granite
from Aswan. The casing then proceeded with fine limestone – part of it, the capping, being still in
place.

The py ramid is constructed near the best available position in the whole Giza area, the very
best one being a little to its east. Indeed, the slope of the plateau rises too much to the west, and
therefore it was necessary to cut away a huge trench of rock along the foundation course on the
west side. This trench is one of the most impressive engineering feats ever undertaken at Giza,
and it could have been avoided by designing the base sides slightly to the east (so y es, I have only
just started speaking about the second Giza py ramid and have already introduced another
topographical enigma) (Photo 3.5).

Photo 3.5. Giza. A picture, taken from the north, of the west side of the second py ramid, with
Menkaura’s north face in the background. Many granite blocks of the casing of the lower courses
of the py ramid can be seen, as well as the huge cut in the bedrock which runs parallel to the side.

Another masterpiece is the broad terrace of enormous limestone blocks which was used to
level the terrain at the front, creating a spectacular platform over which the funerary temple was
constructed and several boat pits excavated.

The internal structure of the py ramid (as far as we know) is relatively simple. It consists of a
granite-lined descending passage which starts on the north face, becomes horizontal at the level of
the rock surface, and leads to the funerary chamber, which was excavated in a pit and then
covered with a pent roof. The chamber still contains the black granite sarcophagus, half-sunk into
the paving of the chamber. The descending passage is today closed and used for a ventilation
plant, so it is impossible to visit it. I really do hope that the scholars who studied it in the past
checked carefully that no joint with a hy pothetical plugged ascending corridor exists on its ceiling.
Assuming that such a corridor does not exist, the second py ramid has no internal, above-ground
structure, although, in my view, it is highly probable that a “relieving” corridor similar to that of
Meidum was located over the horizontal section of the passage. Another underground part exists,
any way. It consists of a second descending passage, excavated in the bedrock in front of the
py ramid and nearly aligned with the other. This has prompted the suggestion that the py ramid
was originally intended to be larger – which is frankly difficult to believe. I rather think that this
passage was a service corridor. It rapidly becomes horizontal and leads to a small chamber fully
carved in the rock in an east to west direction, with an excavated (that is, nonfunctional) pent roof.
After this room, the corridor slopes up to join the first descending passage.

The py ramid had no subsidiary py ramids for queens, but a satellite one is placed in the same
position as that of Dahshur, aligned with the middle of the south side. It is badly damaged, but its
substructure shows that it was almost certainly meant to house a statue, because the descending
passage ends in a small niche. In this niche, pieces of cedar wood were found, forming a
dismantled baldachin of the kind actually used to transport statues on ritual occasions.

To the east of the py ramid lie the remains of a magnificent funerary temple ( Figure 3.6) of
giant limestone blocks. It comprises an entrance courty ard, and an open court which contained 12
statues of unknown subjects (only the sockets remain). Bey ond the court were five niches for
further statues, each one with a storeroom. Finally, the rear side close to the py ramid probably
housed a false door. A monumental causeway starts from the front of the temple and proceeds
downhill until it arrives in the middle of two other megalithic temples. Coming from the direction
of the py ramid, to the left, just before the temples, a large trench opens. In the centre, carved out
of a pre-existing natural rock, sits the Sphinx.
3.6. Plan of the temples of the second py ramid of Giza: (1) funerary temple; (2) causeway
(upper and lower ends); (3) Sphinx; (4) valley temple; (5) temple of the Sphinx.

The Sphinx was sculpted by carving the head out of a pre-existing rock knoll and creating the
body by excavating a huge trench around the knoll. Alas, most, if not all, of the original body is
invisible, being covered by stones dating from various phases of – more or less acceptable –
restoration, the oldest going as far back as the New Kingdom. The body is, at any rate, that of a
giant crouching lion. This idea of a statue of a lion with human head appears for the first time
precisely with the Great Sphinx, although the association of the lion both as a solar sy mbol and as
an “archety pe” of the roy al power probably already existed.12 Perhaps astronomy play ed a
part in this process, since – due to precession – the summer solstice was in the constellation Leo at
the time of construction of the Giza monuments. The summer solstice is also the day of the main
hierophany occurring at Giza (as we shall soon see), so the statue might really be a sy mbol of the
sun merged with this constellation at the solstice. It is only from later New Kingdom depictions
(Section 2.2 of Box 2), however, that we are sure that the Egy ptians did recognise a crouching
lion in the constellation we call Leo. What is more, the statue faces due east, and thus faces the
rising sun at the equinoxes, not at the summer solstice.

The Sphinx is enormous by any stretch of the imagination, being 57 metres long, 20 metres tall
and with the width of its face spanning 4 metres. The head is clearly out of scale (that is, smaller)
with the body, and this raises suspicions that it was resculpted. Another possibility is that the
Egy ptians first carved the head. Then, when they went on to carve the body, they discovered a
huge natural fissure running crosswise and so opted for an enlargement for reasons of stability
(Lehner 1999). This explanation seems sound, although I must confess that, in my modest view,
even if it is the original face, the face of the Sphinx does not resemble at all the face of the
Pharaoh who allegedly had it carved, Khafra. The face does resemble official images of some
Middle Kingdom Pharaohs, especially Amenemhet III (Fay 1996, Temple and Temple 2009).
However, no evidence of official activities of this (or a related) Pharaoh have ever been found in
the Sphinx area. I thus tend to endorse the rather simple solution that the Sphinx is Khufu
(Stadelm ann 1985, 1998), also because this idea concurs with many other indications we are
about to meet.

In front of the Sphinx sits a building of huge megalithic blocks extracted from the trench. It is
natural to think that the building was devoted to – or at least strictly connected with – the statue, so
it is usually called the “temple of the Sphinx” (Photo 3.6). Curiously, though, no reliefs or any
other signs of worshipping rituals which would have taken place there have been found, there is no
direct communication between the temple and the Sphinx enclosure, and, among hundreds of
honorary titles known from the tombs of the priests and overseers of the Old Kingdom necropolis,
not even one seems to refer to a service at the Sphinx (the Sphinx temple was soon forgotten; it
was interred and not known in the New Kingdom). The plan is based on an open rectangular
court, probably housing 12 statues, of which only the sockets remain. The building is usually
considered a temple to the sun, essentially because of the probable association of the Sphinx with
the sun and because of the rigorous east to west orientation it exhibits.
Photo 3.6. Giza. A front view of the Khafra valley complex. From left to right, the valley
temple and the Sphinx temple in front of the Sphinx. In the background, the py ramids of Khafra
(left) and Khufu (right).

The valley temple of the second py ramid sits in line with the south side of the Sphinx temple.
The causeway arriving from uphill forms the southern boundary of the precinct of the huge
statue and then joins the temple in its north-west corner. The building consists basically of a
pillared, T-shaped space and a few small annexed rooms enclosed like nutshells inside gigantic
megalithic walls. The T-shaped hall housed 23 statues (as can be deduced from the sockets in
place on the floor), one of which was probably double and has to be counted twice, so that in their
“sy mbolic circuit” they equal in number the hours of the Egy ptian day. Curiously, the Sphinx
temple, with its central courty ard, is similar in plan and conception to the corresponding
courty ard section of the funerary temple uphill so that, recombining on the same east to west axis
the plans of the two temples downhill, one gets something very similar to the one uphill (Figure
3.6).

It is clear from the preceding description that the second py ramid complex is a unique
architectural masterpiece. The py ramid itself is only slightly smaller than the first, and to
ascertain this there is no alternative but to measure it. So the main reason for calling the Khufu
py ramid the first, or Great, py ramid is simply that every body knew that it had been built first.
And indeed there is scarcely any doubt as to who the king buried in the second Giza py ramid was,
and to whom the funerary cult in the temple complex was dedicated. He was Khafra, in Greek
Chepren, son and second successor to Khufu. The attribution to Khafra (apart from that of
Herodotus, who wrote 2000 y ears later) is proved by inscriptions which are only slightly later in
relation to the monument, like those in the nearby mastaba of Qar (Kelly Simpson 1976). Qar
was overseer of the necropolis and therefore of the py ramids’ complexes. Since each py ramid
complex had a specific name, a list of them is given in the inscriptions, and that of the second
py ramid was Khafra is great. Moreover, while much uncertainty persists concerning the statues
which were present in the funerary temple, many statues of the valley temple, those originally
occupy ing the sockets in the T-shaped hall ( Photo 3.7), have been recovered, one of them intact.
This famous work of art, found by Auguste Mariette in a well in the floor of the temple entrance,
represents King Khafra seated, with the Horus falcon at the back of his head, projecting his wings
protectively around the king’s neck.

Photo 3.7. Giza. A view of the T-shaped granite hall of the Khafra valley temple.
 Apart from wondering who was buried in the second py ramid, however, another burning
question remains about this monument. Who was the king responsible for the planning of the
second Giza complex?

The answer to this question might be more complicated than expected.

3.6 The orientation of the fourth dynasty pyramids

All Egy ptian py ramids of the fourth, fifth and sixth dy nasties (excluding Teti, Chapter 6) are
oriented in such a way that the sides of their bases run parallel to the cardinal directions. It is, of
course, natural to commit errors in taking any phy sical measurements, such as those required to
obtain this orientation, and the Egy ptians were no exception. Consequently , the east and west sides
turn out not to have been laid precisely along the north to south axis, nor the north and south sides
to be precisely along the east to west axis. Yet, to measure these deviations today, we need to use
very accurate instruments such as a transit (theodolite) survey or or high-precision global
positioning sy stem (GPS), since the errors committed by the Egy ptians were astonishingly small,
especially during the fourth dy nasty .

Exact measurements of py ramid orientation were first taken by Petrie (1883, 1892) and more
recently by Dorner (1981). The results obtained by these authors are of course given within the
accuracy of their instruments, which was very good in both cases (on the order of a few seconds
of arc). However, it is much more reasonable to round the data to the nearest arc minute and
consider them within the resolving power of the human ey e, ±2′ , which is also the average error
of a well-trained naked-ey e observer, such as those who originally performed the measurements.
The data are (Belmonte 2001b):

1. Py ramid of Meidum: –18′ ;

2. Bent Py ramid: –12′ ;
3. Red Py ramid: –9′ ;
4. Py ramid of Khufu: –3′ ;
5. Py ramid of Khafra: –6′ ;
6. Py ramid of Menkaura: +14′ .

I have omitted from the list the two fourth dy nasty py ramids which we shall be discussing
later, Djedefra at Abu Roash – which is in poor condition and not, in my opinion, measurable with
a comparable degree of accuracy (in spite of contrasting claims; see Mathieu 2001) – and the
“Great Pit” at Zawiet el Arian, which regrettably has never been measured.
 Clearly, these are orientations which were obtained with a maniacal accuracy : the greatest
error was made by the planners of Meidum, and it is less than one-third of a degree. The problem
of exactly how such accuracy was obtained is quite delicate. Of course, the Egy ptians did not
have the magnetic compass, but this does not matter, since magnetic compasses cannot be that
precise any way. Furthermore, in spite of existing claims (see, for example, Isler 2001), it is
nearly impossible to attain such a high precision using solar methods (for instance, bisecting the
angle formed by the shadow of a post in two sy mmetric positions). Thus, there remains only one
other possibility , the use of stars. To determine north in a precise way , one can measure the rising
and setting positions of a bright star on an artificial horizon (a levelled wall) and then bisect the
angle (Edwards 1952). This method, however, does not, of course, depend on precession, while it
is very likely that the method used by the Egy ptians did. To see this, observe that if one measures
a phy sical quantity and repeats the measurement several times, the result will be a number of
points scattered irregularly in a “band”, which would have the maximum error as its width. Thus,
since the best accuracy obtainable with the naked ey e by an expert astronomer is of the order of
a few arc minutes, one would expect the errors of the py ramid’s orientation to fall randomly into
a band of similar width, centred around true north. But this is not the case – the errors clearly
form a pattern that is not random. The absolute value of the error drops from Meidum to Khufu,
and then rises again from Khufu to Menkaura. This means that a time-dependent phenomenon is
taking place, and this makes for a source of intrinsic error in the method employ ed to determine
true north. This phenomenon is clearly precession (Haack 1984).

The precession-dependent orientation procedure, which is by far the most likely candidate for
the method used by the Egy ptian survey ors, is the so-called simultaneous transit (Spence 2000 –
see also Rawlins and Pickering 2001; Belmonte 2001b; Magli 2003, 2009a). It consists of
observing two circumpolar stars. The survey ors kept track of their relative positions and identified
north as the direction on the ground corresponding to the segment joining the two stars when it is
perpendicular to the horizon. If the precessional drift of the segment is calculated as a function of
time, the resulting graph is a straight line. On this line, the experimental points corresponding to
the orientation errors can be positioned, and dates of construction can be read on the time axis. If
the stars were sighted with one in the upper culmination and the other in the lower one, then they
were most probably Kochab – a star we have already met – and Mizar (zeta Ursa Majoris)
(Figure 3.7). The corresponding chronology emerges, however, as being a little earlier than that
usually accepted. Higher chronologies, such as the Baines and Malek one used in this book, fit
better with the use of two stars sighted at the same (upper or lower) culmination: Megrez (delta
Ursa Majoris) and Phecda (gamma Ursa Majoris).
3.7. The simultaneous transit of Kochab and Mizar in the northern sky of Giza around 2500 BC.

The simultaneous transit method is the only one ever proposed that takes into account the effect
of precession on the distribution of the orientation errors and, at the same time, is compatible with
what we know about the ancient Egy ptians’ way of thinking and about the instrument they used,
the Merkhet.13 But there is a problem. Looking at the true data (instead of looking at their absolute
value), it is clear that the measurement made for the orientation of the second py ramid should
precede, not follow, that of the first (Magli 2003).

A workaround for this problem is that, for some unknown reason, the orientation ceremony of
the second py ramid took place during summer, while that of all the others was carried out in
winter. During winter, the segment between Kochab and Mizar is located “to the right” of the pole
at night, hence in summer it is found “to the left”, leading to the inversion. A similar workaround
functions with the other pair of stars, in this case admitting that for the Khafra py ramid the
orientation was made observing the two stars at their lower culmination (i.e., “under” the pole),
while for all the other py ramids the upper culmination was used. Of course, both are quite ad hoc
solutions which – at least in my view – are not in agreement with what we know about the way of
thinking of the ancient Egy ptians. The foundation of a sacred building was indeed a complex
ritual, in which the king performed a series of sy mbolic acts such as, for instance, the lay ing of
the foundation’s deposits. Many such deposits have been recovered archaeologically in
excavations of temples, but they occurred also at the py ramids, as the recovery of a foundation
cavity containing a copper axe-head in the descending passage of the Djedefra py ramid has
shown (Mathieu 2001). A fundamental part of the ritual, performed through the whole history of
Egy pt from Early Dy nastic times, was the Stretching of the Cord. In a ty pical depiction of the
ceremony, the Pharaoh is shown together with the goddess of wisdom and knowledge, Seshat,
characterised by a curious emblem (a sort of star with seven ray s, surmounted by an arch) on
her head. The Pharaoh and the goddess face each other, and each of them has a kind of hammer
in one hand and a rope-pulling pole in the other. It is clear that the operations are related to the
orientation of the temple’s plan; unfortunately, no texts describing astronomical observations
associated with the ceremony have been recovered that date to before the Ptolemaic and Roman
periods. These later texts, however, make clear references to the observation of certain
configurations of the constellation Meskhety u; that is, the Big Dipper.

If Old Kingdom depictions of the “Stretching of the Cord” do not help in clarify ing the
techniques, they do show the overriding significance of the rites associated with foundation, and
the orientation of the king’s py ramid must have been an operation – a ceremony indeed – of the
utmost significance. Therefore, it is likely that it would alway s have taken place under the same
conditions. Furthermore, orientation data would be scattered more randomly if the season of
foundation, or the choice of the star’s configuration at culmination, was random. So, how are we
to solve this enigma? The natural solution comes from the fact that we are speaking of naked-ey e
observations, although aided with simple instruments, aimed at orienting huge monuments. In this
context, as first noticed by Juan Belmonte, insisting that the data for the first and the second Giza
py ramids – which are separated by 3′ – are really distinct is useless. Much more reasonable is
the idea that the two orientations were performed at the same time. It follows that two projects
were laid down simultaneously (Shaltout, Belmonte and Fekri 2007b; Magli 2005a, 2009a; Magli
and Belmonte 2009).14

Is this really possible? Could it really be that Khafra only completed the construction of the
second py ramid and its complex on the basis of an already existing project which included two
py ramids and their annexes? If so, then this hy pothetical overall Khufu project had such a degree
of complexity as to be the most astonishing architectural feat ever pulled off in human history,
aimed at constructing a gigantic sacred landscape, even more magnificent than that of Khufu’s
father, Snefru.

Well, believe it or not, we can still read the name of this sacred landscape once every y ear, in
the form of the most awesome hierophany ever conceived on planet Earth.

3.7 The horizon of Khufu

In the Old Kingdom, the king was surrounded by an elite entourage of officeholders and priests,
who shared the king’s hopes for the afterlife and were buried near his py ramid. In a sense, the
king’s Ka remained the head of the deceased souls, discharging his duty of carry ing them to the
afterworld. In particular, two vast cemeteries of mastabas are associated with Khufu’s tomb. The
east cemetery is reserved mostly for the roy al family and relatives, while the north cemetery is
for court officials. The mastabas are arranged on a strictly orthogonal grid oriented towards the
cardinal points (so that Khufu’s cemeteries at Giza are among the first examples of orthogonal
town planning). One of the most important of Khufu’s east mastabas is certainly the one which
lies at the beginning of the first row, in front of the queen’s py ramids. It belongs to a son of Khufu
called Khaf-khufu (Kelly Simpson 1978). Since the name of the prince included the roy al name
of his father, it is found written as (from right to left, Kha-f-[Khufu cartouche]).
The tomb is beautifully decorated, its most notable feature being the large carvings of Anubis
which flank the entrance. It is, however, doubtful that Prince Khaf-khufu was buried here;
besides, his name is not mentioned elsewhere, while many other of the king’s sons are known
from various sources. Why ? The location of the tomb shows that Khaf-khufu was quite an
important person during Khufu’s reign, and Stadelmann ( 1984) has proposed a simple solution to
this quandary : prince Khaf-khufu was none other than Khafra, who succeeded to the throne
unexpectedly on Djedefra’s (the first successor of Khufu) sudden death. Upon succession,
Stadelmann argues, he took the name ; Khaf-khufu became Khaf-Ra.

This interpretation has been criticised in that the tradition of assuming a throne name in the
titulary 15 is well attested only later (Bolshakov 1995). But my view is that this is not the point,
because in his specific case it is obvious that, if Khaf-khufu ascended to the throne, the Khufu part
of his name would have had to be changed to Ra. Indeed, as we shall see in a while, Khufu was
Ra, so what was Khaf-khufu supposed to do? Keep the father’s name with a cartouche inside his
cartouche? Or perhaps debase the Khufu name by writing it without the cartouche?

If Stadelmann’s Khaf-khufu = Khafra equation holds true, then it is natural to think that the
newly succeeded king hastily abandoned his mastaba tomb in favour of a py ramid, perhaps one
already under construction nearby , in a dock maintained by Djedefra (the cartouche of Djedefra
appears in the Khufu boats’ pit, showing that Khufu’s first successor continued the works at Giza
while building his own py ramid at Abu Roash). I am well aware that appropriation of monuments
wa s not common in the Old Kingdom (while it became frequent in the New Kingdom). Yet,
besides the question of his original name, there are a multitude of other clues of various origins,
all pointing to the idea that Khafra, perhaps impelled by his sudden accession, chose to complete
the second Giza project of his father as his own tomb.

First of all, there is the satellite py ramid of the Great Py ramid, which, as we have seen, was
added in haste to the existing project. Why ? A solution might be that the Khufu project of course
already included a carefully planned satellite py ramid, that of the second py ramid, located
precisely in the same position as that in Dahshur: to the south of the south py ramid and aligned
towards its center. As soon as the south py ramid was commandeered by Khafra, he ordered the
construction of another satellite for his father.

Second, there is the geological factor. Indeed, as we have already seen, the best place to have
built the first py ramid at Giza would have been in the vicinity of the second. Furthermore, once it
had been decided to build a py ramid in the position of the Great Py ramid, the natural place for
the quarry would have been to the south-west, following the escarpment towards the area east of
the second py ramid. And sure enough, the huge Khufu main quarry is precisely there
(completely filled with debris, probably originating from the dismantling of the ramps), but it
ends at the causeway of the second py ramid, which acts as a boundary (Lehner 1985a; Reader
2001). Clearly, this prompts the supposition that at least the project of the causeway was already
in existence when the blocks were quarried.

Third, as discussed in the previous section, the orientation data clearly point to the planning of
the second py ramid a few y ears before the first, with the error bands overlapping sufficiently to
let us assume that they were planned together. Fourth, archaeoastronomy can furnish us with a
series of other clues confirming the existence of an original double project at Giza. The proof
stems from the profound connection of the Giza py ramid’s complexes with the sun, as I shall now
explain, starting with the second py ramid.

As already mentioned, the causeway slopes down straight from the funerary temple to a point,
which we shall now indicate as O′ , located at the north-west corner of the valley temple,
reachable from the inside of the building through a spectacular corridor cased in granite (Photo
3.8); over this point there also passes the ideal prolongation of the southern side of the py ramid.
Photo 3.8. Giza. The ascending corridor inside the Khafra valley temple.

A series of astronomical alignments relate this point (and, slightly more generally, the area in
front of the Sphinx temple) to the western artificial horizon which was formed by the construction
of the two great py ramids. These alignments are related to the cy cle of the sun from the spring
equinox to the autumn equinox. First of all, since a line running due west passes along the south
side of the py ramid, the sun at the equinoxes was (and is) seen setting in alignment with the south-
east corner on those day s. Second, the alignment defined by the causeway is oriented 14° north
of west. The azimuth of the setting sun at the summer solstice at the latitude of Giza is ~28° north
of west, and therefore this alignment coincides with the midpoint of the path of the setting sun at
the horizon between the spring equinox and midsummer and between midsummer and the
autumn equinox (Bauval and Hancock 1997). Finally, let us consider the line which points towards
the midpoint of the segment, separating the south-west corner of the two py ramids. The azimuth
of this line is twice that of the causeway , ~28° north of west, and therefore it coincides with that of
the sun at the summer solstice. Consequently, the midsummer sun is seen setting in between the
two (Photo 3.9). The sy mbolism implicit in this alignment was noticed for the first time by
Egy ptologist Mark Lehner during his fieldwork at the plateau (Lehner 1985b, 1999). He realised
that, when the midsummer sun sets, an observer actually witnesses the formation of a spectacular
replica of the hierogly ph -Akhet. This sign represents the sun setting (or rising) between the
two -djew mountains. This dramatic phenomenon is thus a hierophany, a manifestation of
divinity which occurs every y ear of a celestial cy cle. Indeed the word Akhet, usually translated
simply as “horizon”, had a profound sy mbolic meaning for the ancient Egy ptians. As we already
know, the double mountains were associated with the afterlife. By connecting them with the sun,
an even stronger image associated with rebirth was created. The region called Akhet in the
Py ramid Texts has the same root as -Akh, spirit, and denotes the place where the dead were
transformed, preparing themselves for the afterworld. As part of the sky, it was also the place in
which the sun, and hence the king, was destined to be reborn. Finally, the choice of the summer
solstice for the date was clearly not coincidental, since it heralded the flooding of the Nile, and
thus the theoretical beginning of the flood season (of course, the actual count of the civil calendar
had already drifted by a considerable number of day s; see Section 2.1 of Box 2).
Photo 3.9. Giza, summer solstice 2011. Akhet, the name of the Khufu project, has been
rewritten once a y ear for 4500 y ears on the Giza plateau and is composed by two enormous
stone monuments and the sun setting in between them. This picture was taken from the terrace in
front of the Sphinx.

Let us now analy se the astronomical alignments (Figure 3.8) of the lay out of the first Giza
complex. This analy sis will be (of necessity ) more speculative given that the valley temple is
submerged by the houses of the modern village. Probes operating there (Messiha 1983; Goy on
1985; see also Lehner 1999) unearthed walls made of huge limestone blocks and a narrow
corridor cased by basalt blocks. From the plans of these excavations, it is apparent that an
important building, a roy al palace, if not the valley temple itself, was located in the area where
the ideal prolongation of the northern side of the py ramid and the causeway intersect each other,
at a point which we shall denote by O. Clearly, such a point – an analogue of point O' – play ed a
special role in the plan of the complex.16 By drawing from this point a set of lines specular to
those of O′ , we see that they are related to the cy cle of the sun from the autumn equinox to the
spring equinox. Indeed, a line directed due west passes near the north side of the py ramid, and
therefore the sun at the equinoxes was (and is) seen setting in alignment with the northern corner
on those day s. The alignment defined by the causeway is oriented 14° south of west, and
therefore coincides with the midpoint of the path of the setting sun at the horizon between the
autumn equinox and midwinter and between midwinter and the spring equinox. Finally , the line of
the setting sun at the winter solstice (~28° south of west) is directed towards the second Giza
complex and passes near the centre of the funerary temple. As a result, the midwinter sun is seen
setting bey ond the second py ramid (Magli 2008a, b).

3.8. The astronomical alignments of the valley temples of the two main py ramids of Giza.

Taken as a whole, the two complexes have specular alignments. In particular, each complex
embodies a hierophany at a different solstice, a hierophany which can only manifest itself in the
presence of the other complex.17

The fact that the astronomical alignments associated with the valley complexes mirror each
other and that one of them on each side effectively requires the presence of the other py ramid to
work is certainly another impressive indication of there being an overall project. However, of
course, one could take the point of view that it was Khafra himself who demanded rigorous
sy mmetry in the planning of the astronomical alignments of his own complex.

Then, one could also think that Khaf-khufu was not Khafra, and that Khufu did not select the
most favourable position to the south-west because he wished his tomb to be placed on the rocky
spur of the plateau. At this point, clearly, one might also surmise that Khufu hastily added a
satellite py ramid to his previously planned complex for unknown reasons – and y es, one can also
assume an ad hoc explanation for the anomalous orientation of the second py ramid and,
furthermore, conjecture that it was Khafra who built his py ramidal complex to be slightly
smaller than that of his father as a sign of respect and/or to save a few hundred thousand tons of
material, and that for the same reason he did not order the construction of py ramids for his
queens. Finally, one can certainly admit that the Khufu stonemasons meticulously cut their
quarry in such a way as to have a straight, astronomically oriented boundary to the south of it,
suitable for a future causeway, and that the artist who sculpted the Sphinx as Khafra opted for an
exaggerated smoothing of the king’s outline towards a sy mbolic face or perhaps towards that of
his father.

But, we have the very last piece of the puzzle to consider. We can learn the name of the
py ramid of Khufu from many sources; for instance, the list present in Qar’s mastaba. It was
; that is, “The Akhet of Khufu” (Akhet is written here as Akh-t). Therefore, the
name bequeathed to us for the Great Py ramid is the same as that of the spectacular hierophany
occurring at Giza at the summer solstice. In other words, this hierophany replicates the very same
name as the Khufu project in the sky once a year.18 Is it really possible at this point to persist in
thinking that it was Khafra who asked his architects and astronomers to embody the name of his
father’s py ramid in his own complex? I think that the answer is: no, it is not possible. The
correspondence between hierogly phs expressing sacred things and what they represented was
usually pretty exact; for instance, as we have seen, the altar for offerings was a sort of gigantic
replica of its own hierogly ph. Therefore, the Khufu complex was called Akhet because it actually
was the Akhet – the horizon – pertaining to the divine Khufu, who had been united with the sun
god, probably already in life. Indeed there are hints indicating that Khufu depicted himself as the
incarnation of Ra (Stadelmann 1991; Hawass 1993). Certainly he inaugurated a long period of
kings, “sons of Ra”, and, as we shall see in the following chapters, all the subsequent “solarised”
kings felt the need to model the sacred landscape in such a way as to render explicit their direct
lineage from the sun god. In the case of Khufu, the meaning of such a gigantic, almost
inconceivable sacred landscape can be better understood by comparing it to that of his father.
The similarities between the sacred landscape devised by Snefru at Dahshur and the project of
the two main py ramids at Giza are indeed striking: two giant py ramids of almost equal height,
with two different slopes (recall that the upper section of the Bent Py ramid has the same slope as
the Red Py ramid, so that only two differing slopes are present at Dahshur), two sets of annexed
buildings, and only one satellite py ramid on the axis of the southernmost main py ramid. The key
difference is that the Snefru project was planned to dominate the Saqqara landscape to the south
as a double mountain sign , while Khufu chose to transform the sy mbol of his father into an
even more powerful sy mbol of rebirth, the Akhet sign , by “adding” the sun in between his
own paired mountains.

Well, the time has come to conclude this chapter, and y es, for me it is as difficult as leaving
the Giza plateau after sunset at the summer solstice. So, let us cast a last backward glance together
at the double mountains of Giza on a summer evening, when the sky is usually cloudless and the
sun casts a shimmering red light onto the desert sands, just before setting.

A message written 4500 y ears ago can still be read with perfect clarity. This message is, that
the horizon belongs to Khufu.19

Box 3. The Seked and the pyramid’s slopes

The principal Egy ptian unit of measure was the cubit; the length of the cubit during
dy nastic Egy pt can be estimated at 52.6 ± 0.3 centimetres. Egy ptian numerals were
based on a decimal sy stem. In spite of this, for unknown reasons which nobody has
ever dared to investigate, they chose to subdivide the cubit into seven palms, and
each palm was divided into four digits, giving a total of 28 elementary units.

The use of the cubit is well documented: many examples of cubit rods have been
recorded archaeologically, and most py ramid and temple measurements can of
course be expressed in whole numbers of cubits. A delicate issue, however, is the
way in which angles were measured in py ramid building. It is, in fact, abundantly
clear that the Egy ptians used the most simple and effective method: measuring
angles in terms of integer fractions or, as we would say today, in terms of rational
tangents. For this reason, in the present book all py ramid slopes are given in terms
of rational fractions (Tables A.3, A.4, A.5, A.6); for instance, the slope of the Khufu
py ramid is 14/11, that of Khafra 4/3. Measuring angles in this way, quarry men did
not have to use the cubit to cut the casing blocks with the correct angle. For Khufu,
all they had to do was to count 14 (arbitrary ) units vertically for every 11 of the
same units counted horizontally. It was even easier for Khafra because the
triangular section of the casing blocks forms a Py thagorean triangle (all integer
sides 3–4–5), so that the hy potenuse could be checked accurately by counting five
units on it. However, from the time of the Middle Kingdom – when the only two
mathematical papy ri known to us, the Rhind and the Moscow, were first written –
the use of a special measure called Seked is documented. A Seked was the number
of palms and digits spanned horizontally for each cubit rise; in other words, it is a
ratio in which the numerator is the base in cubits of a right triangle of one cubit
height. This clearly is not a clever way of using rational tangents. In fact, rational
tangents per se are what are called in phy sics pure numbers, nondimensional
quantities. Insisting on using the Seked presupposes a unit of measure and therefore
introduces errors, since the accuracy cannot be better than the smallest subunit, in
this case the finger – in a context where a unit is not needed. In spite of the fact that
no documentation of the Seked in Old Kingdom py ramid building exists, it is usually
assumed that it was used by the builders (see, for example, Rossi 2003). This has
led to unnecessary, not to say ridiculous, complications. For instance, the simple
ratio 4/3 becomes 21 digits (or 5 palms 1 digit); if the Seked was used, each
quarry man would have had to use a graded cubit with 28 signs, thereby increasing
the possibility of error enormously. The situation becomes absurd when one has to
express the staggeringly simple ratio 3/2 – which was used for the py ramid of Unas
– as a Seked. Please try . Yes, it is impossible.

To summarise, I do not believe that the Egy ptians could have used such an
unnecessarily complicated method when constructing the Old Kingdom py ramids.
This is an important point because insisting on the idea that the Seked was used in the
Old Kingdom can prompt serious errors of interpretation, as it enforces
approximations to the nearest digit which were not intended by the builders.

Another delicate point on which there is much confusion in the literature

concerns the slope of the py ramids’ corners. In any squared py ramid, the tangent
of the slope and that of the corner angle form an irrational ratio, fixed and equal to
2. In other words, only one of the two can be rational. It is, in my view, impossible
to choose the corner angle and then build the py ramid without also having close
control of the slope angle. The reverse is less essential, since what is really required
at the corner is a very careful cut of a limited number of corner stones (four times
the number of stone courses, so up to one thousand in the case of Khufu) – which
can be done in practice (with stick and cord) without explicitly calculating the value
of the corner angle.

A final question is: by what criteria was the slope of a py ramid chosen during the
Old Kingdom? An observation we might make to start off with is that the “trivial”
slope 1/1 was stringently avoided for the kings’ py ramids. The slopes are alway s
considerably steeper, with a single exception at Dahshur, where for the upper part
of the Bent Py ramid and for the Red Py ramid the Py thagorean slope 20/21
(hy potenuse 29) was chosen (the initial slope of the Bent Py ramid and the slope of
the py ramidion of the Red Py ramid correspond instead to the rational tangent 7/5).
As far as Meidum is concerned, according to Petrie, the final slope of this py ramid
was 14/11, equal to that of Khufu (an assertion that I have tried more than once to
verify on site, obtaining higher but vary ing results each time). If Petrie’s measure is
correct, perhaps it is proof that Snefru really did turn Meidum into a geometrical
py ramid later in his reign. In any case, from Khufu onwards, we enter the long
phase of the solar kings of the fourth and fifth dy nasties, during which the values of
the slopes oscillate within a small but effective range (with the final exception of the
very steep slope of the py ramid of Unas, a likely reason for which is discussed in
Chapter 6). Finally, with the sixth dy nasty, the projects of the py ramids conform
rigidly to a fixed standard and the slope stabilises at the Py thagorean 4/3 slope,
which – as mentioned before – is without doubt the “simplest” (regardless of
whether this triangle was also considered “sacred” – as claimed by much later,
classical writers).

Thus, in the period of the “solarised” kings of the fourth and fifth dy nasties, the
slopes show a sort of experimentation being carried out; values vary in a range
between 6/5 and 4/3 (about 3°, between 50° and 53°). A suggestion has been made
that slopes were connected with the sun in that the 4/3 triangle arose from the
measure of the sun at culmination at the winter solstice, this measure being close to
the complementary angle (Magdolen 2000). However, this coincidence clearly has
no appreciable effect on the illumination of the py ramid’s faces, so it is another
example of the kind of “abstract” reasoning supposedly applied by Egy ptian
architects of which we have no proof whatsoever. A more likely possibility, still
connected with the sun, centres on the fact that our star at the summer solstice in the
area of Memphis passed at a height ~53° at azimuth 90°; that is, in correspondence
with due east (Belmonte and Zedda 2007). This means that, on py ramids with
slopes close to or slightly lower than these values, an effect of illumination took
place for some day s around the summer solstice: the west and south faces were
quite abruptly, but fully, lit up by the ascending sun at the moment it crossed the
first vertical.
 4 A mirage from Heliopolis

4.1 A mirage from Heliopolis

If one observes a map of the monuments on the Giza plateau, the existence of a topographical
axis (Figure 4.1) immediately strikes the ey e. This axis is oriented south-west to north-east
(azimuth 45°) and is most easily followed starting from the south-west and thus from the third
Giza complex, that of Menkaura (which will be discussed in detail later in this chapter). The line
runs along the diagonal of Menkaura’s first queen’s py ramid, touches the south-east corner of
Menkaura’s py ramid, follows the diagonal of his funerary temple, passes the south-east corner of
the second py ramid court, cuts the diagonal of the fore-temple, touches the south-east corner of
Khufu’s py ramid and very nearly cuts the diagonal of his first queen’s py ramid (the south-east
corner of the second py ramid misses the axis by less than 30 metres, the azimuth of the
connecting line between the apexes of the two main py ramids being about 43°).

4.1. The Giza axis. The line runs along the diagonal of Menkaura’s first queen’s py ramid, the
south-east corner of Menkaura’s py ramid, the diagonal of his funerary temple, the south-east
corner of the second py ramid court, the diagonal of the fore-temple, the south-east corner of
Khufu’s py ramid and the diagonal of Khufu’s first queen’s py ramid.

The deliberate planning of this axis is self-evident, and its existence is well known (Lehner
1985b; Jeffrey s 1998). It is clearly much more than a simple survey line; it is a primary,
artificial, topographical feature. But why was it executed?

The answer lies at some distance from Giza, to the north-east, on the other bank of the Nile.
Indeed, if the axis is prolonged across the river, it points in the direction of the city of Heliopolis.

Heliopolis – called Iunu- (pillar) – was one of the major religious centres of ancient Egy pt,
active from the second dy nasty. It was dedicated to the sun, as it housed the most important
temple of Ra. Although we do not know to what extent, it is certain that astronomy was practised
there, as it is specified in various sources as one of the pursuits of the priesthood. Heliopolis was
also a primary theological centre, where the dominant cosmological doctrine of the Old Kingdom
was formulated. This doctrine, sometimes called the Great Ennead because it was based on nine
gods, was of paramount importance because it included the my th of the line of descent of Osiris
and therefore underpinned the divine nature of the monarch, identified with Osiris’ son Horus. As
a matter of fact, according to one version of the my th, the temple of Heliopolis marked the place
of a py ramid-shaped sacred stone, the Ben-Ben. The stone was linked with sun worship in that it
marked the spot of the “first sun”, arriving in the guise of a bird on the “primeval hill”, sometimes
viewed as a sort of isle in a primordial watery marsh. The first sun was the creator god, Atum,
who created the sun and incorporated it within him as Ra-Atum. He then created the first divine
couple, Shu and Tefnut (air and water), who in turn begat Geb and Nut (earth and sky ). And so
the world was created; from Geb and Nut came forth Seth, Nephthy s, Osiris and Isis, the final
two being the parents of Horus.

Heliopolis is mentioned in the Py ramid Texts; since reference is also made to Ennead
theology, parts of the texts might well have been written right there. Unfortunately, little remains
today of the sacred centre, whose ruins lie under the modern buildings of Cairo in a district known
as Mataria. Portions of the mudbrick walls of the temple perimeter were still visible in the
nineteenth century and were estimated to be about 1.2 × 1 kilometres. This vast sacred area
contained, as was customary in Egy pt, subsequent additions made by different Pharaohs during
millennia. The plan of the main temple of the sun remains unknown, but there is a general
consensus that the main features of this temple must have been later replicated in the project of
the so-called sun temples of the fifth dy nasty (we shall come back to this problem in Chapter 5).

These temples were characterised by huge obelisks, and indeed a great number of obelisks
were erected at Heliopolis. Most of them, however, have been removed over the centuries,
starting with the Romans. For instance, the Flaminian obelisk in Rome, first erected by Augustus in
the Circus Maximus, was later transported to Piazza del Popolo by Pope Sixtus V. Today, at
Heliopolis only one obelisk remains standing. It was originally one of a pair placed in front of the
py lon of the main temple and was erected by Senwosret I, the second Pharaoh of the twelfth
dy nasty. It was restored in 1950 but, as far as I was able to ascertain, it stands in its original
position or perhaps a few metres to the east. I have therefore taken this obelisk as the Heliopolis
survey point for the purposes of the present book.
 The land between Giza and Heliopolis is occupied by the Nile Valley, so an unobstructed line
of sight connected the two places in ancient times. However, the earth is round and, in view of the
distances which come into play, we have to take the earth’s curvature into account. This can
easily be done by using the so-called horizon formula (actually a straightforward application of
Py thagoras’ theorem). A handy version of this formula is the following. The maximal distance in
kilometres at which an object of height h can be seen equals approximately the square root of 13h
if h is expressed in metres. It follows, for instance, that a person 2 metres tall has a visible horizon
slightly greater than 5 kilometres. If the object sighted has a nonnegligible height, then the two
heights have to be added together. Consequently, a sun-reflecting signal located in Heliopolis at,
say, 20 metres above the ground would easily have been visible from the west bank, located at an
average of some 20 metres above the plain. Such a signal might have been a movable one on the
temple floor, or an observation post situated at the top of a provisional wooden structure. On the
opposite side, of course, once the building sites of the py ramids reached a sufficient height, the
upper courses became definitively inter-visible (the fascinating view of the Giza py ramids from
Heliopolis could still be enjoy ed at the end of the nineteenth century, as confirmed by paintings
of the time).

Thus the Giza axis deliberately pointed to Heliopolis, and the two places, though quite a
distance apart, “spoke” to each other. But why ?

To try to understand the meaning of the Giza axis, it is advisable to gain more insight into the
role of the sun god Ra during the Old Kingdom (Quirke 2001). This god, by far the most important
in this period, was worshipped in various forms, each associated with a different aspect, or role.
As mentioned before, Ra-Atum was the creator of both other deities and human beings. But Ra,
of course, travelled across the sky, so that another of his guises, the falcon god Ra-Horakhti, was
identified with the morning sun; the sun disk itself was considered to be the visible body of Ra, or
sometimes only his “Ey e”. The sun sailed through the sky on his bark, mentioned in the Py ramid
Texts as one of the places where the deceased Pharaoh had a designated seat. During the night,
Ra entered the underworld, only to be reborn the following dawn. This is an obsessive, constant
motif throughout all Egy ptian funerary art and texts of the New Kingdom, but in its first version it
already appears in the Py ramid Texts. Entering the netherworld means entering the realm of
Osiris, and indeed the evolving relationship between the two gods was to suffuse the whole history
of Egy ptian beliefs and architecture. Finally , Ra had a direct influence on the earth, governing the
seasons; this influence was recognised especially in the association of the summer solstice with
the flooding of the Nile. Given such a complex religious scenario, it is not surprising that the
relationship of the sun god with kingship came to be the most significant element of the ideology
of power during the Old Kingdom. The point of rupture, the moment when the Pharaohs adopted
their solar identification as the true basis of kingship, appears to have been during Khufu’s reign.
This conclusion can be drawn from a series of hints gleaned from architecture, since no
theological text has come directly down to us. These hints indicate that Khufu in some way
declared himself to be the sun god. His sons and grandsons would consequently start to define
themselves as “son of Ra” and to acquire explicitly the Ra- particle in their names. Since
Heliopolis was – at least in a sense – the birthplace of Ra, an explicit, topographical linking of the
kings’ tombs with the sacred centre becomes understandable. This topographical relationship can
be defined as dynastic, like several others we shall encounter later on; it is perhaps reflected in a
passage of the Py ramid Texts (PT 307) where the king states “My father is an Onite, and I
my self am an Onite, born in On when Ra was ruler” (On stands for Heliopolis in the Faulkner
translation).

To summarise, then, the deliberateness of the planning of the Giza axis facing Heliopolis is
comprehensible in the sense of a direct link between the funerary complex of the king to the west
(Giza) and the “solarisation” of his rebirth to the east (Heliopolis). Moreover, it can be observed
that with the azimuth of the axis (~45° south of west), the traditional inter-cardinal orientation –
which was characteristic of the sacred centre of Aby dos – was also incorporated into the project,
which may lead to the suspicion that one of the reasons for the choice of the Giza plateau was its
azimuth from Heliopolis.1 As discussed in Chapter 1, this direction pointed towards the setting of
the brightest part of the Milky Way. In particular, at the time of Khufu, an observer looking
towards Giza from Heliopolis (thus at azimuth ~ 225°) would have seen the stars of the Southern
Cross, followed by the very bright stars of Centaurus, “flowing” together with the great celestial
river and disappearing from view behind the apex of the Great Py ramid. All this, however, has
not exhausted the sy mbolic content of the Giza axis, for a rather peculiar fact still remains to be
examined (Magli 2008a).

As a consequence of the Giza axis, any one approaching Heliopolis and looking towards Giza in
ancient times could only see the Great Py ramid, because the second py ramid (to say nothing of
the third) was almost hidden from sight by the gigantic mass of the first. In other words, it can be
said that, although the sites of Giza and Heliopolis are inter-visible, the second and third py ramids
were constructed along a line which had the effect of making them invisible from there. Looking
from Heliopolis (and also, of course, from any other point along the axis), the Giza py ramids
seem to “contract” on each other, and finally their images merge into that of the Great Py ramid,
forming a spectacular optical effect, a sort of mirage. Today it is impossible to verify this mirage
from the centre of Cairo, owing to the presence of buildings and smog. However, if we extend the
line in the opposite direction, towards the desert to the south-west, it passes over the Fay um
highway. From there the view is quite clear, and stopping by the roadside, it is possible to see the
“opposite” mirage; that is, to see the mass of the Great Py ramid vanishing behind the second (of
course the third py ramid in this case will be in the foreground).

It is obvious that whenever one puts two almost identical py ramids in a restricted area, there
will alway s exist a line of sight along which they are seen to merge. Khufu’s (or Khafre’s)
architect thus intentionally resolved to lay out the second py ramid so that the two merge when
seen from Heliopolis, and this was duly followed by Menkaura’s architects as well ( Photo 4.1).
Khufu was, and remained, in this way the lord of the horizon from every where but one point,
which was a “sy mbolic pillar” itself. From that point, the double-peaked horizon was slowly and
modestly reduced to a single, although giant, py ramid.

Photo 4.1. Giza. A photograph taken from the first of Menkaura’s queen py ramids, looking
north-east along the Giza axis. In this precise spot, 4500 y ears ago, the Menkaura survey ors were
working, charged with the duty of aligning the king’s project along the Giza axis, in spite of the
fact that the required place was – exactly as it is today – lost in the desert.

The end result of such frenetic building activity is that Giza is a stunning example of a sacred
landscape, a place where many , if not all, details were planned in line with ideas which had much
more to do with sy mbolism and religion than with practicality and functionality. The model
inaugurated at Giza was to be re-elaborated later, and would lead to the peculiar structuring of the
whole sacred topography of the Memphite area. Indeed, what Khufu actually invented is a way
of interpreting and modelling the sacred landscape which governed the positioning of all
py ramids up to the end of the fifth dy nasty. This model, which I have termed “sy mbolic
invisibility ” elsewhere (Magli 2010a, c), requires the funerary monuments to be built along visual
axes which connect to a chosen element of the lay out of each existing py ramid belonging to
dy nastically related Pharaohs. Interestingly, as we shall see in Chapter 5, although of
“Heliopolitan” – and therefore topographical – origin, these axes also appear to be related to the
stars, as does the one in Giza. But before we can analy se this topic, we must still discuss as many
as three fourth dy nasty projects.

4.2 The Menkaura project

Khafra’s son Menkaura was the builder of the third py ramid complex of Giza. His py ramid is
small compared with the two giants (66 metres tall, 105 metres wide at the base) but
encompasses several impressive technical tours de force.

First of all, from an aerial view of the Giza plateau, it is immediately evident that the best place
to build a py ramid, considering the two already standing, is to the edge of the rocky plateau, more
or less on the same meridian as Khafra’s funerary temple and therefore many hundreds of
metres to the east of the actual position. Menkaura’s py ramid is instead lost in the desert, and we
are not talking here about a mere portable gazebo in a garden. It was also intended to be cased
with heavy blocks of red granite at least up to the first 10–15 courses, and accordingly these slabs
were painstakingly heaved to the godforsaken site where Menkaura wished to design his eternal
resting place. Many of these granite blocks remain, and many of these are undressed, indicating
that the backbreaking work was interrupted on the Pharaoh’s death.

Another feature which is unbelievably complicated is the substructure of the py ramid. In

Menkaura’s complex, the construction technique based on the open pit (used for Khafra and also
for two other fourth dy nasty py ramids, as we shall see in Section 4.3) was abandoned. The
substructure is carved out completely in the rock. It is connected with the lower courses by a
descending passage, while another passage to the antechamber ends in the nucleus and was
probably used as a service passage during construction. Furthermore, for unknown reasons, the
funerary chamber was constructed in spite of the fact that the chamber, being itself carved in the
rock, did not need such construction. Every time I visit the internal apartment of Menkaura, I
never cease to be amazed by the apparently crazy scheme which was pulled off here. Let me
now endeavour to explain.

The descending passage slopes down with the usual angle. Then it becomes horizontal and
widens a little into a sort of corridor decorated with sty lised false doors. The lintel of the exit is
also decorated, carved to resemble a drum roll. The horizontal passage then opens out into a vast
room, giving a spectacular effect comparable to that convey ed by the Grand Gallery. The room
is sometimes called an antechamber, but I prefer the term atrium since it is a huge space entirely
and meticulously carved into the bedrock, and the final chamber is not accessed at the same level
but through a wide, descending gallery located in the middle of the room (the dummy passage
mentioned earlier exits in the same room, at a higher level over the horizontal passage). Before
reaching the funerary chamber, on the right, we find a small room with six niches, probably used
as a storeroom.

The burial chamber of Menkaura is a box made out of red granite ashlars, with the lower
surface of the slabs forming the ceiling worked to resemble a round barrel vault. The box was
undoubtedly prefabricated and then reassembled in its final place, which of course, being at a
lower level in relation to the atrium, is itself excavated in the bedrock. This means that the box has
no structural function whatsoever; it is a sort of independent structure, a tabernacle built inside the
py ramid with the aim of isolating the king’s sarcophagus (found intact in the nineteenth century
but unfortunately moved and lost in a shipwreck) from the rock around. The builders managed to
construct it only with tremendous effort. The slabs of the ceiling were indeed put in place with the
help of an opening on the west wall of the atrium. Even today, one can clamber from here into
the small space left between the slabs and the roof of the excavated chamber and touch the rough
surface of the huge blocks from the quarries in Aswan 800 kilometres to the south, whose only
purpose was to form a sy mbolic “tent” over the Pharaoh’s resting place.

To the south of Menkaura’s py ramid, three “queens’” py ramids can be seen. The main
py ramid has no known satellite py ramid, but perhaps the easternmost “queen” – with a T-shaped
substructure – was, at least initially, meant to have this function. The complex of the annexes was
conceived of on a spectacular scale, but remained unfinished. In particular, the funerary temple
was built with gargantuan limestone blocks weighing more than 200 tons. The intention was to
encase it with slabs of green granite, but the work was stopped, and so we can visit it as a building
site left frozen in the state it was in 4500 y ears ago. This is particularity evident in the north
corridor. The hard stone slabs which had just arrived from the Nile were placed on both sides of
the corridor, and the master masons evidently abandoned the work of cutting the backs of the
limestone blocks of the walls to embed the slabs perfectly. Among archaeological finds made
here are the fragments of a huge alabaster statue of the king, which probably stood at the centre
of the final hall, looking along the axis of the causeway. The Menkaura causeway was in fact
oriented east to west, the only possible solution for maintaining order in the directions of the Giza
causeway s, since the previous two were oriented in specular directions in relation to the parallel
(Figure 3.3). Although the causeway was left incomplete and does not reach the (scant) remains
of the valley temple, it is still an exciting experience to ascend to the py ramid using the existing
part of it. It is a quiet zone of the Giza area, and the gigantic blocks of the funerary temple, with
the py ramid in the background, soon tower on the horizon. At one point, the Menkaura complex
dominates the view so pervasively (Photo 4.2) that one tends to forget about the imposing
presence of the other py ramids – a point I shall come back to shortly .
Photo 4.2. Giza. The Menkaura py ramid towers at the horizon when viewed from the
causeway . The huge blocks of the funerary temple can be seen in the foreground.

The Menkaura project was, then, to all intents a gigantic one. Granted, the size of the py ramid
is considerably diminished when compared with the two other Giza projects. Yet the technical
difficulties involved in transporting thousands of tons of granite slabs to the building site, only to
encase the py ramid and to construct a granite chamber in the prebuilt rock-cut burial chamber,
were herculean. So, why was the py ramid located at such a distance?

A first, basic answer is at our disposal. It was mandatory to align the py ramid in an “invisible”
way to Heliopolis, and indeed we already know that as many as three key architectural features
of the Menkaura project lie on the Giza axis: the diagonal of the first queen’s py ramid, the south-
east corner of the king’s py ramid and the diagonal of the funerary temple ( Figure 4.1 and Photo
4.1). Of course, to fix the position of a cardinally oriented square (the base of a py ramid) on the
ground, once it has been decided that a corner must slide along a fixed line (the Giza axis),
another degree of freedom remains, namely where to stop the corner point. It was thus possible
to construct the third py ramid closer to the second one, slightly shortening the distance from the
cultivation. However, the position of the py ramid was fixed in such a way that the distance of its
apex from the apex of Khafra’s roughly equals the distance between the apex of Khafra and that
of Khufu. According to a controversial hy pothesis, this leads to a resemblance (claimed not to be
coincidental) with the relative position in the sky of the stars of Orion’s Belt (Bauval 1989; Bauval
and Gilbert 1994). The similarity is made more resounding by the fact that the py ramid which is
supposed to represent the least brilliant star of the three, Mintaka, is also the smallest, and also by
the position of the Nile if it is viewed as a terrestrial counterpart of the Milky Way .

This idea has given rise to an abundance of wild speculation which is totally unconnected with
science and therefore will not be addressed here. As far as the point itself is concerned, it should
first of all be made clear that the idea has little to do with archaeoastronomy either, since the
alleged resemblance does not correspond to astronomical alignments (Magli and Belmonte 2009).
Having said that, it seems to me patently obvious that – regardless of who devised the projects,
whether Khufu on his own or Khufu plus Khafra – the architectural ensemble of the two great
py ramids of Giza was unrelated to any idea of “replicating” the sky on the ground. That leaves
precious little hope that it was a conscious decision taken by Menkaura and his architects.
However, there are other factors which might have influenced the king’s choices. First of all, as
mentioned earlier, the distance of the complex from the others makes it tower over the visitor in
spite of its “small” dimensions. Furthermore, given the complex relationship of the two existing
projects with the sun cy cle and the equinoctial orientation of the Menkaura causeway, one may
suspect that the third py ramid was meant to be placed in such a way that the sun at the winter
solstice could be seen to set behind the py ramid from the Sphinx area, an event which would
clinch the “Orion correlation” once and for all. Actually, this does not occur, as the required
position along the Giza axis would have been on the Maadi hills, many hundreds of metres to the
south-west. However, the py ramid is sufficiently displaced at the horizon to be a spectacular
marker of the approach of the sun to the solstice, which is seen to set to the immediate south of the
monument. Finally, and most importantly of all, if Menkaura was “a star of Orion’s Belt”, why
was his py ramid called “Menkaura is divine” rather than being called a star, as two previous
py ramids actually were?

4.3 The star pyramids and their enigmas

Standing on the esplanade to the north of the Great Py ramid and looking north-west, a contour of
low, white hills can be seen. One of the terraces of these hills has too regular a form and, in fact,
it is what remains of the py ramid of the immediate successor to Khufu, his son Djedefra.

The monument is located some 8.5 kilometres north-west of Giza and lies today inside the
quarry area of Abu Roash, on the Giza to Alexandria road. Abu Roash was not virgin soil when
Djedefra chose it, since Early Dy nastic burials have been found there, and the existence of a
huge enclosure – today lost – in the nearby site of El Deir has been recorded (on the so-called
Lepsius 1 py ramid; see later in this section). The py ramid of Djedefra, with a side base of 106
metres, was not so enormous in comparison with his father’s, but the prominent position chosen
would have made it dramatically visible from the Giza plateau, indeed the “tallest” py ramid ever
constructed. The converse view was even more spectacular (Photo 4.3); in fact, even today, on a
very clear day after a rainstorm, I have experienced the emotion of recognising the unmistakable
profile of the Bent Py ramid when looking south from Abu Roash. The monument of Djedefra
was, however, left unfinished, and stone robbers reduced it to what can be seen today. Since it is
virtually a building site left as a fossil from the py ramid age, the scientific interest of the Abu
Roash hill is clearly immense.

Photo 4.3. Abu Roash. The view towards Giza on a clear day .

The lower courses of the py ramid were cased in granite, put in place on inclined lay ers. From
the slope of the casing blocks, a projected height of around 67 metres can be estimated. The
interior chambers were left to open view, and we can thus perceive the way in which they were
built. Djedefra’s architects excavated a huge T-shaped pit (23 × 10 metres in area and around 20
metres deep) where an antechamber/chamber sy stem was to be covered with huge limestone
vaults. The pit is accessed by means of a descending ramp which, once completed, was to be all
but filled with blocks, leaving only the narrow descending corridor, which we can walk through in
the other py ramids. This work was actually commenced, as some limestone blocks aligned with
the sides of the ramp testify (Photo 4.4).
Photo 4.4. Abu Roash. The huge pit of the unfinished Djedefra py ramid.

The funerary temple was built in the standard position to the east of the py ramid but appears to
have been completed hastily, with mudbricks. It was impossible to build the causeway towards
the east, and difficult to direct it downhill towards Giza. Accordingly, a foolish decision was taken
to build the access ramp oriented towards the valley to the north-east. This resulted in an
extraordinarily long (around 1700 metres) causeway. The causeway is unexcavated, but it is
easy to trace it on satellite images as a huge rib which starts from the north side of the py ramid’s
enclosure and proceeds down to a flat area. Here the track disappears at the position where the
valley temple should have been located.

Having chosen the Abu Roash hill – with all the associated problems for the transport of
materials this would entail – the best position for the py ramid would probably have been some
300 metres to the west. The chosen position is, however, located at the intersection of two
important lines. The first line is the diagonal of the Great Py ramid. The projected course of this
diagonal to the north-west (8.5 kilometres in length) indeed passes with impressive precision along
the Djedefra building site (it misses the py ramid by some 40 metres; in terms of azimuths, the
centres of the py ramids are connected by a line oriented about 45°50′ south of east, thus an error
of less than 1°). There can be no possible doubt that this arrangement fulfilled a “dy nastic” duty :
connecting Djedefra’s monument with that of his father. The second line is the sight line
connecting Heliopolis with Abu Roash, which bears an azimuth of ~244°20′ . This direction is not
very far from the winter solstice sunset, but most importantly, it is close to the setting of Sirius in
the twenty -sixth century BC (Shaltout, Belmonte and Fekri 2007a; Bauval 2007). This is
particularly intriguing because the name of the Abu Roash py ramid identifies it as a star. This
name is indeed “Djedefra is a sehed star” (the meaning of the word “sehed” is not very clear,
unfortunately, but it probably means “bright”). There can be little doubt, then, that sy mbolism,
rather than practical reasons, underpinned topographical choices for this king too. This is further
confirmed by the fact that the line of sight to Heliopolis is probably also an “axis” similar to that
of Giza. Indeed, the line crosses another py ramid, the so-called Lepsius 1, which sits at the end of
the Abu Roash hills. Unfortunately, little is known about Lepsius 1. It is a huge structure in
mudbrick, which therefore raises serious doubts about its being an Old Kingdom py ramid.
However, it has a rock-cut substructure analogous to that of Old Kingdom py ramids, and fifth
dy nasty tombs were later excavated in its rock knoll, so it must be more ancient than that, though
– equally – it is strange that tombs were carved in a pre-existing py ramid. It has been tentatively
dated to the end of the third dy nasty (Swelim 1983), but the substructure might lead us to suppose
that it was perhaps the companion in an unfinished (or hastily finished in mudbrick) double
Djedefra project, ignored and built over in the next dy nasty .

The second “star” py ramid of the fourth dy nasty has also remained in the condition of a
building site. It is located at Zawiet el Arian, where, as we have seen, the vestiges of a third
dy nasty py ramid are also located. Near the west side of this py ramid starts the fence of a
military base, and the unfinished monument lies inside the base, just a few hundred metres to the
north-west but, alas, unreachable. To the best of my knowledge, no scholar – including my self, to
my chagrin – has been admitted inside the base to study these remains in the last 30 y ears or so.
So, I am forced here to do something I do not like – to speak about a Egy ptian monument I have
never seen with my own ey es and to rely solely on existing material.2 Fortunately, the site was
documented fairly well by its excavator, Alexandre Barsanti, it is visible on satellite images, and
it was cleared to shoot a feature film in the 1950s. In the film – Howard Hawks’ Land of the
Pharaohs – the plot hinges on the construction of a py ramid, so a building site in operation was
needed to shoot a few minutes of reel. The film itself, though about 4450 y ears y ounger than the
py ramids, sadly has not stood the test of time so well, but these few scenes are worth seeing.
Indeed, the undertaking at Zawiet el Arian was absolutely immense, so much so that it is
commonly referred to as The Great Pit.

The site, first noticed by Karl Richard Lepsius, was rediscovered by chance by Barsanti, who
was at that time excavating the Lay er Py ramid (Barsanti and Maspero 1906, 1907). Returning to
Giza, he took a shortcut through the desert and spotted granite and limestone remains on the
surface. When excavation began, the building site of a gigantic py ramid, similar in dimensions to
that of Khafra and enclosed in a large stone-walled precinct, was revealed. The ancient builders
had dug out an enormous T-shaped trench, with a descending ramp 105 metres long and an east
to west pit 21 metres deep. The floor of the pit was “paved”, as it were, with vast blocks of
granite, with an oval granite sarcophagus sunk into the floor. The sarcophagus was found closed,
with its enormous, perfectly dressed cover in place, but empty. Yet Barsanti was not convinced
that his work was over, on account of a curious incident that took place during the excavation. The
day after a heavy rainstorm, he and his team were expecting to find the pit full of water, but in
fact most of the water had drained away, suggesting the presence of a chamber beneath.
Unfortunately, Barsanti died shortly afterwards, and excavations were never resumed. Any way,
who was the owner of this monument? Several marks bearing the king’s name were found by
Barsanti on the blocks removed from the ramp, and these blocks should still be in situ. However,
since it is impossible for any one to make a new study, the only available sources are drawings
done at that time. From these we gather that the owner of the py ramid was definitely a king
whose cartouche name consisted of two hierogly phs, the second one being -Ka. He therefore
will be called here ?-Ka because there is no consensus on the reading of the first hierogly ph,
which seems to actually differ in various inscriptions. Many appear to read as Nefer-ka, leading
some scholars to attribute the monument to a third dy nasty king (Swelim 1983). However, I fully
endorse the opinion that this is a monument planned by the same school of architects – if not by
the very same architect – that planned the Abu Roash monument of Djedefra. The owner should
accordingly be a king, called Bicheris by Manetho, who reigned very briefly in the second half of
the fourth dy nasty (Lauer 1962). This can be readily appreciated from a series of clues. First is
the extended use of granite and the technique of the “open trench” pit. Second is the orientation.
Indeed, the orientation of the pit can be measured from satellite images with an error difficult to
estimate but not greater than half a degree. Within this error, the descending ramp is oriented to
true north, almost definitive proof that this cannot be a third dy nasty monument. Last but not least,
a further intriguing connection exists between the ?-Ka py ramid and Djedefra’s. By a sort of
miracle, we actually know the name of this monument, due to the inscriptions found on site by
Barsanti. The name appears clearly , repeated several times; it is -Sb, star.

If this py ramid was named for a star, it is certainly legitimate to ask which star, and all the
more because we already suspected that a py ramid strongly connected with this one, Djedefra’s,
was associated with a specific star, Sirius. The site of Zawiet el Arian is in plain view from
Heliopolis (as we shall see, the last visibility line from Heliopolis to the south-west corresponds to
the site of Abu Gorab slightly to the south), and the azimuth of the sight line from Heliopolis to
Zawiet el Arian is ~215°30′ , which corresponds (quite precisely if we take a reference date of
2500 BC) to the setting of the bright star Fomalhaut. Fomalhaut is the brightest star in the
constellation Piscis Austrinus, and one of the first-magnitude stars which were among the
Egy ptian Decans.

To judge whether there is any chance of this being more than a coincidence, we must now
explore the choices made by the kings of the next dy nasty .
 5 Sons of the sun god

5.1 A new horizon for Snefru

The fourth dy nasty comes to an end with Menkaura’s son, Shepsekaf (2472–2467 BC). We do not
know much about the short reign of this king. However, many of the solutions adopted by this
enigmatic monarch are quite original and deserve our attention. It is apparent that the king wanted
to make clear his distance from his “solar” predecessors, so he declined to have a -Ra name.
With the building site of his tomb, he made an explicit recall to, or re-evocation of, the pre-Khufu
tradition, that of Snefru and Djoser. The monument is in fact not visible from Heliopolis, being
placed to the south of Saqqara on the way to Dahshur. Furthermore, it is not a py ramid. It is
actually a unique building which at first sight resembles a mastaba, so it is traditionally called
Mastaba el Faraun (Photo 5.1).

Photo 5.1. Saqqara south. The Mastaba el Faraun viewed from the east.

This message of recalling ancient tradition is quite clear and has been repeatedly noted in the
literature (see, for example, Verner 2002a). However, in my view, the way in which Shepsekaf
devised his funerary landscape convey s a great deal of additional information. It is true that, at a
distance, the tomb resembles some huge mastabas, such as those of the Khufu northern cemetery
at Giza. But when the Mastaba el Faraun is approached by walking a few hundred metres through
the desert from the Saqqara village, more or less along the same route as the monumental
causeway which once ascended to it, then one realises that the analogy with a mastaba is an
illusory effect. Although many such tombs are undoubted masterpieces, the Shepsekaf
monument was constructed by a roy al architect with the accuracy and the refined techniques
employ ed for (and exclusively for) the fourth dy nasty roy al py ramids. As a matter of fact, the
Mastaba el Faraun was the last tomb constructed in Egy pt using such utterly accurate procedures.
The building is made of extremely regular courses of huge stones. It is today 99.6 metres long
and 74.4 metres broad, but it was probably meant to measure 200 × 150 cubits including the
casing, which was in granite for the lower courses. The sides are very well oriented to the
cardinal points.1 They are 18 metres high and slope inward at 70°, but the top is raised up at the
two ends thanks to two low vertical walls (today barely recognisable). As in all fourth dy nasty
py ramids, the entrance is on the north side, from which a descending corridor enters the funerary
apartments. These apartments have nothing to do with those of the mastaba tombs, which usually
comprised several ground-level rooms devoted to the funerary rites, while the funerary chamber
was located in a deep shaft. The interior of Shepsekaf ’s tomb instead bears some resemblance to
the apartments of Menkaura’s py ramid. Little is known about the annexed buildings: a small
funerary temple was located to the east, and a causeway went down, probably to an
(unexcavated) valley temple.

All things considered, the tomb of Shepsekaf poses two significant questions: why was it placed
where it was placed, and why was it designed in the way it was?

To deal with the first point, we can be certain that the Mastaba el Faraun was conceived of –
from the point of view of the art of the landscape – as a monument aimed at occupy ing the
horizon, exactly as the monuments of the king’s predecessors in Giza and Dahshur were. In fact,
although it is “only ” some 18 metres high, it was deliberately built on an adapted rock terrace on
the gentle slopes that descend from Saqqara to Dahshur and in plain, although distant, view from
the old necropolis. At the moment of its construction, the whole area was empty ; we must thus
imagine the monument in the middle of a huge portion of desert land with the horizon to the north
filled by the Djoser Step Py ramid and the horizon to the south filled by the Snefru py ramids. But
why did the king choose to build his tomb in this pristine area so far from both of the two pre-
existing necropolises? I believe that the choice of the building site and the design of the monument
were planned together in order to harmonise the project with the pre-existing Snefru-built
landscape, with the aim of preserving order – Maat – in the already -old sacred ground. Indeed, if
a line is traced from the point located at half the distance between the two Snefru py ramids to the
centre of Shepsekaf ’s tomb (Photo 5.2), the same line prolonged to the north crosses the Saqqara
central field in the “entrance” area located near the Teti py ramid. As a result, any one reaching
the summit of the ridge would have seen (and still can see) the king’s tomb – due to its “bench”
aspect – forming a sort of regular baseline for the double-mountain sy mbol created at the horizon
by the two giant py ramids of Snefru (Magli 2009b). On the other hand, it can be easily seen that
the position of the monument is not dictated by the morphology of the territory ; it has its
foundation on an artificial terrace and is relatively far from the ridge of the plateau. We can thus
conclude that, in placing his tomb exactly where he did, the king “completed” the landscape of
power built by Snefru, establishing in this way his own power and convey ing a message of order
and a return to the old, pre-solar traditions. But why did the king choose to convey such a
message?

Photo 5.2. Saqqara south. The view towards Dahshur from the area of the Pepi I queens’
py ramids. From left to right, the Bent Py ramid and the Red Py ramid, with the huge tomb of
Shepsekaf placed with a perspective effect as a regular baseline in between them; at the extreme
right are the ruins of the later Pepi II py ramid.

This leads us to the second problem, that of understanding the shape, which is not precisely a
“bench” but has two vaulted ends. It is usually said in the literature that the monument resembles
a “Buto shrine”; however, no explanation has ever been given for such a strange choice of form
(Lehner 1999). The city of Buto was a sacred centre, located in the delta. The cobra goddess
Wadjet was worshipped there; together with the vulture god Nekhbet of Upper Egy pt, they
formed the “two ladies” , the patrons of the kingship. Scant remains of the ancient settlement at
Buto have so far been found, but sample excavations have shown that the site was already
inhabited in predy nastic times, and tradition has it that this was a fairly important place of cult,
being the northern counterpart of Hierakonpolis. No actual shrines at Buto have been found, but
the form of the archaic shrines there (perhaps made of perishable materials) is known from the
corresponding hierogly ph, representing an arched-roof building with side poles . So, it really is
possible to assume that this was the origin of the strange aspect of the Shepsekaf monument, but
the problem of understanding this choice persists: the interplay between sy mbolic hierogly phs
and the project of funerary architecture was certainly not a novelty, but why was a fourth
dy nasty roy al tomb arranged in this fashion? The solution I am going to propose here is that what
sway ed the king’s choices was a spectacular natural event: a total solar eclipse ( Box 4). Since the
proposal is highly speculative, I shall tread carefully .

First, since an eclipse is astronomically dated, placing it during a Pharaoh’s reign depends
strictly on the chronology used. The chronology of the Old Kingdom is the subject of much
debate; according to the chronology used in this book, Shepsekaf acceded to the throne in 2472
BC, but the reader is warned that this date disagrees with other more recent chronologies; for
instance, it is much later (2442 BC) in Hornung, Krauss and Warburton’s ( 2006) chronology and
much earlier (2503 BC) in Shaw’s ( 2000). Second, although eclipses on Egy ptian territory as a
whole were not excessively rare, it seems that no reference to these phenomena has ever been
made in Egy ptian texts; although difficult to believe, it also seems that no Egy ptian word for
“eclipse” existed (the unique author mentioning the interest the ancient Egy ptians had in eclipses
appears to be the late Hephaistio of Thebes, writing in the fifth century AD). Moreover, I find
existing claims regarding the presence of eclipses in Egy ptian my thology and art (e.g., Brewer
1991; Sellers 1992) to be rather inconclusive. As a consequence, among the numerous eclipses
proposed from time to time as allegedly influencing historical events in Egy pt (and therefore
architecture and landscape), only two will be discussed in this book. The criterion I have adopted
for this choice is that factual coincidences have to exist that may (at least tentatively ) be put in
relation to eclipses. The first case is the one I am about to discuss; the second will be covered in
Chapter 9.

In the case of Shepsekaf, on the morning of 1 April 2471 BC a total solar eclipse occurred in
Egy pt with totality at Buto. The eclipse was visible also from Memphis, although not in totality,
and it is not inconceivable that the new Pharaoh was informed of the totality at Buto and decided
to return to a pre-solar foundation of kingship and to honour that sacred place with his funerary
monument.

5.2 The stronghold of Ra

In the absence of written documents, the idea that Shepsekaf might have been influenced by the
eclipse of 2471 BC remains purely speculative, although, as far as I know, this explanation is the
only one offering a possible clue for both the place chosen for the king’s tomb and its form.

The successor of Shepsekaf and founder of the fifth dy nasty is King Userkaf, who initiated the
process of return to the solar tradition, which would become fully fledged with his successor.
Userkaf ’s relationship with the roy al family is unclear, but certainly a fundamental role was
play ed in his accession by a queen called Khentkaues I, perhaps his wife. The queen is the owner
of the huge funerary monument located close to Menkaura’s causeway , in a prominent position in
relation to the main entrance to the Giza area, which was the monumental gate of the so-called
Wall of the Crows, a megalithic wall to the south-east of Menkaura’s valley temple ( Figure 3.3).
The building is based on a knoll of bedrock – similar to the one which the Sphinx must have
originally sprung from – which was somehow regularised and used as the foundation of a
mastaba-like structure of stonework (Photo 5.3). The rock knoll is roughly located along the line of
the winter solstice sunset as seen from the Sphinx area, a thing which perhaps helped in making
this unusual architectural choice. The lower section of the monument was encased in fine Turah
limestone, and the top is slightly vaulted, like Shepsekaf ’s (the underground apartments also
resemble those of the two previous roy al tombs).

Photo 5.3. Giza. The funerary monument of Queen Khentkaues.

Whatever his familial relationships, with Userkaf we witness a change which left its traces in
literature, since the dy nastic transition is documented, through the medium of tales, in the text of
the so-called Westcar Papy rus.
 The Westcar Papy rus is a text containing five stories told at the roy al court of Khufu by his
sons. The document has been dated to the Second Intermediate period (around 1700 BC), but the
material must have been written earlier, probably in the Middle Kingdom (as we shall see, a
similar document exists dating to the Middle Kingdom and referring to the advent of the twelfth
dy nasty ). The papy rus (today at the Egy ptian Museum of Berlin) recounts five magic events.
The text of the first has been lost; we only know that it is probably told by Djedefra and takes
place in Djoser’s time. The second story, told by Khafra, is set during the third dy nasty king
Nebka’s reign and describes a sort of black magic procedure which conjures up a crocodile from
a wax model. The third story, told by another of Khufu’s sons, called Baufra, takes place in
Snefru’s time. The fourth and the fifth stories are the most interesting from the historical point of
view. In the fourth, told by a prince called Hordjedef, a magician called Dedi is called to Khufu’s
court to display his ability in “reattaching heads” to beheaded animals. Then Khufu asks him a
rather strange question: the number of secret chambers in the temple of Thoth. The reason is that
the king has spent so much time searching for it himself because he wants to have the same
number in his “horizon”, which is, as of course we know, his py ramid. At any rate, Dedi does not
know this number. He answers that it can be found in a box of flint, in a room of archives in
Heliopolis. The magician apparently cannot open it; only the eldest of the three children who
reside in the womb of Rededjet can do this. Rededjet is the wife of a priest of Ra, and is pregnant
with three children by Ra himself. At this point, Khufu becomes nervous, since these children are
apparently destined to become kings. However, the magician reassures the Pharaoh, say ing that
this will come to pass only after the reign of a grandson of Khufu. In the final story, we are told
about Ra assisting Rededjet in the birth of the three future kings.

The text is clearly very intriguing, but also very difficult to interpret. For instance, what about
the desire of Khufu to know the “number of the chambers of the sanctuary of Thoth” for his
py ramid? Thoth, usually depicted as an ibis or with an ibis’ head, was a very ancient lunar god.
Already documented in predy nastic times, he was later associated with writing and knowledge
(curiously, Thoth was said “to heal the injured ey e of Horus”, a circumstance which, since the
god was associated with the moon, has sometimes been interpreted as a reference to eclipses).
Perhaps the safest way to interpret this part of the text, then, is to think that a sort of reminiscence
about the complex sy stem of chambers inside the Great Py ramid was “in the air” at the time of
writing, and this prompted what we would call today an “urban legend” about the py ramid of the
first “solarised” Pharaoh. Be that as it may , there is no doubt that the Westcar Papy rus as a whole
aims to present the kings of the fifth dy nasty as legitimate heirs to the solar king tradition, tracing
the dy nasty “back” to his ideal source, to Heliopolis, via direct descent from Ra. What is really
interesting for us here is that a similar mechanism is actually visible on the ground, in the
landscape arrangements opted for by these kings. Indeed, first Userkaf devised a clever, complex
way of reconciling all the previous traditions within his funerary project, reintroducing an explicit
recall to the sun and Heliopolis. Then his successors gave a decisive impulse to their “solarisation”
in making their topographical choices. Let us start with Userkaf.
 This king was also called Iry -maat, The one who brings Maat, and his reign appears to have
been a period of settlement and consolidation with regard to religious and political ideas, in what
seems to be, in many respects, a sort of new order based on traditional ideas – as would become
ty pical in the later history of Egy pt. The Userkaf funerary project reflects these changes. It
hinged on the construction of two monuments: the king’s py ramid in Saqqara and another building,
a so-called sun temple, in a hitherto virgin area, that of Abu Gorab.

The py ramid of Userkaf was conceived of as a relatively unambitious project. The real
innovation introduced by the king lies in its position. In fact, he chose to return to the old and
revered Saqqara central field and decided to build to the north-east of the complex of Djoser, as
close to it as possible. The py ramid was of poor quality, so that when the limestone casing was
stripped away, the building lapsed into the pitiful state we see it in today. The interior apartments,
which were to become virtually the template for successive py ramids of the Old Kingdom,
consist of a descending gallery, a horizontal gallery, a room – probably a storeroom – to the left
(east) and an antechamber placed below the apex. From here, a short passage leads west to the
burial chamber. As in Khafra, the funerary room was excavated as an open pit prior to
construction and then covered by huge limestone blocks to form a pent vault. The design of the
annexes was severely constrained by the firm determination of the king to stay in the vicinity of
the Djoser complex. Indeed the latter, as we have seen, is surrounded by a huge dry moat.
Construction of the py ramid and the funerary temple would have been fairly easy in the area
immediately to the exterior of the moat, but this was clearly ”too far” for the king. Consequently,
once the py ramid was laid out within the moat, there was no space left to the east to build the
funerary temple adjacent to the py ramid (filling the moat with hard stones was obviously a
possibility, but this filling would have been quite an arduous task as well as being disrespectful), so
Userkaf ’s is the only funerary temple in the history of roy al py ramids to be built to the south of
the tomb.2

The position of the py ramid of the king was thus in all probability chosen in accordance with
sy mbolic considerations. It is unfortunate that the first tale of the Westcar Papy rus, which took
place at the Djoser court, did not survive; perhaps it would have given us a hint as to why being so
close to Djoser was considered so crucial. At any rate, a clue to the meaning of this “closeness”
is that an unobstructed line of sight connects the Userkaf py ramid with Khufu’s, crossing over the
Userkaf sun temple (Goedicke 2001). If a similar connecting line is traced between the summit of
Djoser’s py ramid and the apex of Khafra’s, it turns out that the two lines are roughly parallel, the
deviation being within 2°. The length of these lines is about 14.5 kilometres, and therefore they
allow for direct inter-visibility, an experience that can still be easily enjoy ed today. The idea of
replicating, at Saqqara, the sacred space of the two main Giza py ramids, then, is the likely reason
for Userkaf ’s placing his py ramid exactly where it is. (This ambitious project would be
completed at the end of the fifth dy nasty with the construction of the Unas project, as we shall
see.)
 Besides the py ramid, Userkaf ordered the construction of the first of what in many respects
seems to be a new kind of religious building, usually defined as a sun temple in the Egy ptological
literature (Ricke 1965; Stadelmann 2000). Userkaf called this building Stronghold of Ra and
located it, for a reason we shall see later, at Abu Gorab, a plateau to the north of Saqqara.
Documents dated to the end of the dy nasty mention other temples, making up a total of five, one
for each of the subsequent five Pharaohs. These are Sahura’s Field of Ra, Neferirkara’s Place of
Ra Pleasure, Neferefra’s Ra Offering Table , Niuserra’s Delight of Ra and finally Menkauhor’s
Horizon of Ra. But only one of these, that of Niuserra, is archaeologically known. It is located
very near to Userkaf’s, and it may well be that only these two were actually built, as we shall see.

The lay out of Userkaf ’s sun temple consists of a building close to the cultivation, a causeway,
and an upper building. As a free-standing ensemble (without a py ramid), it has no known
antecedents, but we might reasonably hy pothesise that its structure was similar to that of the
Heliopolitan temple of the same period. Some authors also consider the Sphinx temple as an
antecedent because it was probably dedicated to the sun as well. However, it is clear that, if the
sun temples have to be similar to something already existing at Giza, then they are instead similar
to the whole temple complex of the py ramids. This raises the strong suspicion that these were also
inspired by the pre-existing structure of the temple of Heliopolis, a notion which is further
strengthened by the close connection between the sun temples and the funerary cult of the king.

The upper building underwent several stages of construction, as it was re-elaborated by at least
two of Userkaf ’s successors, Neferirkara and Niuserra. Initially, there was a rectangular
enclosure with a central mound. To this structure Neferirkara added an obelisk, which stood on a
huge pedestal clad in quartzite and granite, with a winding corridor rising to the roof. Later
Niuserra added an inner enclosure wall and chambers of limestone. The causeway was divided
into three lanes by mudbrick walls. We know from almost contemporary texts (the so-called
Abusir Papyri, written during the reign of Djedkara Isesi, who apparently saw to the efficient
management of the funerary cults of his ancestors) that sacrifices of oxen were made on a daily
basis at the upper temple, and the central lane was perhaps reserved for raising animals. At its
lower end, the causeway ended at the enclosure of the valley building, of which few remains are
visible today. However, the plan has been reconstructed as an open court with a colonnade of
sixteen granite pillars. The upper building is oriented to the cardinal points, but the causeway and
the rectangular enclosure downhill are oriented at 56°, an orientation which has remained
unexplained to date.3

What is the meaning of this sophisticated architectural complex? There is no doubt that an
important clue in interpreting this curious monument comes from the topography of the Memphis
area as viewed from Heliopolis. In fact, looking from Heliopolis towards the west bank and
shifting one’s gaze progressively to the south, the sites of Abu Roash, Giza and Zawiet el Arian are
visible. The visibility is eventually blocked by the rocky outcrop located at the north-west extreme
of the plateau called the Moqattam formation (this outcrop is today occupied by the Cairo
citadel). The last visibility line is tangential to the citadel and passes between Abu Gorab and the
area immediately to the south of it, called Abu Sir (Figure 5.1). Many authors have noticed this
and have more or less explicitly argued that this was the reason for Userkaf ’s choice of Abu
Gorab (Kaiser 1956; Jeffrey s 1998; Quirke 2001). In my view, this is not just the reason for the
choice of place but also the reason for the construction of the monument itself, as I shall now
explain.

5.1. Inter-visibility between the py ramids of the Memphite area and Heliopolis. The last
visibility line is “tangent” to the Cairo citadel and corresponds to the Abu Gorab area. The Abusir
area is the first to be invisible going south. The azimuth of each of the solid lines as measured
from Heliopolis corresponds to a py ramid and to the setting of a decanal star at the (likely ) time
of construction of the py ramids as follows (from north to south): (1) Djedefra-Sirius; (2) Khufu-
Rigil Kent; (3) ?-ka - Fomalhaut; (4) Sahura - Canopus.

As we have already seen on several occasions, according to the Egy ptian conception of the
sacred landscape, each element had to be an explicit harking back to a series of conceptual ideas.
These ideas were then translated at a cognitive level by means of explicit choices made in
topography and orientation. In the case of Userkaf, the temple was constructed very near the
southernmost available point on the west bank of the Nile which is still inter-visible with Heliopolis.
In this way , the temple stood as a tangible witness to the connection of the king with Heliopolis and
the “solarised king” tradition of the fourth dy nasty. The reason the king needed such a connection
is the following. The king chose the building site for his py ramid close to that of Djoser in such a
way as to make an explicit reference to the pre-Khufu traditions and placed the monument in a
manner which explicitly replicated the Khufu-Khafra arrangement visible at a distance to the
north-west, in this way fulfilling a dy nastic duty towards these kings. Yet, Saqqara is invisible
from Heliopolis, being farther to the south of Abusir. Therefore the additional problem of
exhibiting the connection with Heliopolis remained, and there was no alternative but to construct
another building, the sun temple, which is accordingly very closely connected with the funerary
complex of the king and lies on the Userkaf to Khufu visual line. To some extent, the temple is an
indivisible part of the funerary complex, and its position – being in the last place in view from
Heliopolis but also, of course, in the first place from which Heliopolis is visible coming from
Saqqara – acts as a landmark of the position of the py ramid farther south.

5.3 Close to the soul of Ra

Sahura, the Pharaoh whose name means Close to the soul of Ra, was apparently Userkaf ’s son.
Information about his reign comes chiefly from the reliefs recovered in his py ramid complex
which show, inter alia, that the Pharaoh established a roy al fleet and improved trading conditions
in the Eastern Mediterranean. The py ramid of Sahura (Photo 5.4) was the first built on the Abusir
plateau, between Abu Gorab and Saqqara; it is only some 450 metres to the south-west of the
Userkaf sun temple, but this apparently negligible distance has profound, and far from chance,
implications.
Photo 5.4. Abusir. The py ramid of Sahura seen from the causeway . Two elaborate columns
stand at the entrance of the funerary temple in front of the py ramid.

The monument originally stood about 47 metres high, but today it stands in ruins because the
quality of building was very poor, based as it was on an inner core of rough stones and rubble. In
spite of this, the Sahura py ramid is an imposing monument, placed in a prominent position and
still accessed today via the remains of the original causeway. The causeway ended at a valley
temple situated directly on the shores of a lake, today dried up. Ascending to the remains of the
funerary temple, the huge mass of the py ramid of Sahura’s successor Neferirkara sits in the
background to the south-west, and (at least to people already acquainted with Giza) the whole
complex gives a strange impression of déjà vu. It convey s the idea that some rule was being
applied here which was not new but only re-elaborated or reworked under new conditions.
Indeed, two py ramids (in reality three py ramids – the third is unfinished) align on a row which
starts with Sahura and proceeds to the desert in the south-west. Breaking into all this, like an
intruder into an ordered landscape, a fourth py ramid has been positioned in a place where it has
no right to be.

Why was the Abusir plateau chosen? Why were the py ramids there placed in the way they
are? Certainly the placement of py ramidal complexes did have to take into consideration
practical factors such as the presence of nearby stone outcrops – to be turned into quarries – and
accessibility of materials (Barta 2005). Perhaps also the presence of the – still operational –
building site of the py ramid of the preceding Pharaoh may have influenced the choice in one
way (existence of service structures) or the other (congestion of work, prompting a change of
place). However, in the case of Sahura, no particular one of these factors seems to have been
decisive. If the king had wanted to stay close to his father, Userkaf, then there was plenty of space
in Saqqara (in the area of the later Teti py ramid). From Saqqara to Giza, there were several
suitable areas: Abusir, certainly, but why not Abu Gorab slightly to the north, with the service
structures of Userkaf ’s temple; or Zawiet el Arian, farther north; or finally Giza, where Menkaura
had so magnanimously left enough space for a couple of other py ramids to the east, only
partially utilised by Khentkaues? The answer is probably that Abusir has a special sy mbolic
quality ; it is a special place (Magli 2010a). To understand this, it should be observed that, with
Sahura, we return definitively to the solar king tradition. Thus the most natural place for Sahura
would really have been at Giza, but – since Sahura was a solar king – on a site even the dimmest
architect would not have touched with a bargepole: lost in the desert, as a fourth monument
aligned along the Giza axis was doomed to be. Thus, the architects had to find a new solution to
enable their king to adhere to the convention of aligning his tomb towards Heliopolis in an explicit,
sy mbolic way. They managed to come up with a clever idea: placing the py ramid on a site from
which Heliopolis is not visible, but the very first one meets going south. In this way, any one on the
opposite bank of the Nile would have been aware (looking at the western horizon) that the Userkaf
temple now indicated the sacred area, where his successor decided to be buried.

This is confirmed by the otherwise incomprehensible fact that the next two py ramids
constructed at Abusir aligned on an axis directed towards Heliopolis (Lehner 1985c; Verner
2002a). Indeed, incredible though it may seem, Sahura’s successor Neferirkara inaugurated an
Abusir axis which is similar in conception to that of Giza but apparently failed in practice. In fact,
his py ramid – which was designed to be greater than Sahura’s, with a side base of 105 metres
(200 cubits) and a height of some 72 metres – was placed to the south-west of that of Sahura, in
such a way that the north-west corner of the two py ramids aligns on the ideal sight line to
Heliopolis (Figure 5.2).4
5.2. Schematic map of the Abu Gorab–Abusir area. Numbering of the monuments in
chronological order: (1) Userkaf sun temple; (2–4) py ramids of Sahura, Neferirkara and
Neferefra, respectively ; (5) possible site of the py ramid of Shepseskara; (6) py ramid of Niuserra
(a), mastaba of Ptahshepes (b), Niuserra sun temple (c). The Abu Sir main axis (I), the Niuserra
“dy nastic” axis (II), and the Niuserra sun temple axis (III) are highlighted.

Of course, as we already know, this line of sight was, and is, blocked by the outcrop of the
Cairo citadel, but its aim only apparently failed. In fact, at this point any one on the opposite bank
of the Nile would have been aware of the existence of a brand new (in relation to Giza) sacred
landscape, where the roy al py ramids were aligned in a row pointing to Heliopolis. This is
corroborated by the presence of a further monument located on the Abusir axis, and thus quite
distant in the desert. It belongs to Neferefra, the son of Neferirkara (Photo 5.5). His reign was
very short, and the construction of his py ramid – designed to be slightly smaller than that of
Sahura – remained at an early stage. It appears that the monument was hastily finished off as a
sort of low, large mastaba; the substructure was, however, planned in the usual manner as a T-
shaped pit, which is today open to the air. It is a heady experience to stroll around the sides of this
monument and to rest for a while in the desert, near the north-west corner, looking across to the
corresponding corner of Neferirkara, and try ing to imagine a straight line running along all the
way to the Cairo citadel, sometimes barely visible on the distant horizon. In that very same place,
around 4400 y ears ago, stood the king’s survey ors, who were tasked with establishing the corners
of the monument. They knew that the king’s burial place had to be built there, almost lost in the
desert, in the middle of nowhere, and dwarfed behind a huger py ramid, in spite of the existence
of plenty of available space to the east. They certainly knew the name of the project built some
100 y ears before at Giza, a project which satisfied a set of identical, apparently crazy constraints.
The name of that project was Menkaura is divine.

Photo 5.5. Abusir. A photograph taken from the west side of the py ramid of Neferefra. The
open pit of the unfinished py ramid is visible in the foreground. The Abusir axis passes to the far
left of this picture.

For this reason, I think, their own project was called The power of Neferefra is divine.
5.4 The Niuserra project

The fact that the monument of Neferefra is aligned on the Abusir diagonal strongly suggests that
this king was the direct successor of Neferirkara, a theory, however, which has not been
definitively substantiated (Verner 2001). If this is true, then his successor – an ephemeral king
called Shepseskara – had to tackle the same problem facing Sahura at Giza; namely, the
impossibility of “attaching” his py ramid to the pre-existing axis without wandering off too far into
the desert. For this reason, the architect of the Pharaoh probably planned the py ramid in the small
space left between Userkaf ’s sun temple and Sahura’s py ramid, leaving it in this way “just
invisible” from Heliopolis. Indeed, in this area scant remains of what might have been the
building site of a py ramid left at the initial stages have been found.

The problem of finding a symbolically appropriate place for a py ramid was inherited by
Niuserra, probably the y ounger son of Neferirkara. The situation was unchanged, and the place
awaiting him was on the Abusir axis after the Neferefra monument. Building so far in the desert
would have been simply impossible, and so the planners of his monument had to find y et another
way of exhibiting the dy nastic and the solar lineage of the king. The solution they managed to
come up with is ingenious, but – as in the case of Userkaf – necessitated the construction of two
monuments.

First of all, they placed the py ramid – which measured 78.9 metres (150 cubits) square and
was 51.7 metres high – to the east side of an existing one, that of the king’s father, Neferirkara
(Photo 5.6), a quite unique example of a glaringly “intrusive” design in a py ramid field. In this
way, they inaugurated a new dy nastic axis. This second Abusir axis is a line, first discovered by
Lehner (1985c), oriented at ~42°, which connects the south-east corner of Niuserra’s py ramid
with the same corner of the py ramids of Neferefra and Neferirkara. On this axis, the corner of
the mastaba of Ptahshepses, a very important person who became a son-in-law of Niuserra, was
also placed (Figure 5.2).
Photo 5.6. Abusir. The py ramids of Neferirkara (right) and Niuserra (left) from the south-east.

Together with the py ramid complex, the architects of the king also constructed a sun temple
(Photo 5.7), located north of Userkaf ’s and therefore in full view of Heliopolis. The temple was
called Delight of Ra and is the only one, after Userkaf ’s, to have been rediscovered. The complex
once again consisted of a valley temple (almost lost), an upper temple, and a causeway linking
the two. The main focus of the upper temple was a nonmonolithic (masonry built) obelisk, placed
on a huge pedestal 20 metres tall encased in granite. The obelisk no longer exists; it was originally
estimated to have been about 36 metres tall, but this figure has been lowered in recent
reassessments (Nuzzolo 2007a, b). In any case, the upper temple was an imposing monument. A
winding ramp ascended to the obelisk’s base, accessed from a chamber within the pedestal which
contained reliefs relating to the three Egy ptian seasons. The upper courty ard still contains a
masterpiece of Egy ptian sculpture, a huge four-sided alabaster altar made up of four -hetep
signs, each oriented towards a cardinal direction. A large brick model of a boat was constructed at
the side of the temple.
Photo 5.7. Abu Gorab. The sun temple of Niuserra.

Why was this complex architectural project carried out? No definitive answer exists in the
literature; suggestions include that the sun temple is a “mortuary complex for the sun” or “for the
king in his identity as the sun before birth and after death” (see the discussion in Lehner 1999). In
my opinion, the main reason for constructing the Niuserra temple is the same as that for Userkaf
and stems from ideas regarding the structure of the roy al funerary landscapes of that period. In
fact, by creating the new dy nastic axis at Abusir, the architects solved the problem of establishing
the connection of the king’s py ramid with his ancestors, but the other problem remained: the
connection of the king’s py ramid with the sun god and Heliopolis failed to be expressed
sy mbolically by his funerary complex. To meet this requisite, they built the sun temple. Proof of
this is that in this way – amazing as it may seem – the Niuserra architects even managed to
institute yet another Abusir axis (Magli 2010a). This axis is a line oriented ~45° north of west
which follows the diagonal of the Niuserra py ramid. It then proceeds to the south-west corner of
Userkaf ’s temple and intersects the basis of the obelisk in the Niuserra sun temple. This
topographical alignment is similar to that connecting the py ramids of Khufu and Djedefra; there
can be no doubt that it was deliberately designed, and it can still be perceived very clearly today
if one stands on the obelisk terrace of the sun temple and looks towards Abusir (photo 5.8). Its
function is, I believe, unmistakeable: to establish a “dy nastic” link between the funerary complex
of the king and his sun temple and, by extension, to Heliopolis.5

As mentioned before, documents of the period attest to the existence of a sun temple for the
three Pharaohs before Niuserra as well as for his successor Menkauhor. So one might well
wonder whether similar visual axes existed for the unknown temples and, if so, might be helpful in
finding them. However, one could argue that construction of sun temples was not needed for
Sahura, Neferirkara and Neferefra, whose py ramids are sy mbolically aligned to Heliopolis. And,
in fact, there is y et another possibility. Some scholars have proposed that the texts which refer to
these not-to-be-found temples simply speak about renewals made to the existing Userkaf’s temple,
and thus that the only other sun temple actually constructed after Userkaf ’s was that of Niuserra.
This would fit perfectly well with the existence of the Niuserra axis: Sahura, Neferirkara and
Neferefra each constructed a py ramid on the dy nastic diagonal at Abusir, and therefore their
funerary complex was sy mbolically connected with Heliopolis; it was sufficient for them just to
renew the existing temple. Niuserra, on the other hand, was obliged to depart from the axis for his
funerary complex – so that his py ramid was not sy mbolically linked to Heliopolis – and therefore
he was also forced to construct a new temple.
Photo 5.8. Abu Gorab. The view towards the Abu Sir py ramids of Sahura, Niuserra and
Neferirkara from the upper terrace of Niuserra’s sun temple. In the foreground is the huge
alabaster altar of the temple.

To recapitulate, I think that one (if not the main) sy mbolic meaning of these enigmatic
buildings can be explained as follows. They were built as witnesses to the roy al link with the sun
god whenever this link was not explicitly proclaimed by the location of the funerary complex of
the king. If this is correct, then only Menkauhor (the whereabouts of whose py ramid is unknown,
but it might be in Saqqara, not far from Userkaf ’s) could be credited with another still-to-be-found
sun temple, which, by the way, had a “suspicious” (at least for us) name: the Akhet of Ra.
Actually at Abu Gorab, a couple of sand “outcrops” actually exist between the two temples
which might hide the remains of this building (Nuzzolo 2007b; Parcak 2009). Perhaps the name
alludes to a hierophany once occurring there.

5.5 Stars from Heliopolis

Niuserra was the last king to build his funerary complex in Abu Sir. The time of the “sons of the
sun god” ends with him, as his successors were to move back to Saqqara for their py ramids. In
the course of more than 200 y ears, the choice of the location of some of the most wonderful
monuments ever constructed had been governed by a general topographical rule which would
never be applied henceforth: the observance of a topographical relationship with Heliopolis, the
place of birth of the sun god.

Apart from this topographical relationship, we have come across many hints that astronomy
may also have play ed a role in selecting the py ramid’s site. This is, however, quite a delicate
issue, and a great deal of bizarre, even ludicrous, things have been written in nonscholarly
publications on the subject. Thus, the reader should be advised that here I do not mean that
someone dreamed up a “master plan” a priori but only that one inspiring astronomy -related idea
– which again, only Khufu can first have conceived of – may have been taken into consideration
every time a different location for a py ramid was chosen. This possibility is worth looking into for
several reasons. First of all, the funerary cult comprised not just the solar component but also the
stellar one. Second, two (among four) of the choices made for new locations (Abu Roash and
Zawiet el Arian) correspond to two “star-called” py ramids – “Djedefra is a sehed star” and “?-ka
is a star” – and also to the setting of two actual bright stars. Finally, we do know astronomy was
practised at Heliopolis, and it is therefore natural to speculate whether the choice of the sites may
have also had a “nocturnal” – and thus truly astronomical – connection with the sacred centre. So
let us take the point of view of an observer looking at the setting of bright stars from Heliopolis. Of
course, azimuths of stars depend on precession, and thus to simulate the sky we need the dates of
accession of the corresponding Pharaohs. These, as usual, will be taken from the Baines and
Malek chronology (divergences of a few tens of y ears would not invalidate the results
qualitatively ).6

From north to south, the first site is Abu Roash. We already know that the azimuth of Abu
Roash from Heliopolis, ~244°20′ , corresponded to the setting of Sirius. We move to the south and
encounter Giza, the azimuth being of course the same as the Giza axis and therefore inter-
cardinal at ~225°. Also in this case we already know very well that this azimuth corresponds to a
spectacular astronomical phenomenon, the setting of the brightest part of the Milky Way. In
particular, at the time of construction of the Great Py ramid around 2550 BC, an observer looking
from Heliopolis would have seen the stars of the Southern Cross, followed by the very bright stars
of Centaurus, “flow” together with the great celestial river and disappear from view behind the
apex of the Great Py ramid, with the bright star Rigil Kent in optimal alignment. Going farther
south, we encounter the unfinished py ramid at Zawiet el Arian at azimuth ~215°30′ and again we
have the setting of a bright star, Fomalhaut, along this direction (within 1° at a fiducial date of
2500 BC). What remains to be investigated is the Abusir axis, and here a surprise is in store for us
(Figure 5.1).
 We already know that the necropolis was “only just” invisible from Heliopolis, and thus we are
actually looking at the azimuth of the Cairo citadel which “only just” blocks the view and
simultaneously signals the presence of the necropolis on the same axis. This azimuth is ~201° and
is the last azimuth of interest here. If the first one corresponds to the brightest star of the Egy ptian
sky, Sirius, the latter corresponds to the second brightest star of the Egy ptian sky, Canopus (if the
founder of the necropolis Sahura acceded in 2458 BC, the agreement is within 1°).

Of course, all such occurrences might be purely accidental: given four directions in the arc of
azimuths under consideration (between 200° and 244°), it is relatively easy to find a visible star
setting along each direction within an accuracy of 1°. It is much less easy, however, to discover
that, among the four directions considered, three correspond to three out of four of the brightest
stars of the Egy ptian sky : Sirius, Canopus and Rigil Kent (the missing one is Arcturus, which is out
of the azimuth’s range to the north) ( Figure 5.1). Furthermore, all these stars were Decans. The
Decans were 36 stars, or a group of stars, whose heliacal rising happened in successive “weeks”
of 10 day s (see Section 2.2 of Box 2 for more details). The ritual use of the Decans to count the
hours of the night is documented in Egy pt from the ninth dy nasty (2154 BC) but probably dates
from earlier. The observation of the heliacal setting of many of these stars is clearly alluded to in
the Py ramid Texts and for the astronomers was of course as normal as the observation of the
heliacal rising, since heliacal setting marks the beginning of the invisibility period. Indeed there
are a few temples in Egy pt oriented to the setting, rather than the rising, of Sirius. We thus have
four Decans – Sirius, Rigil Kent, Fomalhaut and Canopus – which sat respectively in
(approximate) alignment with the sight lines from Heliopolis to Abu Roash, Giza, Zawiet el Arian
and Abu Gorab-Abusir. It also happens that these stars had heliacal settings in successive periods
going from north to south.

Summing up, then, the sacred space of the solar kings of the fourth and fifth dy nasties appears
to be criss-crossed by ideal – but not concealed – lines. The temple in Heliopolis no longer exists,
and in the course of the millennia, precession has changed the declinations of the stars which
were once seen to set behind the py ramids to such an extent that one of the brightest, Rigil Kent,
has vanished from Egy ptian skies.

In spite of all this, time still fears the giant monuments of the ancient kings, and these
monuments still have much to tell us about the science, ideas and religion of their builders.

Box 4. Solar eclipses

An eclipse of the sun (or solar eclipse) is the passage of the moon between the earth
and the sun. The ideal plane that contains the earth and the orbit of the moon is
inclined by about 5° compared to the plane of the ecliptic; the two intersection
points of the orbit of the moon with the ecliptic are called nodes. The eclipses can
only occur at new moon in the vicinity of one of the nodes. They are generally
witnessed as a portion of the sun’s disk being covered by the moon, called partial
eclipses. However, the apparent dimensions of the moon and of the sun from the
earth are approximately equal, and therefore there usually exists a long, relatively
narrow (not more than 250 kilometres wide) strip of the earth’s surface (called the
path of totality ) where the moon projects its full shadow and the sun is totally
eclipsed (sometimes the moon’s apparent size – due to its vary ing distance from the
earth – is too small to cover the sun completely and a so-called annular eclipse
takes place).

Witnessing a total solar eclipse is completely different from viewing an annular

or partial (even 99%) eclipse. Indeed, if the sun is not totally eclipsed, its brightness
(still potentially dangerous for the ey es) remains intense; it is only during the total
phase (which can last up to seven amazing unending minutes) that the sun’s disk is
fully replaced by a black disk. The contour of the black disk is then visible as a
compact ring halo, the solar corona, which is otherwise invisible. Immediately
before and immediately after totality, the so-called diamond ring effect can be
seen, created by the last and first (respectively ) beads of sunlight able to shine near
the lunar surface. During a total solar eclipse, the temperature drops, birds return to
their nests and dogs bark. The luminosity of the corona is more or less equal to that
of a full moon, and this means that the planets and the brightest stars, if any are
above the horizon at that time, are visible. Looking at ground level, on the other
hand, one might perceive that there are areas at the horizon where the darkness
ceases to be total.

Eclipses are not rare, but total solar eclipses at given fixed points on the earth are,
because of the narrowness of the path of totality. On average, they occur once
every 375 y ears. Accurate reconstructions of past eclipses are available on the
Eclipse Predictions Webpages by Fred Espenak of NASA/GSFC. Identify ing
specific eclipses in historical documents is an exciting task, but one fraught with
complications. An example is the alleged total eclipse described in the twentieth
book of Homer’s Odyssey, which might refer to an eclipse which really occurred
over the Ionian Islands on 16 April 1178 BC (Baikouzis and Magnasco 2008).
 6 The lost pyramid

6.1 The Unas project

Niuserra was the last king to build his funerary complex in Abusir. His successor was the briefly
reigning King Menkauhor, who probably moved to Saqqara. Recent excavations of the remains of
a py ramid (Lepsius 29) to the north-east of Userkaf seem in fact to point to the identification of
this monument as his unfinished py ramid (but see later in this chapter).

His successor, Djedkara-Isesi, inaugurated a new py ramid field approximately midway

between the Saqqara central field and the Shepsekaf mastaba. His architects chose a high spur
very close to the escarpment, which today overlooks the modern village. This choice was
certainly very auspicious from the logistical point of view, but the pristine site also stresses the
ideological decisions taken by this king, who – though attending diligently to the cult of his
ancestors – broke with the tradition of constructing (or renovating) sun temples. Time was ripe for
a new revolution in ideas which, as usual in Egy pt, was to transpire with a mixture of “archaism
and innovation”. The man responsible for this revolution was Unas, the last king of the fifth
dy nasty .

Unas decided to return to the Saqqara central field for his py ramid (Photo 6.1), which, as we
already know, was the first to have its interior apartments inscribed with the Py ramid Texts.
Saqqara central – apart from the possible presence of Menkauhor – had remained untouched
since the Userkaf project, and large spaces for building remained available to the east and the
north-east of the Step Py ramid dry moat, where indeed Unas’ son Teti would later build his own
complex. On the contrary, the area to the south and the west of Djoser was literally
overcrowded, since it had already been used as a cemetery for some 700 y ears. Clearly, this did
not bother the king at all. The py ramid temple, for instance, was built directly over the
substructure of the second dy nasty roy al tomb of Hotepsekhemwy, whose huge entrance
corridor is today visible near the east side of the py ramid. The py ramid was placed very near the
south-west corner of the precinct of Djoser and thus very far into the desert. Consequently, the
builders also had to construct a long causeway connecting the complex with the valley temple. To
make room for the causeway, they had to clear the zone near Djoser’s south wall, which was
already occupied with mastabas, to say nothing of another first dy nasty roy al tomb. Some tombs
were filled with earth, and some mastabas were even completely dismantled (one was
reconstructed in the 1970s from blocks found beneath the causeway ). The causeway was
decorated with painted reliefs and flanked by two huge boat graves, each 45 metres long.
Photo 6.1. Saqqara. The py ramid of Unas seen from one of the boat pits located along the
causeway .

The construction of the py ramid itself was planned with the aim of technical simplification in
mind, combined with the desire to reach the greatest possible height. For instance, the entrance, in
the middle of the north side, opened directly on the ground of the py ramid court. In this way, the
delicate construction of the joint of the rock-carved passage with the masonry of the building was
eschewed. Although the py ramid is small, it is also the one with the steepest slope, 3/2, which
implies that it rose to the respectable height of 43 metres. The py ramid was carefully oriented
and cased with huge blocks, many of which remain on the south side.1

As a whole, the Unas project was one of the most complex in the entire history of the py ramid
age. The explanation for such a “crazy ” project can only be that the king was motivated by
sy mbolic rather than functional reasons. To understand the king’s motives, we have to note that his
py ramid aligns along the axis from Userkaf to Djoser (Lehner 1985c). This “Saqqara axis”
(Photo 6.2), oriented ~39°, connects the south-east corner of Userkaf ’s py ramid with the south-
east corner of Djoser’s py ramid and then crosses over Unas’ base diagonal (also touching the
area of the north-west corner of Sekhemkhet’s unfinished py ramid farther to the south-west). The
“idea” of such a Saqqara axis was in a way first introduced by Userkaf, who, as we have seen,
placed his py ramid near the north-east corner of Djoser’s precinct, almost certainly with the
intention of making the two resemble the Khufu-Khafra pair in Giza. There can be no possible
doubt, in my view, that it was precisely the wish to make the Unas project also conform to these
inspiring ideas that determined the solutions adopted by Unas’ architects. The king asked them to
do their best to conclude the Userkaf project of creating, at Saqqara, an ideal replica of the sacred
landscape of Giza. The reason behind building the highest possible monument was that the project
was to be recognisable to any one approaching the plateau, while the height of the wall of the Step
Py ramid complex would have obstructed the view of the py ramid. To increase the visibility of
the py ramid further, the alignment was set along the diagonal, not along the south-east corner.
There is usually good visibility even today between Saqqara and Giza, and the striking
resemblance between the Saqqara central field after Unas’ additions and the fourth dy nasty
necropolis can still be perceived after 4400 y ears, looking along the Saqqara axis and then shifting
one’s gaze to the north-west, where the ruined py ramids at Abusir also seem a sort of faded copy
of the Giza py ramids towering in the background.

Photo 6.2. Saqqara. A picture taken from the south of the Unas py ramid (foreground). The axis
connecting Unas’ diagonal with the south-east corners of the Step Py ramid (middle) and Userkaf
py ramid (background) can still be perceived.
6.2 Teti and Userkara

The transition from the fifth to the sixth dy nasty is marked by Teti’s reign, although no indications
of any abrupt changes appear in the archaeological records. This is true also for the location of
Teti’s py ramid. Teti was Unas’ successor, and he was clearly determined to align his tomb along
the Saqqara axis described earlier. The architects of the king were faced, however, with a
difficult – though by no means new – problem. Indeed, as in Giza for Sahura and in Abusir for
Niuserra, it was impossible for Teti in Saqqara to build his py ramid to the south-west of Unas, in a
position that was remote in the desert and partially occupied by the old Sekhemkhet complex. On
the other hand, the outcrop of the Saqqara ridge at the southern end of the row of first dy nasty
mastabas and to the north-east of Userkaf ’s py ramid was (excluding the py ramid possibly
belonging to Menkauhor, which perhaps was already there) still free. It was, however, the first
time that a py ramid had to be added to the east end of an axis, and of course this could have been
interpreted as being offensive to the other kings in the row. Probably for this reason, it is not the
south-west but the north-west corner of the py ramid that was aligned. In this way, people
climbing onto the Saqqara plateau and moving towards Teti’s complex still experienced a visual
effect resembling the one that could be seen when approaching Giza from Heliopolis. The effect
was “introduced” by the Teti monument in the foreground, but without obstructing the original
view.

The location chosen by Teti, albeit favourable, is a lofty one, and the construction of a
causeway would have been problematic. As it happened, it seems that neither the causeway nor
the valley temple was ever constructed. The py ramid set a standard which would be followed
subsequently : 150 cubits base, 100 cubits tall, 4/3 slope. The workmanship in the construction of
Teti’s py ramid and later ones was shoddy, and the filling was partly executed with debris, so
when the casing was removed by stone looters, the nucleus collapsed, giving rise to the low
mounds we can see today. An interesting enigma is the way in which Teti’s py ramid complex
differs from all the others: orientation. Indeed, the py ramid deviates about 9° west of north.
Clearly, this orientation is deliberate, since it is the only case found in the whole Old Kingdom of
a roy al tomb not oriented to the cardinal points. The key to such orientation appears to be at the
eastern horizon: at azimuth 9° north of east, on the other bank of the Nile, the rock ridge exhibits a
notch. This notch is the depression of a wadi, the wadi Hof, and corresponds to a solar declination
of about +8°. The sun rises at the centre of the wadi, creating an evocative Akhet hierophany,
around 10 April and 2 September (Belmonte and Shaltout 2009).2

Manetho states that Teti was murdered by his palace body guards. What really happened we
do not know, but something dramatic must have occurred to bring to the throne a king named
Userkara, (Kanawati 2002; Baud and Dobrev 1995). The py ramid of Userkara is missing from
the list of the roy al Egy ptian py ramids. It is true that Userkara’s reign most probably lasted only
from two to four y ears, around 2334 BC according to the Baines and Malek chronology.
However, the planning of a king’s py ramid probably commenced very early, and therefore it is
reasonable to assume that at least the first stages of the construction of Userkara’s tomb were
already under way at the time of his death. If we reject as unlikely the idea that the construction
was never started, then there is still a distinct possibility of finding the building site buried in the
desert sands. Of course, we can rule out the chances of finding the burial place undisturbed.
Nevertheless, the discovery of the tomb might be helpful in clearing up historical issues
connected with Userkara’s accession and kingship. Furthermore, all roy al py ramids after Unas
are inscribed with the Py ramid Texts. Consequently, a hitherto unknown copy of the texts might
be located in the king’s burial site.

The search for this “lost py ramid” would logically have to be carried out at Saqqara, but this
would be akin to looking for a needle in a hay stack in the absence of further information. One
possibility would be to attribute the py ramid Lepsius 29, located to the north-east of Teti, to
Userkara instead of Menkauhor. Indeed, this py ramid seems (judging from existing, rather
imprecise maps) to be oriented as Teti’s. However, the burial chamber of this py ramid is devoid
of texts, a point in favour of a pre-Unas date (or a much later one; a complete survey of this
monument would be worthwhile).

Another possibility is that Userkara moved to the south, simply because the central field was
by now really overcrowded. Recent excavations in the zone known as Tabbet al-Guesh, to the
immediate south of the Saqqara central field, have unearthed tombs of sixth dy nasty dignitaries,
and geo-radar survey s have revealed the presence of two adjacent, squared structures
underneath, oriented north to south. It may be that they are the foundations of the py ramid and its
funerary temple, as the excavators believe (Dobrev 2006, 2008). However, according to the geo-
radar results, the funerary temple would in this case be located north of the py ramid, a decidedly
unusual position (echoed only by some structures to the north of the Step Py ramid, near the
Serdab). Therefore, in my opinion, the geo-radar images rather show a double mastaba tomb
(similar to the Lepsius 25 complex located in Abusir, probably dating from the end of the fifth
dy nasty ; see Krejci 2001). If this is not Userkara’s py ramid either, where on earth are we
supposed to search for it?

My proposal is that the py ramid of the king must be sought by using the sacred landscape at
Saqqara as a reference grid. To explain what I mean, we should first discuss the way in which
later py ramids were set into the same landscape.

6.3 In search of a lost pyramid

The architects of the successor to Userkara, Pepi I (probably a son of Unas), chose the area of
Saqqara south already inaugurated by Djedkara. The py ramid complex of Pepi is quite standard,
perhaps its most striking feature being the presence of a great number of queens’ py ramids. The
French mission excavating the complex has so far discovered seven such py ramids, the last one
belonging to a queen called Behenu, with remains of Py ramid Texts on the walls (Berger-El-
Naggar 2005; Berger-El-Naggar and Fraisse 2008). The py ramids of the Pepi queens literally
inundate the area to the south of the king’s py ramid, forming a small “village” whose southern
boundary aligns on an axis of azimuth ~60° originating at the south-east corner of the satellite
py ramid of the Pharaoh and touching the Nubunet, Inenek, Meretites II and Ankhespepy II
py ramids to the south-west.

The position of the Pepi I py ramid (Photo 6.3) was carefully chosen in such a way as to
inaugurate a new kind of topographical relationship between roy al monuments (Goy on 1977).
These are meridian – that is, north-south – lines; the apex of Pepi I indeed aligns on the same
meridian as that of Userkaf.3

Photo 6.3. Saqqara south. The remains of the Pepi I py ramid.

The remains of the py ramid of Pepi’s successor, Merenra, are recognisable as the low mound
some 500 metres to the south-west. There can be little doubt that this monument was placed there
in order to align along another meridian, that of the py ramid of Unas. Furthermore, a “dy nastic”
principle was respected since the py ramid lies (roughly ) on the diagonal of Pepi I (azimuth ~42°),
and this certainly contributed to the decision to place it almost due west of that of Djedkara, a
fairly unusual positioning.

Merenra’s successor Pepi II (who is also the builder of the last py ramid of the Old Kingdom)
would most likely have wished to respect the two constraints: (1) meridian alignment with a
py ramid at Saqqara central and (2) south-west alignment with his predecessors. However, the
area to the south-west of Merenra’s py ramid – where the meridian of the westernmost py ramid
at Saqqara, Sekhemkhet’s, and the dy nastic diagonal intersect – is in the middle of a wadi. As a
result, Pepi II was obliged to move farther south, choosing the first position available on the same
meridian. This position is very near Shepsekaf’s monument. There is no possible explanation other
than the sy mbolic one for such a choice. Indeed, although it is true that it was possible to take
advantage of the pre-existing fourth dy nasty causeway, the geology of the area is unfavourable,
and the py ramid was probably subjected to structural problems which led to the construction of a
mudbrick “bandage wall”, which seems to have had retaining (rather than artistic) functions (to
avoid similar problems, Shepsekaf’s mastaba had been built on an artificial terrace). Besides, Pepi
II might well have chosen a more easterly position for his building site in the same area, for
instance precisely along Shepsekaf ’s causeway, where the later, small py ramid of Ibi was
placed.

As a matter of fact, all three of Userkara’s successors, Pepi I, Merenra and Pepi II, chose to
align their py ramids on the meridian of a pre-existing py ramid of the Saqqara central field. For
these alignments, bearings taken onsite with a precision magnetic compass give an accuracy
within ½°; the same holds if a topographical (1:5000) map is used. Furthermore, when the same
alignments are rerun using the Google Earth program, they are not only fully confirmed but turn
out to be unexpectedly precise, comparable to the precision attained by the ancient Egy ptians in
orienting the py ramids. This opens up new possibilities in the study of monument orientation in the
Old Kingdom, with particular reference to the simultaneous transit theory. The satellite images,
however, can produce local distortion effects (Redzwan, Firuz and Ramli 2007; Potere 2008), and
error is alway s to be expected when centring monuments. It would thus be advisable to carry out
a complete survey of these alignments using a high-precision transit instrument. At any rate, their
planning required the use of astronomical sightings in order to find true north and then to collimate
the position with that of the pre-existing monument, perhaps surmounted by a reflecting (golden)
signal. As we learned in Chapter 3, determination of true north was effected with nocturnal
observations focusing on the transit of “imperishable” stars, the stars repeatedly mentioned in the
Py ramid Texts and connected in the “rebirth” process of the king. We might conjecture, then,
that the meridian axes at Saqqara have a mixed dy nastic/stellar origin. Once again, they
represent a new way of making explicit reference to an ancient past. The final result of the
combined action of dy nastic and meridian axes is that the sacred landscape of the Saqqara
necropolis is criss-crossed by ideal lines aimed at harmonising the newly constructed monuments
with the pre-existing landscape. This harmonisation included the northern sky, with its sy mbolic
content, but also – y et again – the “dy nastic” landscape; that is, exploiting dy nastic (either blood
or ideal) relationships with previous rulers by means of topographical and visual references to
their monuments.

At this point, however, a curious chain of facts emerges. Indeed, Pepi I – allegedly the first
king to put a py ramid in “meridian alignment” with a pre-existing one – chose that of Userkaf, in
spite of the fact that Djoser’s py ramid was by far the most important and revered py ramid at
Saqqara. An alignment with Djoser would have prompted a building site some 200 metres west,
without creating any serious logistical problems. After Pepi I, Merenra also rejected the position
in meridian alignment with Djoser’s py ramid and aligned the apex of his py ramid with that of
Unas. Finally, Pepi II moved farther to the south-west, aligning the apex of his py ramid with that
of Sekhemkhet.

In the end, then, we have four py ramids in the Saqqara central field, of which all but the most
important have aligned py ramids in Saqqara south. This is rather strange, since one would expect
the most important py ramid to have been the first to be designated as a target for a meridian
alignment. On the other hand, what we are missing is precisely the py ramid allegedly
constructed just before the first of the series at Saqqara south. I therefore recently proposed that
the complex of Userkara may have been located in meridian alignment with Djoser, and that
therefore its remains must lie along Djoser’s meridian, perhaps even right in the middle of the
Pepi I–Merenra diagonal (Magli 2010a, b) (Figure 6.1).
6.1. Map of the monuments of Saqqara and Saqqara south, with the Saqqara central field axis
(from the north-east, it runs along the north-west corner of Teti, the south-east corners of Userkaf
and Djoser, the diagonal of Unas and the north-west corner of Sekhemkhet) and the meridian
alignments between the py ramids at Saqqara south and those of Saqqara central (Pepi I to
Userkaf, Merenra to Unas, Pepi II to Sekhemkhet) highlighted. The meridian passing through the
apex of the Step Py ramid is also traced, although it does not connect to other py ramids. The point
located along this meridian and along the diagonal connecting Pepi I and Merenra is denoted by
P.

6.4 Pyramids and landscapes of power: A look back at the Old Kingdom

Just as with any scientific discipline, archaeoastronomy can make predictions which can be tested
against the facts, and indeed the proposal just made for the location of the Userkara tomb might
be considered an attempt at predictive archaeoastronomy. A noninvasive survey of the area of
Saqqara south directly to the south of Djoser’s py ramid will hopefully be performed in the near
future. Whatever may happen, and however the search for the “lost py ramid” is destined to end,
it is time for us to summarise what we have learned about Old Kingdom sacred landscapes.

The first, and fundamental, observation is that, although the placement and the project of
py ramidal complexes had to take a series of practical factors into account (availability of
quarries and accessibility of materials, to say nothing of state financing), it is undeniable that, in
many, if not all, cases, the py ramids were not constructed in the most favourable available
places. The main examples are:

Khufu at Giza (the best place would have been in the area of Khafra)
Khafra at Giza (the best place would have been some 100 metres to the east)
Menkaura at Giza (much better places available to the east)
Userkaf at Saqqara (much better places to the east)
Neferirkara at Abusir (better places to the east, later used by Niuserra)
Neferefra at Abusir (better places to the east)
Unas at Saqqara (much better places to the north-east, later used by Teti)
Pepi II at Saqqara south (better places to the east)

Considering this list, we can only suppose that it was the implacable will of the Pharaohs that
put enormous pressure on the builders to ensure that rules of sy mbolic origin were adhered to: the
topography of the pyramid’s fields evolved along axes because such axes fulfilled symbolic
requirements. Otherwise, the distribution of the py ramids on the edge of the desert from Abu
Roash to Dahshur would have been quite different from the one we can see today : we would see
the monuments as scattered spots, each one in an advantageous position, and we would never see
a py ramid in such an improbable site as, for instance, those of Menkaura at Giza and of Unas at
Saqqara.

Sy mbolic rules governing the sacred landscape are thus of primal importance in understanding
the evolution of the roy al funerary architecture in the Old Kingdom, as well as its relationship
with power and divine kingship. The ordered landscape included a wide range of elements: the
natural landscape and the sky, but also what could be called the dynastic – or memorial –
landscape, namely the desire to place the funerary monument in direct relationship with pre-
existing ones, which had been built by Pharaohs who were related by direct lineage (for
example, as occurs in Giza and Abusir) and/or by affinity of religious/political ideas. These
elements resulted in three different “families” of topographical axes (not mutually exclusive,
since, for instance, Giza belongs to both of the first two). These families are (Magli 2010a):

1. The Heliopolitan Family, consisting of lines of sight between Heliopolis and Abu
Roash, Giza, Zawiet el Arian and Abu Gorab/Abusir.
2. The Inter-cardinal Family , made up of the following lines:
The Khufu-Djedefra diagonal (45° north of west)
The Giza axis (45°)
The Niuserra dy nastic axis at Abusir (42°)
The second Niuserra axis at Abusir (45° north of west)
The Saqqara central field axis (39°)
The Pepi I–Merenra axis (42°)
3. The Meridian Family, made up of south to north lines connecting Pepi I with Userkaf,
Merenra with Unas, and Pepi II with Sekhemkhet.

Astronomy play ed a fundamental role in the planning of such an ordered landscape. First of
all, the circumpolar (imperishable) stars were used, by means of simple devices, to establish the
orientation of the py ramids from the beginning of the fourth dy nasty. Later these stars were
explicitly mentioned in the Py ramid Texts and were almost certainly used to establish meridian
axes at Saqqara south.

Another group of stars to appear prominently is that of the “southern” decanal stars whose
setting azimuths were between those of Canopus and Sirius. Explicit reference to the stars of
Orion and to Sirius first occurs in the Khufu southern shafts; immediately after, the southern
decanal stars play ed a special role in determining choices relating to the modelling of the sacred
landscape during the “solar kings” period.

Finally, of course, the sun play ed a prominent role, both in specific orientation choices – at
Giza, at Saqqara for the Teti py ramid, and for all the funerary and valley temples which were
oriented to the cardinal points but open to the east – and in the codification of sy mbolic rules of
visibility /invisibility from the main cult centre of the sun itself, Heliopolis.

The result of this stratification of sy mbolic references to the celestial afterworld of the
Pharaohs – and implicitly, to their power on earth – was that the relatively restricted area where
the Age of the Py ramids developed was criss-crossed by ideal, carefully traced lines,
interconnecting visible monuments and places. One point that emerges clearly, and one that I
cannot emphasise too strongly, is that it was not enough for the planners, or the high priests and
officials, to be aware of the existence of a sy mbolic link between the newly built py ramid
complex and the pre-existing ones. These links had to be, and were, public. There is no esoteric
knowledge hidden in the sacred landscape of the Old Kingdom. The sy mbolic messages had to be
made visible – I want to say familiar, as Mircea Eliade would – to any pious person approaching
the roy al necropolis, the place where the cults of the dead Pharaohs were carried on. Py ramid
building was a massive effort, in which the whole nation was involved. We do know, thanks
especially to the excavations of the Giza workers’ quarters, that the py ramids were not
constructed by slaves, or by peasants during the flood season, but by a relatively restricted group
of skilled, well-fed workers (Lehner 2002). However, the maintenance of such a workforce, as
well as labourers in distant quarries like Aswan, was a huge economic burden, which had effects
at the national level. This in turn spurred the populace to share in the Pharaoh’s aspirations to live
in eternity, along with the Ka of the nation. The result of such endeavours was to be visible to
every body ; fine theological points were naturally held to be bey ond general understanding, but a
certain grasp of the significance of these colossal monuments and of the way they were arranged
on the ground would have filtered down to a relatively large strata of people. I agree with
Assmann (2003), according to whom the sacred space of the Old Kingdom was essentially
reserved for the Pharaoh, and y et the very same sacred space was regulated in such a way as to
show explicitly to every one that Maat, the cosmic order whose keeper was the king, was being
maintained for the benefit of the whole country .

The Pharaohs spelled out this message so plainly that, even though so many y ears have
passed, their burning desire to express their profound connection with their ancestors in stone, and
their hope to live forever amid the imperishable stars, can still be perceived clearly today .
 Part Two

We applaud y our beautiful face

y ou biggest of all Gods, Amun-Ra
(Inscription by Thutmose III, High Room of the Sun, Karnak)
 7 Renaissance at the winter solstice

7.1 Renaissance at the winter solstice

After the collapse of the Old Kingdom, Egy pt entered a turbulent phase which is usually referred
to as the First Intermediate period. The dreaded separation of “the two lands” actually came to
pass: the Theban dy nasty ruled Upper Egy pt, while Lower Egy pt came under the control of a
rival kingship. Reunification of the country came about with the eleventh dy nasty, under the
Theban king Mentuhotep II (around 2061 BC; the king’s name is a homage to the Theban war god
Montu), who can thus be regarded as the founder of the Middle Kingdom.

With the eleventh dy nasty, we witness the renaissance of monumental architecture and, in this
context, the rising importance of cult (“divine”) temples. In particular, four temples were
founded in honour of Montu in the Theban region. These are located, from north to south on the
east bank, at Medamud, Karnak and Tod, and at Armant on the west bank. A further temple on the
west bank, already existing and devoted to Horus, was completely reconstructed. It is located on a
spur to the north usually called Thoth Hill. The place is a little tricky to negotiate, but the
stupendous view over the Nile Valley more than makes up for it. Excavations have shown that a
first temple had already been built here in the Early Dy nastic period, but the building visible
today dates from the eleventh dy nasty and was constructed by Mentuhotep III (Voros 2000).
This temple is directly faced, on the opposite bank of the Nile, by the temple at Medamud
(reconstructed in Ptolemaic times). The two monuments “speak to each other” from the opposite
sides of the river, and – at least in my view – delineate a sort of sy mbolic northern boundary,
conceived at the beginning of the Middle Kingdom and guarded by Horus and Montu, for the
sacred city of Thebes (Figure 7.1). The same impression is convey ed, to the south of the town, by
the temples of Armant and Tod. However, the Tod building directly faces not Armant but a
somewhat prominent peak on the hills to the south-west of it, which today is occupied by a
military installation. I would not be surprised, though, if traces of eleventh dy nasty activity were
to be found there also.
7.1. The area of Thebes, with the position of the two pairs of temples located, at the beginning of
the Middle Kingdom, as its northernmost and southernmost landmarks.

During the excavation of the Thoth Hill temple, a slight offset of about 2° between the Early
Dy nastic building and the later one led archaeologists to speculate that the temple may have
originally been oriented to the heliacal rising of Sirius, the star of Horus’ mother Isis, and then
reoriented taking the precessional drift of this star into account. This would be an important
discovery also because it might constitute evidence for the astronomers’ awareness of an effect –
the slow change in the rising position of a star – which is due to precession (Section 1.4 of Box 1).

That the observation of precession-dependent effects was practised by ancient astronomers

has alway s been denied in the scientific literature, where the first discovery of the precessional
motion of the earth axis is by default attributed to the Greek astronomer Hipparchus. Although
Hipparchus was probably the first to attempt a sy stematic explanation, it is virtually impossible to
believe – given the highly accurate registrations of the rising, transit and setting of stars made by
the Baby lonians or by the Egy ptian astronomers who compiled the decanal lists – that they were
completely unaware that some phenomenon was slowly acting in the background, changing the
declination of bright stars and the background of the stars where the sun was rising at particular
moments of the solar y ear. The same holds for the simultaneous transit method, whose
precession-dependent inaccuracy would have become evident in the centuries which separate the
fourth dy nasty monuments from the last Old Kingdom py ramids. Nevertheless, I must stress that
there is no definitive evidence in Egy ptian texts or architecture pointing to the possession of such
knowledge, and – alas – Thoth Hill is no exception. In fact, the calculations which should show
deliberate orientation to the rising of Sirius are compromised by the idea that the heliacal rising of
this star can be seen only at a very high altitude (around 10°). This is definitely too much, as
Sirius can be seen to rise heliacally at a much lower height, as any one who has tested this in
Egy pt – including my self, and I am certainly not a skilled naked-ey e astronomer – can attest. So,
in reality, the azimuths of the temple do not match the phenomenon. The temple is probably one
of the first instances of Theban monuments oriented to the winter solstice sunrise. The orientation
was maintained, and perhaps ameliorated, in the Middle Kingdom reconstruction when the bend
in the axis was effected (Belmonte and Shaltout 2005).

Orientation to winter solstice sunrise is a pattern that was to become of the utmost significance
in the Theban area. Another early example can be seen in the magnificent funerary monument
of Mentuhotep II. The complex is located in a “bay ” – very similar to those found on a seacoast –
which opens up to the north-west of Thebes, on the west bank of the Nile. This place is today
called Deir el Bahri and is rightly famous for the temple of Hatshepsut, which was constructed
there 600 y ears later (Chapter 8). The Deir el Bahri bay is located immediately to the north of a
conical peak, el Qurn, which would subsequently play an important role in the sacred landscape
of Thebes. It may be, though, that its presence as a natural py ramid almost directly above the
bay was already an important landmark for Mentuhotep II. The complex, which was constructed
in several distinct stages, is today badly damaged, and tourists wandering around the nearby
Hatshepsut temple scarcely bother to glance at it; y et it must have been quite sumptuous. It was
conceived of as a T-shaped terrace housing buildings comprising two underground structures; one
is the so-called Bab el Hosan, the cenotaph we have already discussed in Chapter 2, and the other
is the true underground tomb of the king. In some sources, the complex is referred to as a
py ramid, but according to recent reconstructions, the central edifice never was of py ramidal
shape (Arnold 1979). At the west end of the terrace, a vast hy posty le hall was built directly at the
foot of the hill, with a niche hewn into the cliff. Almost certainly, a statue of the king would have
been placed there, serving as a focal point for the entire complex. The monument as a whole was
quite an original, imposing building, conspicuous from the opposite side of the Nile, as is
Hatshepsut’s temple today, the temple being right in the middle of the bay (it is unclear why the
Middle Kingdom king chose a lateral position, perhaps because of the presence of other buildings
later demolished by Hatshepsut). The complex does not, however, face any recognisable feature
or building on the opposite bank of the Nile; in particular, the axis of the Karnak temple runs
slightly to the north of the bay (so that of Hatshepsut does not face it either as is sometimes
erroneously asserted). The orientation of the axis is thus, as mentioned, clearly solar, as it points
to the rising sun at the winter solstice. The same orientation is shared by the axis of the funerary
complex probably belonging to the king’s son Mentuhotep III, which is located in the hills south of
Deir el Bahri but was left unfinished. This orientation thus begins to distinguish itself as a regional
pattern of Thebes, as is dramatically confirmed by the alignment of the most important of all
Egy ptian temples: Karnak.
 The area usually called Karnak contains a huge complex of temples and shrines which
developed into the most important sanctuary in the whole country during the New Kingdom. It
was called ipet-isut; that is, the most select of places. The foundation of Karnak occurred during
the eleventh dy nasty, but it was with the beginning of the twelfth dy nasty that a shift between
Montu and Amun as the main divinity associated with kingship was seen, and Karnak’s
importance started to grow.

Amun was a complex, multiform deity. He was originally a creator god but would soon
acquire solar connotations, and, once joined with Ra as Amun-Ra, would become by far the most
important divinity of the Egy ptian pantheon. His chthonic connotations, however, lingered on;
Amun is, in fact, usually invoked as “the hidden one” and also as “the one who hears pray ers”,
with reference to oracular activities carried out in his name.

The foundation (or re-foundation) of Karnak as the main cult centre of Amun is attributed to
the second ruler of the twelfth dy nasty, Senwosret I (Bly th 2006). Remains of his building are
visible in the innermost court, and their axis is aligned with the winter solstice sunrise (the
orientation of the Middle Kingdom settlement nearby is slightly different, a fact that might
warrant further investigation). The front of the temple, however, pointed to the opposite side,
towards the Nile. Since the axis points to the winter solstice sunrise, the front theoretically points to
the summer solstice sunset. This does not, however, mean that the last ray s of the setting sun at
midsummer can penetrate the temple, because this would only work with a flat horizon. The
horizon is, rather, occupied by the Theban hills, which obstruct the view (so that summer solstice
sunset is seen along a lower azimuth). The astronomical orientation of Karnak was thus
definitively to the winter solstice sunrise (a fact which will be abundantly confirmed by the New
Kingdom additions to the temple, as we shall see in Chapter 8), while to the west the axis is
actually orthogonal to the direction of the river, a factor which has been suggested as being of
further help in establishing the sanctity of the place (Belmonte and Shaltout 2009).

But why was Amun-Ra, the hidden one, the “new” god whom the “new” kings wished to
“push” to the head of the pantheon, associated with the rising sun at the winter solstice? There is
no getting away from the thought that this choice must have stemmed from calendrical
considerations. Indeed, in the y ears around the foundation of Karnak, the calendar completed
one-half of its turnaround with respect to the solar cy cle, and thus New Year’s Day coincided
with the winter solstice (Hawkings 1974, Bauval 2007).

7.2 Kings from the south

The last king of the eleventh dy nasty is probably Mentuhotep IV, mentioned in some inscriptions
but absent from the lists of kings. This has led to speculation about the possibility that his successor,
Amenemhet I (1991–1962 BC), the first king of the twelfth dy nasty, was a usurper. Be that as it
may, with the twelfth dy nasty Egy pt enters the most brilliant phase of the Middle Kingdom, and
the kings resume constructing py ramids for their burials.

The remains of seven roy al py ramids of the twelfth dy nasty are today scattered about on the
ridge of the desert between Dahshur and the northern rim of the Fay oum oasis (Figure 3.1). Most
of them are in a bad state, due to erosion and looting occurring over the centuries. What we can
see does not, therefore, do justice to the grandiosity of the original projects (Arnold 1991).
Indeed, like the Old Kingdom py ramids, those of the Middle Kingdom were designed and built to
be visible sy mbols of power. Their placement on the landscape was meant to convey a series of
messages relating to the divine nature of the kings as well as their dy nastic claims to kingship.
Contrary to what happens in the Old Kingdom, where a series of changes in these messages can
be traced in the evolving architecture, first up to the apex of the solar kings and then with the
appearance of the Py ramid Texts and the return to Saqqara, in the case of the twelfth dy nasty
monuments the messages appear to be even more coherent. It is thus worth starting with a
general overview of all these monuments (Table A.6).

The reign of Amenemhet I was inspired by a return to ancient traditions and values. Although
the king was almost certainly born in Thebes, he chose to found a new capital in the north. We
know that the city was called Amenemhet the Seizer of the Two Lands ; unfortunately, it has never
been rediscovered, but it was very probably located near the modern village of Lisht, because it
is here that the king decided to construct his py ramid. Lisht is approximately midway between
Meidum and Dahshur, the two sites where King Snefru had constructed his py ramids some 600
y ears earlier. Of course, this fact may have simply been due to chance, but we shall see later
that the continuous reference to Snefru – and thus to the epoch just before the time of the “solar”
kings initiated by Khufu – is any how crucial to understanding the Middle Kingdom py ramid
projects.

As in the Old Kingdom, also during the twelfth dy nasty each roy al py ramid had its own name
(for Amenemhet I it was The Places of the Appearances of Amenemhet). The py ramid is located
near the ridge of the desert, a rule which would alway s be followed subsequently. The complex
clearly resembles those of the Old Kingdom, with a valley temple, a causeway and a funerary
temple located on the east side of the py ramid. Blocks from funerary complexes of the Old
Kingdom, including Khufu’s, were reused in the py ramid. Since they were transported upstream,
it is difficult to believe that they were used for convenience; it is more likely that some kind of
magic power or force was believed to attach to them. The bulk of the py ramid was built with
small stones and rubble, but the surface was covered with slabs of white Tura limestone, the same
used for Old Kingdom py ramids. Therefore, once finished, the appearance of the monuments did
not differ significantly ; the same holds for the height, which probably was around 55 metres,
comparable to Menkaura at Giza. The entrance was in the north face at ground level, as was
standard in the sixth dy nasty, with the chamber on the py ramid’s vertical axis. As in Theban
tombs of the period, the funerary apartment is accessed through a vertical shaft; unfortunately,
the level of water has risen considerably since construction, and the burial chamber of this
py ramid has never been explored.

The successor of Amenemhet I, Senwosret I, located his py ramid about 1.5 kilometres to the
south of his father’s. The py ramid was called Senwosret beholds the two lands and included as
many as nine queens’ py ramids. With an estimated height of 61 metres and a carefully laid
casing of white stone, it was an imposing monument, constructed with the aid of a framework of
skeleton walls (Arnold 1988).

The causeway of the complex, originally unroofed, was rebuilt with a roof and with the
addition of a series of standing statues of the king in Osiris form, testify ing to the increasing
importance of this god. The importance of Osiris is connected to a process of “democratisation”
of the afterlife (Shaw 2000). We can extract information on this shift in attitude towards the
hereafter from contemporary funerary texts called Coffin Texts (Mathieu 2004). These are in
many way s similar to the Py ramid Texts, y et their presence in the interior of funerary coffins of
officials, priests, local governors and their families demonstrates that direct access to the afterlife
was no longer exclusively a roy al prerogative. A series of new elements also appear which
contrast with Py ramid Texts traditions. In particular, for the first time, rough graphic depictions of
the underworld chambers were made, and in one of these chambers the deceased were
subjected to judgement before they could be united with both Osiris and Ra: “He will be like Ra in
the eastern sky , like Osiris in the netherworld”, say s Utterance 1031 (trans. Faulkner 2004).

The encounter with Osiris in the afterworld takes on a sinister, otherworldly quality, as it takes
place in a recessed region or a room in complete darkness. It is perhaps on account of the
connection with the realm of Osiris that the py ramids of this period display very deep funerary
chambers and, from Senwosret II onward, also a curious “winding” lay out. However, no
funerary texts associated with a Middle Kingdom roy al burial have ever been found, so we
cannot be certain whether the Coffin Texts reflect the roy al funerary cult in totality ; as a matter
of fact, it may be that this cult was already associated with a version of an even gloomier text, as
we shall see shortly .

In spite of the fact that the new py ramid’s field at Lisht was readily available for the
construction of further monuments, the successor of Amenemhet I, Amenemhet II, did not
choose to build his py ramid near that of his father, but drastically changed the building site to
Dahshur. No one knows the reasons for this. In their authoritative survey s, Lehner (1999) does not
discuss this issue, while Verner (2002a) say s that this choice happened “for some reason”. As we
learned in the first part of this book, however, in the Old Kingdom there was alway s a very
important reason, usually sy mbolic rather than practical, for the choice of the building site of a
roy al py ramid. It was usually related to the king’s wish to be in proximity to selected
predecessors, and explicit sy mbolism was embodied in the visual axes between monuments of
dy nastically related kings. In the case of Amenemhet II, an analogous mechanism was certainly
in play : the king wished to make an explicit reference to Snefru.

To substantiate a sy mbolic, as opposed to functional, motive for the choice of Dahshur, one
might cite the tale called Prophecy of Neferti, a text written during the early twelfth dy nasty
(Kelly Simpson 1972; Lichtheim 1973). The story develops, indeed, at the court of Snefru, where
a sage called Neferti is entertaining the king. The Pharaoh asks the sage to predict the future, and
Neferti depicts a dark vision of the country in the throes of chaos. Chaos will be brought to an end
by “a king from the south”, who will restore order. The text clearly has a propagandist aim, since
the forthcoming king in question is Amenemhet I. Interestingly, the structure of the tale is akin to
that of the Westcar Papy rus, where a similar mechanism – a sage predicting a new generation of
kings – is used to justify the rise of the fifth dy nasty. In the Westcar Papy rus, the king adopted to
officialise the new generation is Khufu, and indeed the new generation of kings is that of the “sons
of the Sun God” of the fifth dy nasty. In the case of the Neferti prophecy, the choice of the last
king before the solar tradition, Khufu’s father, Snefru, appears to denote the increasing distance
between the Pharaoh’s doctrine of power and solar, Heliopolitan ideas. It is no coincidence that
the cult of Snefru in Dahshur was extensively revived during the twelfth dy nasty, when, for
instance, the offering temple on the east side of the Bent Py ramid was rebuilt with the addition of
mudbrick walls to regulate the flow of worshippers (Fakhry 1959). On the contrary, no similar
revival of cults whatsoever is documented at Giza (Malek 2000).

The choice of the building site of the py ramid of Amenemhet II at Dahshur is an explicit
citation of Snefru. The monument lies to the east of Snefru’s Red Py ramid and was surrounded
by a huge rectangular enclosure oriented east to west. It is, unfortunately, in a completely ruined
state due to widespread plundering, so it is impossible to estimate its original height. The mortuary
temple is also in a state of dilapidation, but its position can be identified by the remains of two
py lons located on the façade. The interior structure of the py ramid is quite simple and follows the
protocol requiring the entrance to be in the middle of the north side. This, however, was to be the
last time such an arrangement would be employ ed. The successor of Amenemhet II, Senwosret
II, decided to break this rule and to build his py ramid at a completely new site, El-Lahun (Photo
7.1).
Photo 7.1. El-Lahun. The py ramid of Senwosret II seen from the east.

El-Lahun is located on the southern rim of the desert ridge just before the mouth of the
Fay oum oasis channel (Figure 3.1). The choice of such a place is usually explained by an
“interest in the Fay oum oasis” on the part of the king, who is credited with some drainage works in
the area. As it turns out, we are certain that it was during the early Middle Kingdom that the
Fay oum basin was reclaimed and transformed into a prosperous agricultural area by diverting
part of the Nile through a channel leading to Lake Moeris. It is, however, unclear if the
completion of these works – perhaps started by Amenemhet I – is to be imputed to Senwosret II;
indeed it has been argued that the presence of the king’s py ramid at El-Lahun is proof of this (see,
for example, Shaw 2000). Perhaps the odd location of El-Lahun at the very “mouth” of the
Fay oum channel and therefore in conspicuous view of all people entering the area may be
adduced as further evidence to back up this choice – to which, in any case, we shall be returning
later.

The monument, originally around 50 metres high, is relatively well conserved, due to its
construction on an outcrop of y ellow limestone. Most of the py ramid was built with mudbricks,
with stone cross-walls inserted to improve stability. The casing is no longer present and had
probably already been removed by the time of Ramesses II. The interior structure was
investigated by Petrie (1891), who was initially unable to find the entrance. In fact, access is not
located on the middle of the north side but in a baffling position: the py ramid courty ard near the
east end of the south side. Clearly, architectural features connected with the rebirth of the king in
the region of the northern stars, mandatory in the Old Kingdom, are lost here. Rather, we have,
on one hand, a growing awareness of the danger of future looting of the py ramids in turbulent
times, and on the other, the rise of the Osiris cult’s influence on the architect’s choices. In
particular, it has been suggested that the “interest for the south” stems from the fact that Osiris’
tomb was supposed to be located in Aby dos, the main cult centre of this god, and that the general
plan of the interior arrangement was determined by analogy with the god’s “apartment” in the
underworld. According to Petrie, at the north-west corner of the burial chamber, a passage
without any apparent function loops around the room, may be suggesting some sy mbolic
meaning; indeed the concept of a “subterranean island” was associated with Osiris’ death and
resurrection. (Today it is possible only to crawl up to the beginning of the corridor, the entrance to
the underground chambers being filled by sand and thus unreachable.) A similar “winding”
internal plan will be adopted also for the Senwosret III py ramid at Dahshur and for the
Amenemhet III py ramid at Hawara (Figure 7.2).
7.2. The interior apartments of the py ramid of Amenemhet III at Hawara.

Another influence of the emerging cult may perhaps be perceived in the presence of a row of
trees planted around the outer wall of the complex, possibly representing the grove supposedly
surrounding Osiris’ primeval tomb.

7.3 The topography of the beyond

The reign of the son of Senwosret II, Senwosret III, might be considered the apogee of the Middle
Kingdom. This Pharaoh is indeed credited with substantial developments in the country and with
the resulting economic prosperity . For his py ramid complex he returned to Dahshur, north-east of
the Red Py ramid. Yet, as we shall see presently, the chances are that the king was not buried
there and that the Dahshur py ramid was his cenotaph.

The py ramid of Senwosret III was an immense undertaking, and it was probably as tall as 78
metres (making it the tallest of all the py ramids from the fifth dy nasty onwards), although today
only a flattened mound can be seen. Its entrance is located near the north-west corner. From
there a vertical shaft drops to a descending corridor; the corridor then turns twice and arrives in a
burial chamber which is off-centre in relation to the py ramid. The chamber contains an
enormous granite sarcophagus – designed as a sort of miniature replica of the Djoser Step
Py ramid enclosure wall at Saqqara – but the room gives the impression of never having been
disturbed or plundered. No funerary equipment has been found, and no exploration has ever
hinted at the existence of further roy al chambers. Thus, the py ramid was perhaps not used for the
king’s burial, although we know it was used for the tomb of one of his queens, Weret II (Arnold
2003). The queen is indeed the owner of a subsidiary py ramid, whose funerary apartments
extend also under the south-west quarter of the king’s py ramid, with access from a shaft in the
courty ard. Other queens and possibly other roy al persons were buried to the north, in an
underground cemetery which extends under four other small py ramids. Another important
discovery made nearby was that of six “funerary ” wooden boats buried in the sand. In an Old
Kingdom context, this kind of find would be ascribed to the solar cult tradition; however, we
should remember that the Early Dy nastic enclosures in Aby dos were also associated with burials
of boats. Actually , it is plausible to think that Senwosret III was buried precisely in Aby dos, where
he built another funerary complex (Currelly 1904; Wegner 1995, 2007b, 2009).

The Aby dos complex is located a couple of kilometres to the south of the main cult centre of
Osiris (Figure 1.2). It consists of a funerary town, a mortuary temple near the cultivation, and an
extended underground tomb, whose entrance is in a T-shaped enclosure just below a conical hill,
to the south of the temple. This hill is part of the easternmost end of the cliffs located to the south
of Umm el Qaab and is undoubtedly a seminal element of the Senwosret III tomb site. The
location was selected in such a way that, approaching the site, the cliff occupies the horizon
prominently. The overall effect is generally perceptible from as far off as the floodplain, but
becomes striking when one is precisely in axis with the entrance to the tomb. The intentional use
of this feature of the sacred landscape is undeniable, since there were no geomorphological
constraints to excavating the subterranean tomb elsewhere at the base of the cliffs. The
orientation of the axis of the complex is hence not of astronomical but of topographical origin. As
a matter of fact, the peak resembles a py ramid, especially when viewed along the axis, so what
we have here is an example of a tomb located under a natural py ramid, as would be the case in
the New Kingdom with the Valley of the Kings located in the shadow of the el Qurn peak of
western Thebes. The likelihood that the tomb is coordinated with the peak is confirmed by the plan
of the tomb’s interior. The plan consists of two different sections. From the entrance, a pole-roof
chamber, resembling archaic models such as the Djoser complex, leads to a first part or “outer
tomb” encased in fine Tura limestone. Then the casing changes to red quartzite. This second
section contains the burial chamber – with sarcophagus and canopic chest sockets concealed
behind the wall masonry – followed by an arched corridor attached to which are two additional
chambers. This “inner tomb” lies below the bulk of the natural py ramid, which was devoted to
Anubis: the seals recovered in the complex indeed bear the inscription -djew-Inpw,
“Mountain of Anubis” (Wegner 2007b). Interestingly, later in the New Kingdom, Anubis would
be considered the protector of roy al burials at western Thebes and would appear in the seal of the
Valley of the Kings. However, the mountain tomb is denoted in Aby dos with the traditional
sy mbolic hierogly ph of the two paired peaks, whereas in Thebes (as documented, for example, in
the Abbott Papy rus; see Chapter 8) the roy al tomb would be denoted with its “solar” counterpart
Akhet.

The Senwosret III underground complex was thoroughly protected with massive blocking
stones (circumvented by looters with the expedient of a tunnel), and access was concealed from
above. These facts, along with the full functionality of the burial place, tend to suggest that this
was the true burial place of the king. If this is accepted, then many architectural elements prompt
the conviction that this tomb is the archety pe of what might be called the “Amduat tomb”. This
terminology comes from the likely emergence during the twelfth dy nasty of a funerary,
partially pictographic text, the Amduat, describing the nocturnal travel of the sun god in the realm
of Osiris (Hornung 1999). Since the night was divided into twelve hours (see Section 2.2 of Box 2),
a journey through the netherworld is also divided into twelve hours representing different regions
in the topography of the bey ond. The climactic moment of the journey occurs at the transition
between the fifth and the sixth hours. The deceased passes a place which is the realm of the god
Sokar, a Memphite god of the underworld already associated with Osiris in the Py ramid Texts. At
this point, a merging of Ra, Osiris and the deceased takes place. This happens in a “hidden
chamber”, and the original name of the Amduat was, unsurprisingly, “ the Book of the Hidden
Chamber”. Later hours of the Amduat describe the sun travelling towards the eastern horizon,
where he will be reborn at dawn, the twelfth hour. The text is first documented in the early
eighteenth dy nasty, but many scholars are convinced that its origin must be antedated by several
centuries, and the parallel with the topography of the Senwosret III tomb is, to say the least,
intriguing. The path inside the tomb can indeed be seen as a sy mbolic route; in the outer tomb, we
can see the movement into the netherworld, culminating in the burial place of the god near the
midsection. In a famous New Kingdom depiction of the Amduat present in the tomb of Thutmose
III, this place is represented under a sty lised py ramid-like mountain, and indeed, as mentioned,
the burial chamber is behind the conical hill. The subsequent inner tomb, characterised by the
arching passage and the use of red quartzite (specially transported to distant Aby dos at
considerable expense), may sy mbolise the sun passage leading to rebirth on the eastern horizon.

7.4 The Amenemhet III project

The son of Senwosret III, Amenemhet III, was the last great king of the Middle Kingdom. After
him, py ramid construction would come to a rapid end. His successors probably commissioned
two unfinished monuments at Mazghuna, a few kilometres south of Dahshur, and a few other
remains exist of py ramids built by kings of the thirteenth dy nasty at Saqqara south.

Like that of his father, the funerary project of Amenemhet III comprises two monuments.
This time, however, both monuments are py ramids, one in Dahshur (Photo 7.2) and the other in
the Fay oum. The py ramid at Dahshur – usually called the Black Py ramid – although ruined, is a
formidable presence near the ridge of the desert to the east of the Bent Py ramid. Its substructure
is fairly complex and consists of two apartments, internally connected by a corridor and usually
designated as the king’s and queens’ sections (De Morgan 1894; Arnold 1987). The entrance to the
king’s section is located near the south-east corner on the east side, while the entrance to the
queens’ section is located at the opposite end of a straight corridor and therefore near the south-
west corner on the west side. In the king’s apartment, the burial chamber contains a pink granite
sarcophagus similar to that of Senwosret III, with niches imitating the perimeter wall of Djoser’s
Step Py ramid (including a miniature of the entrance). On the east side, sy mbolic -udjat
ey es look in the direction of sunrise. The queens’ section lies under the southern quadrant of the
py ramid. There were two queens buried here, each with her own burial chamber. Although the
py ramid was violated in antiquity, a few of their bones and items of funerary equipment were
found. To the south, a third, carefully designed sy stem of chambers was also built. It is accessible
from both sections through separate corridors and consists of “ka” chapels which most likely
contained statues of the deceased. This section – which is unsuitable for burials – is very
elaborately structured: to each burial chamber of the apartments there corresponds a chapel, all
three being situated precisely under the south side base of the py ramid. A transverse corridor
runs farther south, connecting these rooms.
Photo 7.2. Dahshur. The offering temple of the Bent Py ramid, with the py ramid of
Amenemhet III in the background.

The other py ramid constructed by Amenemhet III is positioned near the village of Hawara in
the Fay oum oasis (Photo 7.3). This place is not particularly favourable for a building site; to tell
the truth, it is a very poor position – just a flat, lowish stretch of desert. In any case, the py ramid –
constructed, like the other, in mudbricks and originally covered with fine limestone – is relatively
well preserved. The interior is completely different from that of the Black Py ramid. The
entrance is located on the south face near the south-east corner. Inside, the corridor leads north up
to a dead end. However, as in the Aby dos tomb of Senwosret III, a corridor hidden within the
ceiling leads, through two other twists blocked by portcullises, first to an antechamber and then to
the burial chamber. The latter, located very near the apex projection, is acclaimed as a
masterpiece of engineering; unfortunately, today the substructure is flooded by groundwater and
totally inaccessible. According to Petrie ( 1890), the room is a huge monolithic box of quartzite
sunk into a pit. Inside lies the king’s sarcophagus, together with a smaller one for a daughter of the
king. Huge quartzite slabs were lowered to form a ceiling for this room using a sand-lowering
device (the first appearance of such a device in Egy pt), and the whole chamber was protected by
a saddle vault, in turn located under a massive brick vault.

Photo 7.3. Hawara. The py ramid of Amenemhet III.

The standard explanation given in the literature for the construction of two py ramids by the
same king is that the Black Py ramid was “abandoned” owing to structural problems. In many
textbooks, the alleged “failure” of the king’s architect at Dahshur is ironically compared with the
similarly alleged “failure” of the Snefru architects some hundreds of metres to the west and
some 700 y ears earlier; that is, the Bent Py ramid. Well, precisely as we did in that case, let us
examine this alleged failure in detail.

If one looks in many of the interior corridors and chambers of the Black Py ramid, a series of
severe fractures and cracks can be seen (Arnold 1987). One explanation may be that, at one
point, the weight of the overhead building exceeded the limit of subsoil resistance, which was
perhaps also affected by its proximity to the groundwater level. Consequently, the ground
beneath the py ramid started to crack, and the substructure along with it. Another possibility, 1
which seems much more attractive to me, is that the py ramid itself did not suffer from any
innate problems, but an earthquake occurred. In any event, extended fissures appeared, and some
of the corridors began to collapse; in particular, cracking occurred in the ceilings of the rooms
located near, or directly under, the south baseline of the py ramid. The king’s architects responded
to the threat with wooden frames and reinforced walls, and indeed, with these operations the
builders succeeded in halting the collapse. In my opinion, there is no doubt that they considered
the py ramid to be safe, because some of their repair work was clearly inspired by aesthetic
principles rather than necessity. In particular, the basis of the king’s sarcophagus was carefully
plastered, with the aim of concealing from view the irregularity of levelling caused by the
bulging of the floor. Why bother doing that if a new py ramid was being constructed?
Furthermore, the py ramid was used for burial of the queens. It makes little sense that the queens
would be buried in a structure considered unsound for the king; apropos, it should be noted that
cracking occurred also in the Senwosret III queens’ burial chamber and also was carefully
repaired.

At the very least, the “abandonment” theory seems debatable, but it becomes untenable when
several other points are taken into account. First of all, we are virtually certain that the
construction of the Dahshur py ramid commenced during the co-regency of Amenemhet III with
his father, when an enlargement of the Senwosret III complex nearby had not y et been carried
out (Arnold 2003). As we have seen, there is strong evidence that the latter was designed only to
be a cenotaph and a family burial place. Thus, it would not be bey ond the bounds of possibility to
suspect that the Amenemhet III py ramid, located less than 3 kilometres to the south, in part
contemporary and probably designed and built by the same architects, was also devised with the
same aim in mind. This idea is further confirmed by an interesting find which connects the two
py ramids of the king in a sy mbolic manner. It is a model made of limestone and wood, which
was carefully buried under the floor of the annexes of the temple of the Dahshur py ramid. The
model is quite accurate and represents the interior arrangement of a py ramid, with a miniature
portcullis ready to be operated. It is likely that this model represents the interior rooms of the
py ramid at Hawara (the only difference being that it features only one sliding slab instead of
three). Why was this model present in the cult centre of the Pharaoh in Dahshur? The method of
its burial resembles a foundation deposit, and so the most likely answer is the existence of a
sy mbolic, as opposed to functional, relationship between the projects of the two py ramids.
Finally, even accepting for a moment the “abandonment” theory, why was the building site for
the new py ramid changed so drastically ? By opting for a site near the Black Py ramid (for
example, the terrace about 1 kilometre to the south, where the py ramid of Ameny Qemau of the
thirteenth dy nasty was later constructed), the pre-existing service structures of the “abandoned”
py ramid could have been readily reused.

To conclude, although some Egy ptologists have proposed the intermediate point of view that
the Black Py ramid was finished as a cenotaph, I favour the idea that it was designed from the
very beginning with this aim (Fakhry 1974). It is indeed easier to accept that the two projects –
Hawara and Dahshur – were conceived of almost together and not with the second as a substitute
for the first, because otherwise the total divergence in design between the internal apartments of
the two py ramids would be inexplicable. In fact, the subterranean rooms in Dahshur are unique in
design, while those in Hawara are similar to those, pre-existing, of Senwosret III in Dahshur and
to those of the only other extant roy al py ramid in the Fay oum area, that of Senwosret II – an
interesting connection that we shall be exploring further.

7.5 Sentinels of power

Having completed our survey of twelfth dy nasty py ramids, let us now go back to the architect
who was asked by Amenemhet II to design the king’s py ramid project in the old necropolis of
Dahshur, which had lain virtually untouched for several centuries (Magli 2011a).

From the technical point of view, the choice of constructing near the floodplain avoided
unnecessary complications: stones were required only for foundations and casing blocks, so there
was no need for extensive quarries, and mudbricks were probably plastered directly on site using
Nile mould. But this is only part of the story, because there was a sy mbolic need as well: the
necessity of keeping Maat (order) in the old revered necropolis and thus remaining faithful to the
Snefru tradition. To fix the position of the king’s py ramid, the architects of Amenemhet II thus
decided to place the monument into a perspective, visual relationship with the Red Py ramid,
which stood in the background. The original idea might well have been to set the north side of the
temenos (the wall encircling the sacred area) of the complex along the prolongation to the east of
the line of the south base of the Red Py ramid. However, this intersects a dense area of pre-
existing fourth dy nasty tombs, so the wall was by necessity traced immediately to the south. The
effect for people ascending to the front of the complex must any way have been quite
spectacular, a sort of merging visual effect between the newly built py ramid and the much taller
(but distant in the desert) Red Py ramid of Snefru, thereby united in an evocative, sy mbolic
affinity .

The second py ramid constructed in Dahshur, that of Senwosret III, was planned to be built to
the north of that of Amenemhet II. The project was interrelated with the Amenemhet II complex
as per tradition; indeed a meridian axis ideally connects the two complexes running along the
west side of the temenos wall of Senwosret III (Figure 7.3) and along the front (east) side of the
temenos wall of Amenemhet II. However, a clear reference to the existing projects of Snefru
was also intended. Indeed, as we have already seen, the causeway of the Bent Py ramid – the
southernmost py ramid in Dahshur – is oriented in such a way that, for an observer looking along
its length, the sun at the winter solstice is seen to disappear behind the massive bulk of the
py ramid. The architects who designed the causeway of the Senwosret III complex – the
northernmost py ramid in Dahshur – chose to create a sy mmetrical configuration. Indeed the
py ramid’s causeway is oriented at 298°, and therefore points to the setting sun at the summer
solstice. Since the py ramid is slightly to the north of the junction between the causeway and the
temple complex, the midsummer sun was seen to set framed between the south-west corner of
the py ramid and the summit of the temenos wall. Further, the line sy mmetric to that of the
causeway with respect to due west passes slightly to the south of the Red Py ramid. Therefore, the
sun at the winter solstice was seen to set behind the south-east corner of the Red Py ramid, a thing
which might have influenced the choice of Senwostret III’s building site to the north with respect
to central Dahshur. The name of the py ramid cited the Ba of the king, as did those of the middle
fifth dy nasty complexes, perhaps emphasising the solar connotations of the monument.

7.3. Schematic map of the Dahshur central field (north to the right, monuments in chronological
order): (1) Bent Py ramid (a) and Red Py ramid (b) of Snefru; (2) Amenemhet II; (3) Senwosret
III; (4) Amenemhet III. The east to west lines passing along the north side of the temenos wall of
Amenemhet II and the south side of the Red Py ramid, and along the south side of the
Amenemhet III py ramid and the north side of the Bent Py ramid, are highlighted. The meridian
connecting the three Middle Kingdom py ramids, passing along the west side of the temenos wall
of Senwosret III, the east side of the temenos wall of Amenemhet II, and the east side of the
Amenemhet III py ramid, is also shown.

Finally, when the architects of Amenemhet III embarked on the project of the king’s py ramid
in Dahshur, they took into careful consideration the existing monuments in order to harmonise the
new element into the pre-existing funerary landscape, as well as to maintain Maat. In fact:

1. The meridian from Senwosret III to Amenemhet II was taken into account, since if it
is prolonged to the south it runs along the west side base of the Black Py ramid. (Later,
the east wall of the thirteenth dy nasty complex of Khendier in north Dahshur was
also aligned to it.)
2. To fix the position of the monument along the meridian mentioned earlier, the project
took note of the position of the Bent Py ramid to the west, and the py ramid was
 planned in order to create a perspective effect between the new one and the old one,
almost specular to that connecting the Amenemhet II py ramid with the Red
Py ramid. In fact, the south side of the Black Py ramid is aligned with the prolongation
to the east of the north side of the Bent Py ramid.
3. The py ramidion of the Black Py ramid (recovered at the beginning of the 1900s and
currently in the Cairo Museum) has the same slope as the lower section of its giant
“counterpart”, the Bent Py ramid.
4. A final clue to the harmonisation of the king’s project with pre-existing ones is in the
choice of the direction of the causeway, which runs due east. If we analy se the
causeway s at Dahshur from south to north, we see that their orientations adhere to the
following order: winter solstice sunset (Bent Py ramid), due east (Amenemhet III,
Amenemhet II and – probably – the unexcavated Red Py ramid’s causeway ),
summer solstice sunset (Senwosret III).

The ideal resemblance of the twelfth dy nasty sacred space in Dahshur to that of Snefru in the
same place can therefore be said to have been completed with the Amenemhet III project. To
have a complete picture, we can try to imagine what the necropolis of Dahshur looked like after
the Middle Kingdom additions. The landscape in the direction of the Nile was quite different from
today. The Dahshur lake extended to the south, in front of the desert ridge and a (recently
recovered) quay located in the wadi to the east of the valley temple of the Bent Py ramid
(Stadelmann and Alexanian 1998; Alexanian et al. 2010) (Photo 7.4). People sailing on the lake
would perceive a stunning effect of perspective, with the two magnificent monuments of Snefru
in the background and their brand new companions, those of Amenemhet II and Amenemhet III,
in the foreground. Aligned with these, to the north, the imposing py ramid-cenotaph of Senwosret
III towered above the whole area.
Photo 7.4 Dahshur. The py ramid of Amenemhet III seen from the valley temple of the Bent
Py ramid.

We move now to the Fay oum area to investigate whether topographical cognitive factors can
help to explain the choice of the building sites at Lahun and Hawara.

Amenemhet III’s choice of the Fay oum area is usually justified, as it was for Senwosret II, by
the “interest” shown by the king in the oasis, where he also built a temple – and two huge quartzite
colossi, according to Petrie, who discovered pieces of them. But the Fay oum is vast and totally
surrounded by desert, and the reasons for choosing remote, outly ing Hawara remain enigmatic.
Nobody has really made the effort to solve this puzzle. For instance, Verner ( 2002a) say s that the
place is “not far from Senwosret II py ramid in Lahun”, but the two sites are 8.7 kilometres apart,
and this is hardly adjacent in terms of building sites. At Lahun there was plenty of space to build a
new py ramid, in the pre-existing necropolis of a highly respected and revered predecessor.
Furthermore, there was all the infrastructure required for py ramid construction: accessibility of
materials, and a huge py ramid town which remained active long after the reign of Senwosret II.
So, once the Fay oum area had been chosen, why did Amenemhet III move from El-Lahun to the
relatively remote site of Hawara? A possible answer to this topographical enigma is once again
offered by an analy sis of the relationship between the twelfth dy nasty projects and those of
Snefru, this time that of Meidum-Seila (Magli 2011a).
 As we know from Chapter 3, Snefru built Meidum and Seila as paired, inter-visible monuments
designed mainly to communicate a message of power. The two py ramids of El-Lahun and
Hawara are also inter-visible. Today it is much easier to view the giant mass of El-Lahun from
Hawara than vice versa,2 but in ancient times the two monuments “spoke” very clearly with
each other. They actually stand like twin sentinels, occupy ing the two corner ends of the strip of
desert which is the prolongation to the south of the py ramid field’s ridge, not unlike the way
Meidum and Seila stand at two sides of the same strip farther north. Interestingly, Seila is inter-
visible with Hawara, with an azimuth around 50°30'. This was noticed by Petrie (1891), who was
led by this connection to attribute Seila to the same builders. Indeed, he wrote that Seila “is a
landmark of all this part of the country ; and can be seen from Hawara, as a white heap on the hill
top … [it] is probably a building of the twelfth dy nasty.” A reference to the old Snefru project,
together with the idea of completing an ordered landscape of power also at the Fay oum, may
thus have been the main motivation for choosing Hawara (Figure 3.1).

If the principle of “completing the projects to resemble the past” helps to explain the choices
of Amenemhet III, a thorny issue still rankles: to explain satisfactorily the choices of Senwosret
II. He decided to deviate from the building site inaugurated by his dy nasty, Lisht, and from the
traditional site revived by his father, Dahshur; moreover, he broke the tradition of an orientation to
the north of the entrance to the py ramid and planned a new “winding” arrangement of the
interior chambers. Both successors to this king were to have two tombs: Senwosret III had a
py ramid tomb in the north at Dahshur but was probably buried in the southern one (at Aby dos),
and likewise Amenemhet III had a py ramid in the north at Dahshur but was probably buried in
the south (at Hawara). Had this tradition also already been established by Senwosret II? Judging
by the similarities between the internal arrangements of El-Lahun and Hawara, which prompts
the thought that they are both “tombs to the south”, one is led to speculate that perhaps Senwosret
II might also have had a cenotaph “to the north”, of which we are unaware. If this is true, then
perhaps a part of the previous traditions – with regard to building site and/or orientation – were
preserved by the king in his alternative monument. This possibility has already been explored,
owing to the unusual structure of a tomb (Petrie’s Tomb 621), located to the north of the El-Lahun
py ramid (Arnold 2003). This tomb – whose owner is unknown – boasts many of the features of a
roy al tomb; no burial remains have, however, been found in it, so it may actually be a cenotaph
of the king. Being “still” oriented to the north, it might even be the “missing link” between the
Amenemhet II and the Senwosret II py ramids.

To this possibility I would add y et another one: that the cenotaph of Senwosret II could be the
first one to be located in central Dahshur, where the scant remains of one as y et unattributed
Middle Kingdom py ramid have been documented (Lepsius 55; its remains were apparently
severely damaged as a result of the construction of a pipeline).

It may be, after all, that it was not by chance that the king’s py ramid at Lahun was called,
exactly like the two belonging to Snefru in Dahshur, Senwosret is rising.
 8 A valley for the kings

8.1 A new renaissance

The Middle Kingdom ended along with the twelfth dy nasty. Under the thirteenth dy nasty, the
country began to split up again into two lands, with the foreign Hy ksos taking gradual control of
Lower Egy pt. The process leading to a second reunification was launched by the Theban rulers
of the seventeenth dy nasty and can be said to have been completed with the reign of Ahmose
(1550–1525 BC), the founder of the eighteenth dy nasty (Shaw 2000). The transformation initiated
in the Middle Kingdom, when the twelfth dy nasty kings had favoured Amun as the main deity,
was concluded, so that Thebes became the main religious and power centre of the whole country
and Karnak the most important temple in Egy pt.

The Theban rulers before Ahmose were buried in tombs excavated along the slopes at Dra
Abu el Naga, a series of low cliffs to the north-west of the Deir el Bahri bay. Their tombs were
arranged one after the other, respecting a south-of-west progression (Winlock 1924). Ahmose, on
the other hand, evidently wished to give a strong signal of the return to an ancient tradition, for he
constructed a majestic funerary monument at Aby dos (Harvey 1994, 1998). The complex is
close to that of Senwosret III and parallel to its axis (Figure 1.2). It included a py ramid which is
currently in very poor condition but which must have been a reasonably distinctive and striking
monument on the Aby dos landscape. At present, no subterranean structure has been identified in
it. However, on the axis with the py ramid towards the cliffs lies a rock-cut underground complex,
surmounted by a terraced temple, built up against the mountain. The complex bears a
resemblance to Senwosret III’s tomb nearby but, as with the latter, it is not known for certain
whether it was a cenotaph or if the king was interred there. His mummy has actually been
recovered, in the so-called Deir el Bahri cache, a tomb in western Thebes which was used by
twenty -first dy nasty priests, alarmed by plundering of ancient burial sites, to store dozens of
roy al mummies which had been gathered from their original sepulchres. So there exists the
possibility that the king had a Theban tomb, though it has never been found.

The py ramid of Ahmose is the last roy al py ramid to be constructed in Egy pt. Immediately
thereafter, a clever new way of concentrating almost all the sy mbols and the icons associated
with the afterlife – including the py ramidal shape – into an extremely restricted space was
invented. The king responsible was probably Ahmose’s successor, Amenhotep I. His reign was
relatively peaceful: the king devoted himself to the organisation of the state and instituted several
important traditions which would be followed by almost all his successors. First of all, he wished
to leave tangible traces of his reign at the temple of Karnak, where he ordered the construction of
a huge limestone gateway. Second, he was the first king to inaugurate the tradition of constructing
memorial temples in western Thebes. These temples, which were to acquire enormous
importance with later kings, are usually called “funerary ”. They were indeed devoted to the cult
of the deceased king, but with the addition of a rather complex series of implications which we
shall be exploring later. Finally, as mentioned, Amenhotep I was probably the founder of a new
roy al necropolis, in the wadi today known as the Valley of the Kings (Figure 8.1).1

8.1. Map of western Thebes. The roy al funerary temples are numbered in chronological order,
while capital letters denote geographical areas: (A) Dra Abu el Naga; (B) Valley of the Kings;
(C) el Qurn; (D) Deir el Medina; (E) Birket Abu; (1) Hatshepsut; (2) Thutmose III; (3)
Amenhotep II; (4) Thutmose IV; (5) Amenhotep III; (6) Ay -Horemheb; (7) Seti I; (8) Ramesses
II; (9) Merenptah; (10) Siptah-Tawosre; (11) Ramesses III.

The main hint that Amenhotep I was the founder is that he was granted the honour of being
declared patron god of the necropolis, along with his mother, Ahmose Nefretiri. They were
worshipped in specially built temples at Deir el Medina, the town where the workmen of the
valley lived. The question would, of course, be settled if it could be shown that Amenothep I was
buried in the valley, but this has not y et been possible. The burial of the king is mentioned in an
official document of inspection of the roy al tombs drawn up during the twentieth dy nasty, the
Abbott Papy rus, where the inspectors’ itinerary is described in some detail. The document is
difficult to interpret, though, because it mentions in passing two buildings by Amenhotep I,
presumably temples, whose locations are uncertain (one of them is perhaps the one documented
by Howard Carter at Deir el Bahri, now lost). The text does show that the king was buried in
western Thebes, but from an archaeological point of view, we have not one but two likely
candidates for his tomb, of which only one is in the Valley of the Kings. The tombs there are
labelled by the letters KV followed by a number, and the one in question is KV39, located on the
very edge of the valley, some 200 metres south of the later Thutmose III tomb, very close to the
path ascending from the labourers’ village and thus in a perfectly natural position to be “the first
tomb built”. However, a recent re-excavation has failed to come up with any definitive proof for
Amenhotep I, and many Egy ptologists believe that the king’s tomb is, rather, that labelled AN-B,
located on the high cliffs over Dra Abu el Naga, based on the evidence of numerous fragments
inscribed with the name of the king and his mother found there (see a complete discussion in
Reeves and Wilkinson 1996, and references therein). From the topographical point of view, it
should be observed that AN-B is located in a dominant position in relation to the roy al tombs of
the seventeenth dy nasty, which spread from north to south on the low slopes below. It is a fairly
unusual topographical relationship for a roy al tomb when compared to previous ones, especially
considering that the latter follow a south-of-west progression. On the other hand, KV39 is actually
to the south-west – although in a completely different place – of all these tombs.2

8.2 A valley for the kings

So much for Amenhotep I’s tomb. From the time of his successor, Thutmose I (1504–1492 BC),
the rulers of the New Kingdom were buried in the Valley of the Kings (Reeves and Wilkinson
1996; see, however, Romer 1975). The valley (Photo 8.1) is today approached from a route to
the west, but in ancient times this path was blocked – more or less near today ’s ticket office – by a
natural rock wall 5 metres high, removed only in modern times. Access from there was possible,
but people were forced to climb the wall through an opening in the rocks. The valley was thus
mainly entered by tracks over cliffs, one starting at Deir el Bahri, the other, smoother and
perhaps used for the last part of the funeral of the king after the rites in the funerary temple,
crossing the hill from Deir el Medina (Romer 1981; Hornung 1990).
Photo 8.1. Western Thebes. The Valley of the Kings, with the modern access corridors to the
tombs. The peak of el Qurn is visible to the left.

The choice of the valley for the roy al necropolis was in all probability influenced by sy mbolic
criteria. First of all, as has been repeatedly observed in the literature, its position behind the cliffs
at the western horizon as seen from Thebes assimilated the king’s death and rebirth with the solar
cy cle. In fact, such a statement can be validated further, in a quantitative sense, if one notes that
the axis of the Karnak temple of Amun – by far the most important religious centre in Egy pt
during the New Kingdom – passes along the northern rim of the Deir el Bahri bay. The Karnak
temple axis, as we have seen, is oriented to the winter solstice sunrise to the south-east but opens
towards the opposite orientation (which would be to the summer solstice sunset with a flat horizon)
and therefore specifically towards the hills which guard the entrance to the valley. Thus, although
the last ray s of the sun do not penetrate the temple, the summer solstice sunset observed from
Karnak is still very striking if the observer is aware – as the ancient Egy ptians naturally were – of
what is concealed behind the hills.3

Other sy mbolism implicit in the choice of the valley is connected with the prominent peak of el
Qurn. This peak’s resemblance to a py ramid is obvious from any side but becomes quite
extraordinary when the mountain is seen from the east, to the extent that one might suspect that
the natural py ramidal shape was deliberately adapted by sculpting on that side. The peak itself,
however, was not used for carving out the tombs, nor are the orientations of tombs and temples
aimed towards it. The function of this peak is, accordingly, not directly connected with the
funerary cult. We might consider it instead as a familiar, widely recognised marker of the
presence of the roy al burials.

As far as the interior of the tombs is concerned, they contain a renowned collection of
magnificent decorations, and, in particular, of scenes extracted from funerary texts, which in the
New Kingdom become a sort of illustrated map to the netherworld. The form of art is
pictographic: vignettes accompanied by explanatory texts. The oldest is the Amduat, which we
have already discussed. The most spectacular version of the Amduat is certainly that visible in
the burial chamber of the tomb of Thutmose III, KV34. The decorations here are drawn in such a
way as to give the impression of a huge papy rus unrolled and used to upholster the walls; the
chamber itself is of oval shape, not unlike a king’s cartouche. Generally speaking, the interior of
the roy al tombs does not follow a rigid pattern. Their topography can, however, be subdivided
into three successive stages, roughly corresponding to dy nasties eighteen, nineteen and twenty :
early tombs with curved axes; intermediate tombs where the entrance corridors curve abruptly to
one side at a pillared hall about halfway into the tomb; and later tombs with straight axes. It is
usually claimed that subsequent sections were sy mbolically linked to the nocturnal journey of the
sun, so that the interior of the tomb mimics the topography of the bey ond. The true significance
of some elements remains elusive, however; for instance, was the impressively deep well,
excavated in a special room on the corridor from the reign of Tuthmosis III onwards, a functional
element to stop rainwater from collecting and robbers intruding, a sy mbolic element, or both?

Another point deserving our attention is of course orientation, both practical and sy mbolic. The
importance of astronomy in the management of religion and power at that time is clearly alluded
to in the depiction of astronomical texts on the walls of the tombs, starting from the nineteenth
dy nasty . These texts include star clocks and the “astronomical ceilings”, representing an image of
the sky as the Egy ptians were accustomed to seeing it – that is, of the Egy ptian constellations (see
Section 2.2 of Box 2). In spite of this, it is difficult to individuate a role for astronomy in the
planning of the tombs. The access corridors face the interior of the wadi so their horizon is usually
high. Analy sing the corresponding declinations, it turns out that during the eighteenth dy nasty the
vast majority of the tombs were in the solar range, with declinations between −24º and +24º, with
three exceptions looking towards Thoth Hill to the north (García, Belmonte and Shaltout 2009).
The sun in the (open) tombs could thus shine up to the shaft room. I do not think, though, that any
particular sy mbolism can be attached to this pattern: the tombs were meant to be closed and
probably also concealed from view. Besides, when the tombs were later to acquire a straighter
axis, there is a lack of any recognisable orientation pattern. An exception is perhaps that of three
tombs oriented close to due west. This orientation might be sy mbolic since these are Hatshepsut’s
(KV20), Amenhotep III’s (WV22) and tomb KV55, which is a burial place for members of the
Amarna roy al family (possibly also for the reburial of Akhenaten), hence those very three
Pharaohs who, as we shall see, had, for different reasons, a “special affinity ” with the sun god.
 A further issue is the presence of purely sy mbolic references in the interior of the tombs; for
instance, sy mbolism connected with the sun’s positions may be perceived in eighteenth dy nasty
tombs, due to different colours being adopted for sun sy mbols in various places inside (Wilkinson
1994b). Generally speaking, however, roy al tombs are flat, linear, “two-dimensional” affairs,
corresponding exactly to how the netherworld is represented in the vignettes of the funerary texts,
without any attempt at perspective. A notable exception, which actually shows efforts being
made to achieve perspective in the pictography of the afterworld (for example, in the Ani
Papy rus, Folio 33; see Faulkner 1994), is related to a process of “cosmisation” of the burial, which
occurred quite analogously in many other cultures (Krupp 1997; Ruggles 2005; Magli 2009a).
This process consisted of marking with special protectors the four walls (ideally, the four cardinal
points), so that the tomb – on the basis of the process of “the founding of the human space” we
described in Chapter 1 – became the centre of the world, the place where main directions cross
each other. In Japan, for example, some excavated funerary chambers of the so-called Kofuns
(burial tumuli constructed between the third and the seventh centuries AD) contain images,
painted on the walls, of four animals also sy mbolising the four cardinal points and the four
seasons: the Azure Dragon of the East (spring), the Red Bird of the South (summer), the White
Tiger of the West (fall) and the Black Turtle of the North (winter). A starry ceiling completes the
decoration. In Egy pt, the “cosmisation” of the funerary chambers begins at Aby dos, with inter-
cardinal orientation, and continues with the rigorous orientation of the py ramids to the cardinal
points and the distribution of the Py ramid Texts on different walls and chambers. In the Middle
Kingdom, coffins are “oriented”: their eastern part is the long side, identified on the exterior by
the double ey e -udjat, sy mbolically looking at sunrise and rebirth; consequently, the whole
coffin is oriented as well, and the inscription on the exterior runs accordingly “from north to
south”. In the New Kingdom, the tradition of the so-called magic bricks was established (see, for
example, Silverman 1996; Tay lor 1999). These were bricks inscribed with spells against the
enemies of Osiris, one for each of the four walls and, sy mbolically, for each cardinal point. In
many cases, the bricks had sockets into which an amulet could be inserted, facing the relevant
wall. The amulets were a Djed pillar for the west, Anubis for the east, a shabti (a mummy -form
figure of the deceased which can be magically activated) for the north, and a torch for the south.
Each brick was inscribed with passages from Spell 151 of the funerary text called The Book of the
Dead, where four “genies” (the “four sons of Horus”) are invoked for protection. They are:
Amseti with human head, Hapy with baboon head, Kamutef with jackal head, and, finally, the
falcon-headed Qebehsenuef. Their role was also associated with the protection of the viscera
(liver, lungs, spleen, intestines) of the deceased, contained in canopic jars. The choice of the
number four for the canopic jars is therefore also sy mbolic, as there are of course many other
items of viscera which were not extracted, or were extracted but not conserved.

8.3 The Hatshepsut projects

On the death of Amenhotep I, his son Thutmose I ascended to the throne, to be succeeded in turn
by his son Thutmose II. Thutmose II died shortly after marry ing his half-sister Hatshepsut. He
left a y oung boy (fathered with another wife), Thutmose III, as heir to the throne, but Hatshepsut
became regent. At any rate, she managed to proclaim herself Pharaoh and ruled for about 20
y ears before leaving the throne to the legitimate heir (probably on her death). To legitimise her
own rights to the monarchy, Hatshepsut claimed direct descent from Amun-Ra. To validate this
ideology, she started an ambitious building program on both the Theban banks of the river,
establishing a series of ideological patterns and ideas which would be widely followed in later
y ears. The masterpiece of her building programme is the funerary temple called Djeser-djeseru,
the “most holy place” (Photo 8.2).

Photo 8.2. Western Thebes. The terraces of the Hatshepsut temple at Deir el Bahri.

The temple was designed as a sort of artificial extension of the cliffs of the Deir el Bahri bay,
and is thus superbly integrated with the natural landscape. It consists of three court terraces
separated by front colonnades and linked by ascending ramps, with dimensions deftly calculated
to create stunning theatrical effects. The upper terrace had an entrance portico adorned with
images of the queen in Osiris form, guarding the final sanctuary, a rock-carved chapel of Amun.
(The tomb of the Pharaoh Queen in the Valley of the Kings is located roughly in correspondence
with the temple axis on the opposite side of the cliff.) The architect responsible for the temple was
Senenmut, a fairly important figure who also had an (unfinished) tomb excavated for himself in
the flank of the temple hill.4 Hatshepsut’s architecture as executed by Senenmut on both banks of
the Nile stresses the importance of the sun. The funerary temple is oriented to the winter solstice
sunrise; today a wall prevents the rising sun from filtering up to the final sanctuary, but this
phenomenon probably occurred in ancient times. The same orientation was emphasised by
Hatshepsut in her additions to Karnak. Indeed, although the axis of the Karnak temple had been
oriented to the winter solstice sunrise since the Middle Kingdom, the main front of the temple was
facing west. Hatshepsut chose to add a structure that was open to the south-east, dedicated to
Amun-Ra who hears the prayers. The building was aligned on the same axis as the pre-existing
temple but was explicitly linked to the sunrise, and a group of seated statues representing
Hatshepsut and Amun-Ra was the first element to be illuminated by the rising sun in the day s
around the solstice, creating a spectacular hierophany (Hawkins 1974; Krupp 1988).

Hatshepsut’s need to evince a direct connection with the sun in order to legitimise her reign is
made clear also by other elements of her building activities. Included in her plan was, for
instance, the erection of two obelisks along the Karnak axis – today no longer standing – dedicated
to marking the places “where my father rises”. As part of the ideological propaganda aimed at
validating her reign, it also appears that Hatshepsut was the first Pharaoh to promote the worship
of a “Theban triad” of gods, formed by Amun, Mut and Khonsu. Mut was an ancient Theban
goddess associated with creation. As Thebes grew in importance, she was identified with the wife
of Amun and mother of their son Khonsu, who in turn gradually replaced the other ancient
Theban god, Montu. At Karnak, Khonsu was worshipped in a temple located to the south of the
main building, while his mother had a specially built precinct to the south-east. A visit to the Mut
precinct is a unique experience for two reasons. First, the area is filled with hundreds of basalt
statues of the goddess in her lion-headed form, the warrior goddess Sekhmet, whose carving is
apparently due to Amenhotep III (but some think that the original project was also Hatshepsut’s).
Second, the temple is unique in being surrounded on three sides by a sacred lake shaped like a
lunar crescent. Various interpretations have been put forward for this; some think that the lake was
meant to constrain the potentially dangerous leonine goddess, others that the lake is an allusion to
her son Khonsu, who was associated with the moon and depicted as a falcon wearing a crescent
and moon disk on his head. No orientation to the moon can, however, be recognised there.

To the immediate south of the temple, excavations are gradually bringing to light a straight
avenue flanked by hundreds of sphinxes. The sphinxes are a relatively recent addition (fourth
century BC), but the avenue is much older and can probably be ascribed to Hatshepsut as well. It
leads to the most important temple after – or perhaps even on a par with – Karnak: Luxor.

8.4 The sanctuary of the south

The so-called temple of Luxor is located along the Nile some 3.5 kilometres to the south-west of
Karnak (Figure 8.2). Known in ancient times as the “sanctuary of the south”, it was principally
dedicated to Amun, worshipped here as a fertility and creator god, Amenemopet (Bell 1997).

8.2. Plan of the Karnak and Luxor temples, connected by the Alley of the Sphinxes. Notice that
the Karnak axis goes perfectly straight, while the Luxor axis bends several times.
 There is a suspicion that the foundation of this temple dates to the Middle Kingdom, but
conclusive proof has never emerged, as the earliest reference so far comes from an inscription,
discovered in a quarry near Memphis, dating from y ear 22 of the reign of Ahmose. The earliest
architectural evidence, on the other hand, comes from Hatshepsut’s reign, although most of her
buildings were subsequently destroy ed and the magnificent temple we can see today is mostly
the work of Amenhotep III and Ramesses II (Badawy 1968).

Amenhotep III’s buildings at Luxor were planned in two different stages. In the first stage, the
intricate, secluded multiroom complex which stands today at the very end of the temple was
erected (perhaps on a small “primeval” hill, although many Egy ptian temples – for instance
Medinet Habu – claimed such an honour); later a huge open court with a magnificent access
colonnade (completed by Tutankhamun after the Amarna period) was added. Later on, major
additions were made by Ramesses II, which consisted of an entrance py lon (Photo 8.3) with a
pair of huge obelisks in front of it and a large pillared court. Inside this court, to the right of the
entrance, a triple shrine can be seen. The structure – which replaces the last “way station”
previously built by Hatshepsut – was used for housing the barks of the statues of Amun, Mut and
Khonsu of Karnak. Luxor and Karnak were in fact closely connected. Every y ear, the statues of
the Theban triad visited Luxor in a procession known as The Beautiful Festival of the Opet (Cabrol
2001). This festival, together with the “Beautiful Feast of the Valley ”, which we shall encounter
later, and the feast of Osiris, was the most important of several held y early in honour of the gods
in ancient Egy pt. It commenced with the Karnak statues being loaded onto ceremonial barks
under which long stakes were inserted. Baldachins were then carried on the shoulders of the
priests; the religious procession moved towards Luxor along the avenue mentioned earlier. Today
this avenue is lined by the hundreds of Sphinxes added subsequently by Nectanebo II, but
Hatshepsut had already equipped it with six “bark stations”. At each station, the cortège stopped
and the priests performed ceremonies.5
Photo 8.3. Luxor. The Ramesses II py lon of the temple seen from the final section of the Alley
of the Sphinxes. The displacement of the axis of the first court with respect to the front can be
perceived.

Renewal was the focus of this feast, and countless offerings of flowers, sy mbols of renewal,
were brought to the temples. The idea of the renovation of power – both divine and roy al – is
certainly not new, as it can be traced back to the Early Dy nastic period and the Sed festivals. The
New Kingdom kings also celebrated Sed festivals, but the y early feast of the Opet fulfilled a
different function, connected to the relationship of the common people with the divine. Public
access to temples was in fact forbidden, so the idea of circulating the god’s statues back and forth
met the need to have contact, however detached and perfunctory, with the gods. The Pharaoh, in
accordance with his divine nature, had of course a key role, for the festival was connected with
the renewal of the Ka of the king and – by extension – to that of all people. The Pharaoh himself
made a sort of reappearance, having changed his clothes, after the entrance of the procession into
the recessed part of the Luxor temple. The secluded rites included a repetition of the coronation,
with the king receiving the two crowns in front of the god’s image and presenting special
offerings.

Was the “sanctuary of the south” – and the explicit manifestation of the Pharaoh’s power
associated with it – tied up with astronomy ? And if so, in what way ?
 Contrary to what transpired at Karnak in the course of more than one millennium, where
subsequent additions did not alter the axis’ direction towards the rising sun at the winter solstice, at
Luxor at each enlargement a bend of the axis was effected. The bends are initially almost
imperceptible: the inner court has an azimuth ~34°, which changes to 35½° for Tutankhamun’s
court. Then, however, the turn to the west becomes clearly perceptible with the Ramesses II
addition, though the court and the py lon of this king are not aligned with each other, bearing
azimuths 42½° and 39½°, respectively. The presence of these bends makes a visit to the temple a
strange experience: at the entrance, the line of sight along the open hall is perceived at an angle in
relation to the front py lon, and the linear perspective of the colonnade on the opposite end does
not reveal the presence of the vast inner court which follows (Photo 8.3).

The riddle of the Luxor bent axis has been the subject of several unsuccessful attempts at
explanation, including an astronomical one. In particular, in the nineteenth century, Egy ptian
chronology was very different from today and had (wrongly ) been shifted backwards by many
centuries. Using this chronology, Locky er ( 1894) associated the changes of the axes with the
precessional drift of the rising point of the bright star Vega. However, this solution cannot be
reconciled with the currently accepted chronology. The changes in the axes thus remain
unexplained, as they were not necessary to keep the building parallel to the Nile – which has not
altered its course much since then, as the ancient quay connected with the temple clearly shows.
To find the most plausible reason for the deviation of the Ramesses II addition, we must first
analy se the Karnak to Luxor avenue.

Unlike what happened with the Luxor temple proper, important astronomical events took place
at the time of construction at both ends of this avenue. The pathway proceeds very straight along
its 2 kilometre course, and its azimuth from Luxor to Karnak can be estimated quite precisely to
be 45° (data from the author) (Figure 8.2). Clearly, this choice is hardly random, as it is the inter-
cardinal orientation we have already encountered many times; furthermore, it was not
constrained by local topography. We already know that this direction is out of the solar and lunar
range, and that it generally corresponded to the Milky Way. Actually, if we take Hatshepsut’s
accession as a reference point (say around 1470 BC), then we can see that the region of azimuths
close to 45° was particularly crowded by the rising of bright stars: the “northern branch” of the
Milky Way with Cy gnus, but also Arcturus and Vega. Equally luminous was the horizon at the
opposite end (azimuth 225°), where the brightest part of the Milky Way – and, in particular, the
Southern Cross – sat in alignment with the avenue in the direction of Luxor (Tables A.1 and A.2).
The two centuries or so separating Hatshepsut from Ramesses II were not sufficient for
precession to destroy these phenomena, so that 200 y ears later the spectacle was still quite
effective, and Ramesses II provided an artificial horizon for it with the erection of the external
py lon and the two obelisks at the end of the avenue. But the large (7°) bend of the Ramesses court
also had another aim. In fact, the project was designed in such a way that Luxor became a sort of
double-faced temple, since a visual axis connects the chapels of the bark stations with the inner
sanctuary (Photo 8.4). In this way, when occupied by the statues, the chapels play ed the role of
alternate inner sanctuaries located at the opposite end.

Photo 8.4. Luxor. The axis of the Amenhotep III colonnade of the Luxor temple viewed from
the back end.

We might say , then, that the sy mbolic relationship between Karnak, the main “house” of Amun
who hears the prayers, and Luxor, the main “house” of Amun as a creator (or re-creator) god,
responsible for renovating the Ka of the Pharaoh, was heightened by a series of references to
Egy ptian conceptions of the sacred space which would have been quite familiar. Basing on the
astronomical and topographical observations presented earlier, I think that the “sanctuary of the
south” – where the power of the gods was “re-enhanced” and, in a sense, resuscitated – can be
seen as a sort of gigantic Serdab, and in fact the ceremonies held in the most secret part of the
temple (the so-called Opet temple, located to the back of the main building) probably included the
Opening of the Mouth performed by the Pharaoh on the statue of Amun of Luxor, Amenemopet.
The Luxor temple is actually to the south-west of Karnak and connected to it by the alley oriented
precisely along the inter-cardinal direction. It is therefore in a position which is also the “classic”,
almost mandatory position for the tomb of the successor to a revered king. In this case, however,
the successor is no one but the “renewed” Pharaoh who, as well as a rejuvenated Amun god,
succeeds himself.

An aura of my stery surrounds the temple of Luxor even today, as countless publications have
tried to assign to it a hidden, esoteric meaning (see e.g. Schwaller de Lubicz 1998). Indeed we do
not know the details of the ceremonies that took place there, nor can we imagine the feelings of
the devout people who left inscribed votive shards along the route of the statues’ procession and
saw in the solemn march of the gods the reassuring regularity of the life cy cle. After the
entrance of the statues into the recesses of the temple, the common people waited for the king to
report on the success of those ceremonies, and in this sense the secret of the temple really had
been kept. Nonetheless, we can see once again that ancient Egy ptian architecture and sy mbolism
is far from being hidden or esoteric. So although the fine details of the theological framework
were perhaps only vouchsafed to the elite, the feeling of the sacred space, and the way in which
buildings were oriented and ceremonial acts were engineered in order to maintain Maat on the
land of the two lands, was also here apparent – familiar – to every one.

8.5 My face is yours

On Hatshepsut’s death, the legitimate heir Thutmose III ascended to the throne, and the memory
of the Pharaoh Queen swiftly began to fade. Thutmose, in fact, launched a wide-ranging
programme aimed at dwarfing the achievements of his predecessor, to the extent, later in his
reign, of even obliterating her name from many monuments. The king also added a small temple
up against that of the queen at Deir el Bahri, probably with the objective of replacing it as
receiver of the statues of the Karnak gods during the “Festival of the Valley ” (Chapter 10).

The king’s intentions are particularly clear precisely at Karnak, where – among other building
projects – he ordered the erection of enormous obelisks (one can be found today in Piazza San
Giovanni in Laterano in Rome) aimed at outdoing Hatshepsut’s efforts. To the south-east end of
the temple axis, the king also ordered the construction of a somewhat unusual structure, the
Akhmenu. The Akhmenu was a large, rectangular temple intended to celebrate the king’s
ancestors and military campaigns; the roof was supported by two rows of columns shaped like the
poles of a portable tent. From the architectural point of view, the transverse position of the longest
side of the Akhmenu in relation to the Karnak temple axis ( Photo 8.5) clearly shows the intent of
obstructing the view of Hatshepsut’s buildings along the direction of “her father” rising into the
south-east.
Photo 8.5. Karnak. The temple axis at sunset.

Veneration of the rising sun at the winter solstice was, however, reaffirmed also in the
Akhmenu. In fact, a stairway from the north-east corner of the pillared hall leads up to a room
(“high room of the sun”, as Gerald Hawkings called it), which is clearly a solar shrine. This
elevated building is provided with a window opening to the south-east and a huge altar in the form
of four-hetep signs not unlike that of the Niuserra sun temple at Abu Gorab, built about a
millennium earlier.

Successors to Thutmose III were Amenhotep II and his son Thutmose IV. With these two
kings, we see a renewed focus on Giza that is somewhat difficult to account for. No traces of cult
activities pertaining to the Middle Kingdom have in fact been recovered there, the only fact
worthy of note being the presence of stone reliefs which came from Giza py ramid complexes
reused in the py ramids of Lisht. Some evidence of activity can be found at the beginning of the
New Kingdom, but it is usually attributed to the fact that the area of Giza was used as a hunting
reserve (Hassan 1953). The Pharaoh who really turned the situation around was Amenhotep II,
who ordered the construction of a new temple there after more than one thousand y ears. This
temple (perhaps built on an earlier Thutmose I chapel) is the small building which is visible
directly above the north side of the Sphinx pit. The building houses a huge stela, dedicated by the
king to the god Hor-em-akhet, meaning “Horus in the horizon”. The temple is obviously oriented
to directly face the Sphinx from the front and Khufu’s py ramid from the rear, and there can
scarcely be any doubt that it is dedicated to the Sphinx herself, so in a sense it is incorrect to call it
a “temple” since the god’s statue is definitively not inside it. On the other hand, there is some
ambiguity as to the interpretation of the god “Horus in the horizon” identified with the statue
(Wilkinson 1994a). It is usually believed that the original meaning of the Sphinx was lost at that
time and that the similarity – about which we know a considerable amount – between the setting
sun between the two py ramids and the hierogly ph Akhet (with the Sphinx perched in the middle)
had perhaps been “noticed” or “picked up” (Photo 8.6). I have alway s been loath to accept this
interpretation, as it smacks too much of a sort of fetishistic worship of a statue, which appears
quite antithetical to the Egy ptian mentality. So, I tend to think that the Akhet in question here –
where the “Horus” is in – is nothing but Khufu’s. Unfortunately, it is impossible to ascertain
whether the denomination “Horus in the Horizon” for the Sphinx can be traced back to the Old
Kingdom; in turn, the name of the Great Py ramid, the Horizon of Khufu, was known in the New
Kingdom, but perhaps referred to the whole Giza necropolis. As it happens, however, Amenhotep
II is also credited with the revival of the cult of Khnum, the god protector of Khufu, since he
decreed the erection of a pair of obelisks devoted “to his father”, Khnum-Ra, at the main temple
of this god in Elephantine (one of the two obelisks is today at the University of Durham).
Photo 8.6. Giza. The sun sets behind the Sphinx, with the two main py ramids forming a giant
Akhet sign, as seen from the Sphinx terrace on a summer evening. The Sphinx really becomes
“Horus in the horizon” in these moments.

Another point that is difficult to clarify is the reason behind the decision by Amenhotep II to
build this temple. This decision is probably connected with the famous “dream stela” which was
erected by his son Thutmose IV between the paws of the Sphinx. The inscription on the stela
recounts that, when the king was still a y oung prince, he fell asleep in the shadow of the statue at
midday. In a dream, Hor-em-akhet prophesied that he would gain the future kingship. The god,
however, requested that his precinct be cleared up and restored. Although the stela bears the date
of y ear 1 of Thutmose IV, it is hard to believe that Amenhotep II erected the temple without
clearing the pit, so perhaps the works were really carried out by the prince on his father’s behalf.
If this was the case, the initial repairs in the masonry of the Sphinx body should also have been
executed, although the megalithic temple in front of the Sphinx was left completely forgotten and
buried in the sand.

Clearly, the restoration of the Sphinx suited the propaganda aims of Thutmose IV.
Accordingly, one might suspect that the restoration made by the king involved not only the body
but also the face. As we have seen in Chapter 3, the question “who is the Sphinx?” is highly
debated, and I have already agreed with Stadelmann’s ( 1985) identification of the statue with
Khufu as being the most likely. However, there is a passage of the prophecy of the Dream Stela
where the Sphinx say s (Breasted 1906): “My face is y ours, my desire is toward y ou. You shall
be to me a protector.”

The wording “my face is y ours” is usually interpreted as “my face is towards y ou”, but I
would suggest that the hy pothesis of a resculpting of the head by an artist serving Thutmose IV is
a possibility which might just be worth exploring further.
 9 The Horizon of the Aten

9.1 The dazzling sun disk

On the death of his father, Thutmose IV, Amenhotep III inherited – probably when still a child –
a prosperous and stable kingdom that he was to rule for almost 40 y ears (1391–1353 BC). His
reign can be divided into two quite distinct parts (Kozloff and Bry an 1992; O’Connor and Cline
2001). In the first part, the king appears as a “standard” monarch of his dy nasty : he attends to
some military problems in Nubia, increases international diplomacy and commerce, and devotes
huge effort to leaving tangible traces of his passage at Karnak, Luxor and many other places
scattered throughout the country. His regnal y ears appear to flow quite peacefully up to y ear 30,
when he celebrates his first Sed festival. Then, something happens. He begins to “feel like a new
man”, or rather, being a Pharaoh, a new god. In a recently discovered quartzite statue, the king is
shown with a y outhful appearance, in spite of the fact that the statue was probably executed late
in his reign. The reliefs relating to the festival show the king in the semblance of Ra, on a solar
boat. What is happening, though strange, is clear: the living king is identify ing himself with the sun
god during his own lifetime. This is quite a heretical idea, perhaps only attempted by Khufu
before. According to the prevailing theology , the king certainly voy aged in order to be at one with
the sun god, but only after death.

This identification campaign proceeds rapidly . The king starts to define himself as “the dazzling
sun disk”. Somehow, the unification also encompasses other gods, the king being depicted with
attributes of Amun or Thoth; hundreds of statues of different gods are made and housed in the
king’s temple, perhaps acknowledging him as a creator of gods. Other Sed festivals are celebrated
in y ears 34 and 37. The festivals take place at the strange complex that the king created for
himself in the area today called Malkata. The complex, a sort of sy mbolic new capital
constructed on the Theban west bank (which was, of course, traditionally reserved for the dead),
comprises a huge palace, a gigantic lake and an enormous funerary temple (Kemp and O’Connor
1974).

The king’s palace was called “the House of Rejoicing” and was very massive, with painted,
plastered walls, some of which have been recovered. In front of it, today dried out and
recognisable only from satellite views, was created an enormous “ceremonial” T-shaped lake,
connected with the Nile, called the Birket Habu (Graham 2010, 2011). The palace had a great
harbour on its docks, from which the king could sail on his “solar” bark. Last but not least, the
funerary temple must have been an architectural masterpiece. To obtain the stones necessary for
the statues of the king in the temple, the roy al officer, Amenhotep son of Apu, mobilised quarries
all over the country, even attaining such eminence as to be granted the honour of building a
funerary temple for himself not far from that of the king. Little remains today , but the grandiosity
of the Amenhotep III project is continuously confirmed by new excavations, and the sight of the
first py lon of the temple is branded unforgettably on the memory of any one entering western
Thebes from the south. Here sit two of the most gigantic monolithic statues man has ever
ventured to create, the so-called Colossi of Memnon (Sourouzian 2006; Sourouzian et al. 2006).
The statues, which stand on huge pedestals and represent the seated king, are about 18 metres
high, with an estimated weight of up to 720 tons (Photo 9.1). The material is quartzite, a ty pe of
limestone which is readily found at Aswan, some 300 kilometres to the south and therefore
transportable downstream. However, it has emerged from geochemical analy ses that the stone
was not sourced there (Knox et al. 2009) but rather came from quarries located near Heliopolis
(y es, Cairo). Therefore, they were not transported downstream but painstakingly moved
upstream along the Nile (or dragged across the land a good 500 kilometres). Either way, it must
have involved prodigious effort, as we can read in an inscription probably referring to these
statues. The inscription stresses how this journey was overlaid with sy mbolism, and how the route
went from “Heliopolis-of-the-North” to “Heliopolis-of-the-South”; that is, Thebes.

Photo 9.1. Western Thebes. The so-called Colossi of Memnon mark the entrance to the
funerary temple of Amenhotep III.

As mentioned, the colossi are still standing today, signalling the entrance to the temple; the axis
was oriented to winter solstice sunrise, and therefore the rising sun at midwinter can be seen
framed between the two enormous figures. This is the first funerary temple after Hatshepsut to
be oriented in this way, and this is surely no coincidence, given what we have learned about the
identification of Amenhotep III with Ra. Also, the choice of constructing a new residence near
the temple, and therefore on the west bank of the Nile, is indicative of the king’s views regarding
his divine role. In fact, this is nothing less than a clean break with tradition: only deceased kings
were usually associated with the “dy ing” sun to the west. In a way, Amenhotep III, identified
with the sun, living in his palace on the west bank near his funerary temple and not far from his
tomb, was “already dead”, while, as we shall see in a while, his son Akhenaten, living and
destined to be buried in the east, was to consider himself “already reborn”.

Probably as a consequence of all this rejection of orthodox religious conventions, Amenhotep

III also made an innovative choice for his burial place, for his tomb was excavated in the so-
called West Valley (tombs there are classified with the letters WV followed by a number;
Amenhotep III’s is WV22). The West Valley is usually described as a western branch of the
Valley of the Kings but is actually another wadi, to the west, running almost parallel to it. WV22
was the first roy al tomb located there, and only the unfinished tomb of the king’s son Akhenaten
and that of his later successor Ay will follow it.

It is difficult to work out the reasons behind such unconventional behaviour. However, it has
been proposed that the revolution in kingship and religion which started with Amenhotep III and
reached its apex with his son originated from a sort of unbearable burden bearing down on the
Pharaonic institution. The Pharaoh was supposed to be simultaneously Horus (a god incarnate on
earth), the keeper of the cosmic order on behalf of the sun god, but also the “archety pal
strongman”, superior to all others on every occasion. Psy chological pressure on him would be
perfectly understandable, especially if all these functions were reflected in obsessive official
ceremonies and appearances, culminating each y ear in the Opet festival. In the meantime, the
“elite” of the state establishment, and especially army officers and the priesthood, were busily
acquiring power and independence. This process, which was extremely lengthy, can be seen
reflected in theology (Assmann 2003). In the Old Kingdom, the religious world was sensed as a
global interaction between the community and the gods (with the sun god in a prominent role).
This interaction perpetuated Maat, the cosmic order, the king being the mediator and the keeper of
such order. With the Middle Kingdom and the rise of Amun, a different kind of theology arose.
The principal god alone is responsible for the generation of the cosmos and, to some extent, for
the creation of the other gods. Clearly, the “poor” living god – the Pharaoh – had to find his own
way of keeping his power intact in this developing scenario, as well as take the continuing
traditional religion into consideration. In this sense, the importance of matching traditional ideas
and recognisable sacred icons with the “new” religion phy sically “living” in the great temples of
eastern Thebes becomes clearer. This can also be seen in the choices made for the sacred
landscape of western Thebes as well as for the related rites of the festivals, where “hidden” gods,
usually residing in the final, inaccessible chapels of their temples on the east bank, were
periodically dragged along in procession, visible – though still inaccessible – to the crowd.
 As a whole, the office of divine kingship thus demanded more than ever the unconditional
support of the people, obtained through the medium of religion; this in turn led to an increase in
the intermediary functions and duties of the living god, the man who imparted the will of the
supreme god. The situation broke down with the son and successor of Amenhotep III. He acceded
as Amenhotep IV, but changed his name from y ear 5 of his reign to Akhenaten, meaning Alive is
the spirit of Aten. I shall refer to him by this name henceforth.

This king is universally known for his religious revolution, which tended towards monotheism
centring on the Aten, a god we may refer to as the sun disk. The revolution took place in rapid
stages and was reflected in the progressive dismantling of the existing religion. This led to the
closure of temples devoted to other gods, including Karnak, with the chief priest of Amun
dispatched on a mission to a remote quarry .

The “only ” god was in a sense an old one, since it appears that veneration for the Aten actually
commenced in the Middle Kingdom and is documented under Tuthmosis IV and Amenhotep III;
in fact, the father of Akhenaten, as mentioned, favoured his own identification with the solar disk.
The Aten in Akhenaten’s conception was a universal but exclusive god: basically the only high
priests of the Aten were the king and his wife Nefertiti. The representation of the sun disk in the art
of the period soon becomes extremely original, and makes it clear that it was precisely the disk,
depicted with ray s terminating in helpful little hands, that was the object of Akhenaten’s worship.
The king and the members of the roy al family are shown with rounded, exaggerated facial and
corporeal characteristics, a peculiarity which remains unexplained but perhaps was meant to
emphasise their exclusive relationship with the god. While most of the other cults were
summarily dismantled, the relationship of Aten with the sun god Ra appears more complex; for
instance, Ra was retained in the renewed titulary of Akhenaten and incorporated into the names
of two of the king’s daughters. Furthermore, in the foundation texts of his new capital, the king
explicitly states that the cult of the Mnevis bull – an animal sacred to Ra – was to be retained
there, although no traces of it have been rediscovered archaeologically .

The rejection of the cult of Amun and the progressive acceptance of the Aten cult appear to
have been inexorable. As soon as the king succeeded to the throne, he adorned the southern
entrance to Karnak with scenes of himself worshipping the personification of the sun disk and
ordered the construction of a new temple dedicated to the Aten. This temple – the Gempaten,
meaning something like “Aten is found here” – was located to the east of the Amun-Ra temple
precinct. The temple was an open court with colossal statues of the king. It was apparently built to
celebrate a Sed festival held in the third y ear of his reign, and was later almost completely
destroy ed by Horemheb (Redford 1987). The huge statues were knocked down and left there,
only to be found some 3200 y ears later. Only part of the foundations have been excavated, but
judging from existing maps, the axis of the temple was parallel to that of Karnak and open to the
south-east and therefore oriented to the rising sun at the winter solstice. However, this homage to
tradition was soon to be abandoned too, and Egy pt was about to embark on a short-lived but
extremely interesting phase: the so-called Amarna period.

9.2 The Amarna sacred space

Amarna is a sort of desolate bay of flat land, stretching for some 10 kilometres along the east
bank of the Nile and surrounded by desert cliffs. It is located about 300 kilometres to the north of
Thebes, roughly midway to Memphis. Today it is a rather forbidding place, but it cannot have
been so very different when the king chose it as the spot on which to found nothing less than his
new capital, called Akhet-Aten, the Horizon of the Aten. Curiously enough, just to the immediate
south-east of Amarna, the Nile Valley widens considerably, so it is quite clear that – given that
this was the geographical area coveted by the Pharaoh – the site was deliberately chosen to be
enclosed as much as possible, almost like a nutshell. The reasons for the choice of such an
uninviting place for the new capital of the two lands have been, as is so often the case, overlooked
in the existing literature, but – as usual – will be of great interest to us.

The city was ritually founded, in a manner which may remind us of much later examples,
such as the ritual foundations of towns by the Etruscans and the Romans (Ry kwert 1999; Magli
2008c). Among such cultures, the foundation of a town was associated with a series of ritual acts
aimed at consecrating the landscape. In a similar way , the landscape at Amarna is an example of
a consecrated landscape, an environment which is ritually founded to assure its suitability for
human beings to inhabit. As such, it does not necessarily have to be particularly comfortable or
pleasant; in Mircea Eliade’s words, a place just has to be founded to be inhabited (Eliade 1959,
1964). Sanctification of the whole urban landscape appears to be something of an innovation for
the Egy ptian world, where foundation rituals are very well known and documented in the
archaeological records, but only in the case of temples and tombs. Nevertheless – as mentioned
in Chapter 7 – I believe that a sort of boundary of the sacred landscape can perhaps also be
identified at Thebes, at least to the north, given the mutual position of two temples located on the
opposite banks of the Nile, the “Nest of Horus” on Thoth Hill and the temple of Montu at
Medamud. In the case of Amarna, the ritual limitation of the sacred space assumed the unusual
form of the so-called boundary stelae. These monuments “speak to each other” through visibility
lines traceable between the two banks of the Nile and are of the utmost interest for gauging the
king’s mental attitude and thought processes. Each one is a rectangular niche, in many cases
originally flanked by carved statues of Akhenaten and Nefertiti and of some of their daughters. It
was Flinders Petrie (1894) who first seized on their importance and classified them with letters.1
The stelae were not all carved at the same time; the main time difference appears to be one
y ear, between 4 Peret 13 of y ear 5, when a first “foundation statement” was carved, and the
same day one y ear later, when this statement was in a sense repeated and enhanced (a further
addition was made in y ear 8). The two texts are usually called “proclamations”. The first
proclamation corresponds to the initial, main delimitation of the space of the city within the two
crags to the north and the south; and the second proclamation specifies definitively the boundaries
of the town on both banks of the Nile. No doubt, these monuments were considered by the king to
be extremely important; some of them, when intact and painted, would have been visible from
afar, and were meant to be visited, as traces of ancient pathway s running up to several of them
demonstrate. Their texts are not wholly recognisable, unfortunately. But some passages are, to
say the least, astonishing. I quote them from the Murnane and Van Sy clen edition ( 1993),
restoring, however, the word “Aten” instead of their “Orb”.

The inscriptions first describe the king’s arrival in the place where the “Horizon of the Aten”
will be founded, travelling “on the great chariot of electrum” like the Aten himself when “he rises
in his horizon and fills the land”. The king then addresses his court. It was apparently crucial for
him to stress that he had been personally told by his father where to build the city, and that the
city had to be built exactly there:

The Aten desires that there be made for him … a monument with an eternal and everlasting
name. Now, it is the Aten, my father, who advised me concerning it, [namely ] Akhetaten.
No official has ever advised me concerning it, not any of the people who are in the entire
land has ever advised me concerning it, to suggest making Akhetaten in this distant place. It
was the Aten, my father, who advised me concerning it, so that it might be made for Him as
Akhetaten.… Behold, it is Pharaoh who has discovered it.… I shall make Akhetaten for the
Aten, my father, in this place. I shall not make Akhetaten for him to the south of it, to the
north of it, to the west of it, to the east of it. I shall not expand bey ond the southern stela of
Akhetaten toward the south, nor shall I expand bey ond the northern stela of Akhetaten toward
the north.

It looks as if even Nefertiti has no say in the matter. Indeed, if she say s “Look, there is a nice
place for Akhetaten in another place”, the king “will not listen to her”.

The second proclamation, or decree, gives substantial topographical information about the city
and the way it is to be ritually limited by the stelae. The dimensions of the city are fixed with
inordinate precision to the nearest cubit. Curiously, for each boundary, the king states “I shall not
go past it forever and ever”, which apparently has to be interpreted as an indication that he
resolved to confine himself categorically within the city. This interpretation can be criticised,
however, on the basis of a passage where he asks to be brought back to his tomb from whichever
place he might be in when he dies.

The city planned by the Akhenaten architects was abandoned shortly after the death of the
king, and rapidly divested of almost all its implements, so that today practically only the
foundations and the lower courses of mudbricks of the buildings remain. However, it is the very
fact of this abandonment that gives us a unique opportunity to understand the ideas about urban
town planning, architecture and sy mbolism which prevailed at that time.
 The city can be divided into several zones: residential ones were located to the north and to the
south, while the central area was home to the main palaces and temples (Kemp 1976; Kemp and
Garfi 1993). The temples were quite different in conception from those of the old religion, where
spaces became increasingly cramped and dark the nearer one was allowed to approach the final
chapel. Here the temples are open courty ards filled with altars. The largest, today called the
Great Aten Temple, occupied an area of 800 × 300 metres enclosed in mudbricks. The second
main temple, also called the Small Aten Temple ( Photo 9.2), stands nearby. Its axis is parallel to
that of the first; we know that it was called “the mansion of the Aten” since its construction is
explicitly mentioned in the boundary stelae. As we shall see in the next section, the building has a
dramatic connection with the Pharaoh tomb, prompting us to consider it the Amarna version of
the Pharaoh funerary temple.

Photo 9.2. Amarna. The (reconstructed) Small Temple of Aten.

9.3 The Horizon of the Aten

Clearly, the choice of a completely virgin location – ignoring for the moment the problem of
understanding how the site was directly indicated by the god Aten – stressed from the very
beginning the clean break with the previous Theban-centred religion.
 A second key point of rupture is that the funerary complex of the king (the cult temple and the
tomb) was located on the east bank of the Nile (Figure 9.1). The roy al tombs were in fact built in
a narrow side valley of a wadi that dominates the eastern horizon of the town, being strategically
located at the approximate centre of the Amarna bay. 2 To some extent, the eastern location of
the roy al tomb and temple at Amarna reverses the situation instituted by Amenhotep III. Indeed
also this Pharaoh created a sort of brand new capital, Malkata, collecting all the main elements
representative of his presence – palace of residence, funerary temple and tomb – onto the
western bank, whereas Akhenaten brought the very same elements all onto the eastern bank. The
king living in Amarna was thus “already reborn”, his identification with the unique God occurring
on the east, rather than the west, horizon.

The importance of the eastern horizon and of the wadi within it influenced the whole urban
plan of the new town. Indeed, the plan is explicitly based on an orientation whose longitudinal axis
runs ~13° south of east. This is the orientation of many blocks of the east ramp of the desert altars
(strange, aligned mudbrick platforms located in the desert area north of the town), and is
particularly evident in the central town, since this is the azimuth of the Great Temple of Aten and,
most importantly of all, that of the Small Temple. To appreciate the significance of this
orientation, the Small Temple is the place to go. Indeed, looking along the axis towards the east,
the mouth of the roy al wadi occupies the horizon. There can be no possible doubt that this
alignment is associated with the afterlife, since here – exactly as in Giza some 1200 y ears before,
but here with the rising sun – a beautiful hierophany was planned.

The Giza hierophany was intended to replicate the name of the Khufu complex – the Akhet of
Khufu – at sunset during the summer solstice (Photo 3.9).

The Amarna hierophany was intended to replicate the name of the new city – the Akhet of
Aten – at sunrise twice a y ear (Photo 9.3).
Photo 9.3. Amarna. The Akhet of Aten: the sun rising in the roy al wadi viewed along the north
side of the temple (photograph courtesy of Marc Gabolde).

Indeed the sun, seen from the temple, rises between the sides of the wadi around 23 February
and 24 October (Gregorian). The sun framed by the sides of the wadi creates an Akhet sign,
which is still perfectly visible today when looking along the northern side of the temple (Gabolde
2004, 2005). Although there is no definitive proof that the king was inspired by the Giza
hierophany , the evidence seems striking. Probably Akhenaten visited Giza, and there even exists a
bas-relief in the ty pical late Amarna sty le showing the king in Sphinx-like, elongated form. Since
the position of the temple was not constrained by topographical features, there can be hardly any
doubt that the date of the hierophany was explicitly and deliberately chosen. Although it is
difficult to be precise – due to uncertainties both in the date of reign of the king and in establishing
the starting y ear of the Egy ptian calendar – the date of foundation of the town, which is explicitly
mentioned in the Stelae, 4 Peret 13, fell around the solar (Gregorian) late February in the y ears
around 1350 BC. Therefore, we have in Amarna the first example of a tradition which linked
orientation with a specific solar date relevant for the foundation of a town, as occurs, for instance,
with Alexandria, which was recently shown to be oriented to the rising sun on the day of birth of
Alexander the Great (Bauval and Hancock 2004, Ferro and Magli 2012). Interestingly, although
the foundation of Amarna is the focus of the texts of the boundary stelae, there is no mention
there of the Stretching of the Cord ceremony which, as we have seen, was probably connected
with the stars and thus with the old, banned religion.

To summarise, it can be said that, despite the innovative features of many of the choices
made, the Pharaoh apparently decided to insert a series of understandable and well-established
sy mbols and references in his own funerary landscape. The Akhet hierophany , in particular, is an
explicit reference to the tradition of the solar kings of the Old Kingdom, and especially to Giza, a
tradition the king must have been quite familiar with. However, we can also find explicit
references to the old sacred landscape of Aby dos (Richards 1999). In fact, the very same
elements – a funerary temple (corresponding to the Early Dy nastic enclosures), a wadi, and the
roy al tomb – occur, although in an odd, easterly oriented way, in accordance with what must
have been the ideas of the Pharaoh about the afterlife and rebirth (Figure 9.1). As it turns out
instead, no traces of New Kingdom notions regarding the afterlife appear to be present at
Amarna; in particular, the old-religion funerary texts are completely rejected, with all their
sy mbolism about the journey of the sun during the night dispensed with. From the Hy mn to the
Aten inscribed on some Amarna tombs, we learn that the sun just sets every day, leaving people
in despondency and darkness, and returns promptly the following morning, rising on its own
horizon. This strengthens even further the seminal role play ed by the rising sun in the Amarna
sacred space. In this respect, it has been proposed that not only the Small Temple position but
indeed the whole urban plan was fixed, depending on the position of the roy al wadi and tomb, in
such a way that ideal straight lines connect the tomb – and the associated rising sun – with all the
main buildings (Mallinson 1999). Perhaps this is stretching things too far. Nevertheless, it is true
that the northernmost and southernmost boundary stelae roughly delimit, together with their
connecting lines with the tomb, a sort of sy mmetrical space in which the tomb itself is the focus
of attention.

9.1. Schematic map of the funerary landscape of King Akhenaten, (1) Great Temple of Aten;
(2) Small Temple of Aten; (3) axis of the Small Temple; (4) mouth of the roy al wadi; (5) roy al
tomb.
9.4 A message of power

There is no trace, then, of “Amarna funerary texts” describing the sun god’s perilous nocturnal
journey. Although a few traces of a residual Osiris cult have been documented in nonroy al
contexts, evidently there was no place for Osiris in Amarna roy al theology. As a matter of fact,
this may have something to do with one of the two main puzzles arising in the history of
Akhetaten, which clearly are: why was it founded where it was founded, and why was it
abandoned?

In this section, I shall “defend” (to use once an academic idiom which I have alway s disliked)
a somewhat controversial hy pothesis which may succeed in answering one of the two posers.
Since the hy pothesis I am going to discuss relies crucially on the Amarna chronology, I shall now
specify as accurately as possible the dating of the Amarna period in line with the latest views of
chronology specialists.

The regnal dates of Akhenaten vary as follows: Baines and Malek ( 1981) (the chronology used
in the present book) 1353–1335 BC; Von Beckerath ( 1997) 1351–1334 BC; Shaw (2000) 1352–
1336 BC, Dobson and Hilton (2004) 1360–1343 BC; and Hornung, Krauss and Warburton ( 2006)
1353–1336 BC. Thus, in all chronologies, the foundation of the town – y ear 5 – is no later than
1346 BC, while the last y ear of the king might be from 1343 to 1334 BC. Having said that, let us
imagine for a moment that we are in Amarna on 14 May 1338 BC. At about 2:20 p.m., something
happens (Sellers 1992; McMurray 2005; data independently verified by the author). The sun
begins to be obscured by a black semicircular halo, which reaches totality at about 2:41 p.m. The
air temperature drops, dogs bark, and the bright stars of the night can be seen for as long as four
minutes.

According to all the chronologies mentioned, this total solar eclipse took place between the end
of Akhenaten’s reign and the beginning of that of his successor. The king died almost certainly in
the seventeenth y ear of his reign. It is unclear – and ferociously debated – what really happened
immediately afterwards. It appears that an enigmatic figure called Smenkhkara ascended briefly
to the throne; in any case, in the space of a few y ears, the ruler of Egy pt became a y oung boy,
probably the son of Akhenaten. He was called Tutankhaten, “living image of the Aten”, but soon
changed his name in a way which left no room for doubt regarding his religious intentions:
Tutankhamun. In spite of the fact that his tomb was discovered virtually intact on 4 November
1922 by archaeologist Howard Carter in the Valley of the Kings, not much is known about the
reign of the y oung king besides the fact that he led the country back to the old gods and left the
new capital to return to Thebes, probably in his y ear 3. At any rate, he was too y oung to take such
ponderous decisions on his own, and indeed during his reign two personages, the priest Ay and
General Horemheb, both of whom would rule after him, figured prominently .
 The eclipse can thus be accommodated easily into all the chronologies as being observed by
the court residing in Akhetaten, and may be proposed as one of the causes which led to the
banishment of the new cult and the return to the old gods. One can indeed imagine this as a strong
negative signal, a sort of spell cast by the old gods on the shining solar disk to incite a return to a
more modest status quo. However, all it would take to bring the eclipse to Akhenaten’s regnal y ear
5 is at most ten y ears in all reasonable chronologies. A ten-y ear shift would not be so terribly
implausible, since there are many uncertainties about the ruler who succeeded Akhenaten, as
well as about the length of Horemheb’s reign. So, still at a speculative level, I do think that an
active – rather than passive – interpretation of the eclipse is much more convincing. In other
words, it is far too much of a coincidence to imagine that the eclipse just happened to occur at
Amarna a few y ears after its foundation (passive interpretation) – rather than thinking that
Amarna was chosen because it was a fitting place among those ly ing well within the totality
range of the eclipse. And indeed, what means did the Aten have to advise his son about the place
of the new capital? As we have seen, the reality of this explicit advice appears definitively in the
foundation texts of the boundary stelae, written – according to our hy pothesis – at the end of
February 1337 BC, ten months after the eclipse. Ten months would be plenty of time for the king
to be informed about the places of totality and to select a suitable new site, and it would not be
inconceivable even to suppose that the Pharaoh was actually travelling in that area and witnessed
the totality .

A clear hint that this may be the correct interpretation comes from the texts. First of all, the
language bordering on the obsessive used in the stelae seems to aim at putting into a good light
what might otherwise be interpreted as a bad omen. Furthermore, the texts aim to convince the
reader that the king alone is authorised to construe the messages of the Aten properly. Another
curious fact is that, around y ear 9, Akhenaten felt the need to “change the name” of the god, who
then acquired the “didactic” cartouche name. The didactic name starts more or less as “the
Living One, Ruler of the Horizon, who rejoices at the horizon”, but the meaning of the final part is
somewhat nebulous and seems to make reference to something called “the shadow of the Sun
Disk”. In any case, I stated in Chapter 4 that the only two eclipses being considered in this book
are associated with an additional, previously unnoticed confirmation that leads us to think that they
had a tangible influence on Egy ptian history . In the case of the Shepsekaf eclipse, it was the shape
of the king’s tomb, connected with the place of eclipse totality, Buto. In the Amarna case, the new
fact is the following.

As mentioned in Box 4, during totality, the planets and the brightest stars can be seen close to
the eclipsed sun. By performing a computer simulation of the Amarna eclipse, it can be seen that
the sun at totality was located – and therefore reappeared – in that part of the ecliptic which lies
between Gemini and Taurus. This is the section of the path of the sun which is the closest possible
to the celestial region pertaining to Osiris-Orion, as defined by the old religion since the Py ramid
Texts. Furthermore, Sirius – which had undergone heliacal setting a few day s before and was
therefore in its invisibility period – was visible during the eclipse, almost at culmination to the
south.

If Akhenaten’s father – the dazzling sun disk – was searching for an explicit signal of his victory
against the old religion, the old gods, and the old ideas concerning the afterlife, then it is my firm
belief that he could not have found a better position for himself in the sky from which to launch
his awe-inspiring message of power.
 10 The last of the greats

10.1 A divine king …

On Tutankhamun’s death, a member of the Amarna elite, a priest called Ay , ascended the throne.
Ay ’s reign, however, was very short. On his death, his successor, Horemheb, gave fresh impetus
to the restoration of the old religion and subjected Ay himself to a damnatio memoriae by
usurping his funerary temple in western Thebes. Horemheb designated as his heir an official of
his court, Ramesses I, considered the founder of the nineteenth dy nasty. With the latter’s son, Seti
I, and grandson, Ramesses II, Egy pt was to enter the last period of great splendour of the New
Kingdom.

Seti I concluded the process of reorganising the country, re-establishing the old cults
definitively and reaffirming Egy pt’s sovereignty at the western borders. His building program is
apparent in numerous places, above all, of course, at Thebes, where among other projects the
king ordered the construction of a magnificent funerary temple located to the north-east of Deir
el Bahri. Yet Seti I was the first king of the New Kingdom after Ahmose to lavish particular
attention on Aby dos, where he built a temple which is one of the most stunning masterpieces of
Egy ptian architecture (Photo 10.1).
Photo 10.1. Aby dos. Light and shadow effects in the temple of Seti I.

The outer courty ard of the Seti I temple at Aby dos has been destroy ed, so visitors today
encounter the façade directly, accessed by a flight of stairs. Once inside, the atmosphere of the
enormous hy posty le hall immediately rivets the attention. It is sometimes said that it was
conceived to resemble the primeval swamps of creation; what is certain is that it is almost in
darkness, with fascinating beams of sunlight that illuminate small spots. The building was
dedicated to as many as seven gods, the most important being Amun (in the central chapel), with
Seti I, Ptah and Ra-Horakhti to the left and Osiris, Isis and Horus to the right. To the rear of the
chapels, the axis of the temple is subject to a 90° turn to the left, a circumstance which – as far as
I am aware – is unique in the history of Egy ptian architecture. The left corridor bears, inscribed
on its walls, a list of kings. The list (which excludes Hatshepsut and the Amarna period but is
otherwise an important historical document) was placed there for unknown reasons, y et the
passage is by no means a secondary one, since the temple still has a final, astonishing surprise in
store. A second right-angled turn leads to a corridor and then, past the exterior back wall, to a
strange submerged structure – not structurally connected with the temple but perfectly aligned
with it – usually called the Osireion (Figure 10.1).
10.1. Map of the Osireion, Aby dos.

This building is so unique and so anomalous in New Kingdom architecture that most of the
available descriptions give an incorrect characterisation of it. In particular, it is said repeatedly
that the monument bears many similarities to the roy al tombs of the Valley of the Kings. This
borders on the ridiculous: the only “similarity ” is that some of the walls have been inscribed
(especially under Seti’s grandson, Merenptah) with texts ty pical of the roy al tombs of the valley,
such as the Amduat. Like it or not, the only possible parallel for the Osireion is to be found far off
in time and space: the temples of the second py ramid at Giza (Figure 3.6 and Photos 3.7 and 3.8).
The Osireion was in fact built by an architect who – just like the architect of that temple’s
complex – was extremely proficient with megalithic structures, as it is made out of enormous
granite and sandstone blocks. Furthermore, the builders of the Osireion were perfectly happy to
work in the presence of water, since the monument was designed with the express purpose of
being flooded. As far as I can understand them, their mode of operation was as follows. First, a
huge rectangular pit about 15 metres deep was excavated. Then the pit was “encased” with huge
slabs and a rectangular, pillared hall was built inside it. Finally, a canal was excavated and
flooded in such a way as to create an “island”, accessed by two sy mmetrical flights of stairs,
from the central court. Six niches, or chapels, are present on both of the longer sides; three further
niches are set on the side of the Seti I temple, and two on the opposite side. Of these niches, all are
“dummies” except for the central one on the temple side, which opens into a rectangular room
usually called the “sarcophagus room”, though no sarcophagus has ever been found there. The
roof of this chamber is made up of enormous slabs and is similar to that of the Queen’s Chamber
in the Great Py ramid.

All in all, this really is an incomparable building. The standard interpretation is that it was built
by Seti I together with his own temple, with the aim of representing the Osiris cenotaph.
However, it is strange that in a period of self-celebration such as the Ramesside one, the
monumental effort required to quarry and transport the megaliths of this structure was not
celebrated in inscriptions. Apparently, the Osireion ( Photo 10.2) is not even mentioned any where
in the temple behind, or in other official Seti I inscriptions.1 Moreover, the “true” Osiris cenotaph
had already been identified and venerated since the Middle Kingdom and stood less than 2
kilometres to the south-west in the necropolis of Umm el Qaab; it is difficult to understand what
prompted Seti I to build a new one. So, either the Osireion is a cenotaph for the king himself – but
in that case it is distinctly odd that his son Ramesses II, who completed his father’s temple but also
built his own temple nearby , did not want a similar cenotaph for himself as well – or one might be
led to think that the building already existed and had perhaps already been forgotten, as happened
for the relatively similar temple of the Sphinx at Giza, by the time of the Middle Kingdom (so that
a “false” Osiris cenotaph was created). Somehow Seti became aware of the existence of the
Osireion and ordered the construction of his own temple – with the same main axis but a strange
L-plan – as a frontal addition. The temple was conceived also as a means for dy nastic “time
travel” leading, through the corridor of the king’s list, to the cenotaph of the first my thical
Pharaoh, Osiris. On the other hand, it should be mentioned that serious difficulties for an Old
Kingdom dating stem from the fact that little activity at Aby dos is documented archaeologically
in this period, although important remains of the Old Kingdom phase may still be buried under
late period structures (O’Connor 2009).2 Understanding the role of water in the monument would
be helpful; recently it has been ascertained that the water most likely comes (mainly ) from the
Nile (Westerman, Issawi and Parizek 2011), and there exist offering tables of the fourth dy nasty
(for instance, Sethu’s table found in Dahshur) where huge, rectangular basins used for ritual
offerings are depicted, together with information on the level of the water in them at different
seasons. A huge basin excavated in the rock and accessed by a flight of stairs is also present near
Khentkaues’ tomb in Giza. In this connection, it is also interesting to note that a deep, multilevel
flooded tomb at Giza is sometimes identified as y et another Osiris dummy tomb or cenotaph
(Hawass 2007). This shaft lies beneath the second py ramid causeway and is arranged on three
levels; the deepest one contains a flooded hall with a central sarcophagus. Access is so difficult,
however, that it is hard to believe that this place could have been frequented by pilgrims.
Photo 10.2. Aby dos. The Osireion.

To conclude, I must say that the attribution of the Osireion to Seti I seems to conflict with what
we know about architectural ideas and the celebration of divine kingship during his reign.
Admittedly, a predilection for archaism is apparent in the Ramesside age, but the architectural
archety pes are to be sought rather in the Middle Kingdom and not in the megalithic temples of the
Old Kingdom, which were barely known at that time (indeed the Sphinx temple – which it would
be easy to indicate as the archaic prototy pe for the Osireion project – was not known). Another
problem is the orientation of the building and of the Seti I temple aligned with it. In fact, for a new
temple planned at Aby dos, an inter-cardinal orientation would have been natural, in a way – in
line with what we already know – almost compulsory. Clear proof is to be found extraordinarily
nearby, in the Ramesses II Aby dos temple, built a few y ears later and a few hundred metres
away, which bears an azimuth of 44°. The azimuth of the Osireion–Seti I temple axis is instead
36°, which is too low to consider it as being a member of the inter-cardinal family. The solution
has to be elsewhere. One can take the rather feeble view that the axis points on the opposite side to
the old necropolis at Umm el Qaab and therefore to the “true” Osiris’ cenotaph ( Figure 1.2), but
this alignment is extremely approximative since it passes some 200 metres to the south-west of
the Early Dy nastic necropolis; in fact, the projected course of the axis passes over a low mound
covered with pottery of all epochs, which might itself have been sacred (Effland and Effland
2010). If, on the other hand, we seek a reasonable astronomical target, none is recognisable
(either at rising or setting) during the Seti I reign, and we are forced back again to the period of
the fourth dy nasty (say 2550 BC), when the brilliant star Arcturus, the brightest in the Egy ptian
northern skies, rose in almost perfect alignment with the azimuth 36°.

10.2 … and his divine child

In the reliefs of the king’s gallery in Aby dos, Seti I is shown together with his heir, a y oung prince
who would become perhaps the most famous Pharaoh of all after Khufu: Ramesses II.3

The reign of Ramesses II was characterised by the king’s grandeur and ubiquity : massive
architectural projects were devised and executed at his behest, such as a new roy al residence in
the Nile Delta and a gigantic columned hall which the king added to Karnak. Several new temples
were constructed, for instance the two at Abu Simbel and, as mentioned in the previous section, a
new one at Aby dos, close to that of his father and begun when the king was still co-regent. The
temple appears to be mainly dedicated to Osiris, although a series of other divinities are depicted
as well; it also contained another copy of the list of kings (fragments of it are today in the British
Museum). Perhaps Ramesses II’s most ambitious project, however, was the Ramesseum, the
king’s funerary temple, which we shall be meeting in the next section. The name of the king and
his structural additions also appear on many pre-existing temples. In particular, the king’s war
campaign against the Hittites was made famous by the ubiquitous inscriptions which recounted it.

Ramesses II celebrated himself as a god in numerous instances; interestingly , his reign marks a
special moment in Egy ptian history since for the first time after his creation the civil calendar re-
aligned with the solar y ear, after some 1500 y ears of wandering. So, it is certainly not a
coincidence that the most famous hierophany associating the king with the gods is related to the
calendar. It occurs in Nubia, at Abu Simbel. Here Ramesses II ordered the construction of two
temples on the west bank of the Nile. The temples were dismantled and later reassembled in a
higher, more suitable place to save them from the rising of Lake Nasser after the construction of
the Aswan Dam in the 1960s. In this way, they have been saved, although, unfortunately, the
dramatic effect they exerted on sailors is lost forever. The temples were in fact excavated in the
rock, and their façade was created by sculpting the cliff surface. The smallest one was built in
honour of Ramesses’ most eminent wife, Nefertari. The large one really is large: on the façade
are four seated colossi of the king, each about 21 metres high, flanked by two chapels, one
dedicated to Ra-Horakhti, the other to Thoth. The interior is made up of subsequent halls aligned
on the same axis. At about 60 metres from the entrance lies the core of the monument, a small
chapel with the seated statues of the four deities to whom the temple is dedicated. From left to
right, they are Ptah, Amun-Ra, the deified king and Ra-Horakhti ( Photo 10.3). For a few day s,
twice a y ear, a thrilling spectacle takes place here, when the rising sun at dawn penetrates as far
as the inner recess of the temple. The sun carefully avoids lighting up the chthonic god Ptah. It
illuminates first Amun-Ra, then the king, and finally Ra-Horakhti. Fortunately, this phenomenon is
still visible today because those responsible for the rescue and removal of the temple were aware
of it and therefore the corresponding alignment has been respected, although, to the best of my
knowledge, the profile of the horizon as seen from the entrance in the original position has not
been survey ed and recorded.

Photo 10.3. Abu Simbel. The innermost chapel of the temple of Ramesses II. From left to right:
Ptah, Amun-Ra, Ramesses II and Ra-Horakhti.

The hierophany was clearly an architectural constraint which governed the planning of the
building from the very beginning. So, there can hardly be any doubt that the corresponding dates
were deemed to be important.4 The azimuth of the temple, ~101°, points to the rising sun in late
February and late October (Gregorian dates close to 20 February and 22 October), and these
dates are of importance since they were connected with the beginning of the calendar seasons
Shemu and Peret during the time of Ramesses II. The interest in astronomy and calendrical
aspects in the project of the temple is also confirmed by the chapel located to the north of the
colossi and devoted to Ra-Horakhti: the axis of this chapel is skewed 16° to the south of that of the
temple, in such a way as to align with sunrise at the winter solstice (Krupp 1988).

10.3 The temples of millions of years

As we have already seen, along with their tombs in the Valley of the Kings, the kings of the New
Kingdom constructed a “memorial” temple on the west bank. These temples were built on the
border of the cultivated land, near the base of the cliffs surrounding el Qurn. The southernmost is
also the last one, that of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu, but the other temples’ locations do not
follow any recognisable chronological order on the ground; the northernmost one is that of Seti I,
slightly to the north-east of Deir el Bahri, and all the others are crowded in between (Figure 8.1).

The monuments conform to the standard Egy ptian temple plan: the entrance py lon is followed
by an open court, a columned hall and the inner sanctuary, so they are not, in principle, different
from the “divine” temples in serving the function of “containers” for the god’s statue and energy.
Generally speaking, it can be said that these monuments were devoted to the worship of the king,
and in this sense they play a role similar to that of the Early Dy nastic roy al enclosures and the
py ramid’s temples; furthermore, at least some of them certainly had a false door, to which
offerings for the deceased were brought on a regular basis. However, it is essential to note that all
were also temples of Amun. Each one had a specific name (similarly to the py ramid
complexes), and these names defined them as “mansions”, where the Ka of the king was destined
to reside together with the main god for “millions of y ears”. For example, the two best-preserved
temples, which we are about to visit, those of Ramesses II (or Ramesseum) and Ramesses III,
were called something like “the Mansion of Millions of Years of Ramesses II United with Thebes in
the Domain of Amun” and “the Mansion of Millions of Years of Ramesses III United with Etern in
the Domain of Amun in Western Thebes”, respectively .5

The Ramesseum (Photo 10.4) was begun very early, probably in the king’s y ear 2. The
enormous complex covers an area of approximately 6 hectares and comprises a stone building
surrounded on three sides by mudbrick houses and storerooms with vaulted arches. Looking at
any map of the main building, at first sight it would seem that the author of the map was rather
sloppy, since the walls are not parallel. But, as it turns out, the Ramesseum does have a slightly
trapezoidal plan, based on two axes that skew each other by 2°.
Photo 10.4. Western Thebes. The colonnade hall of the Ramesseum.

It is sometimes asserted that the wish to orient the temple “towards Luxor” and, at the same
time, the pre-existence of a smaller structure built by Seti I led to the strange, skewed plan.
However, besides the fact that a temple on the west bank cannot be oriented to Luxor since Luxor
is parallel to the Nile, the perpendicular to the front of the Ramesseum passes well to the north of
the Ramesses II py lon there. Thus, the trapezoidal plan must have been a deliberate choice on the
part of the architect, who wanted to enhance the perspective effect. Perhaps he was the very
same architect who designed the trapezoidal, skewed court of the Luxor temple and was
accordingly authorised by the king to make an explicit reference to that project. In any event, it is
difficult for us today to perceive the skewed plan because the first court – once housing the (today
collapsed) enormous granite colossus of the king (Photo 10.5), originally some 16 metres high,
which inspired Percy By sshe Shelley ’s poem “Ozy mandias” – is in poor repair. The second
courty ard is lined with statues of the king in Osiris guise; it gives access to the hy posty le hall,
which is provided with 48 papy riform columns. This hall is a veritable architectural masterpiece
and was used as the prototy pe for another, more famous one: the hy posty le hall which was added
at Karnak by the same king. The final rooms contain drawings of roy al and divine boats on the
walls and an astronomical ceiling similar to those found in tombs of the same period. Of the final
sanctuary , only the foundations remain.

Photo 10.5. Western Thebes. The fallen colossus in the Ramesseum.

It is clear that the Ramesseum also inspired the other great memorial temple which has come
down to us virtually intact, the temple located at Medinet Habu (the southernmost area below the
Theban hills) (Photo 10.6). It is the last memorial temple of western Thebes that we know of, and
it pertains to the last great king of the New Kingdom, the second Pharaoh of the twentieth
dy nasty, Ramesses III (1194–1163 BC). The area, however, had been sacred since at least the
eighteenth dy nasty, and a small temple of Amun built by Hatshepsut and Tuthmosis III was
located there. This building is now visible next to the entrance area, enclosed in the same
mudbrick enclosure as the later complex and dwarfed by the huge, perfectly conserved first
py lon of the Ramesses III temple. The complex was actually conceived of as a temple town,
enclosed within a wall and resembling a military fort. The presence of the massive wall was a
contributing factor in making the site an important administration centre at a later date, though it is
unlikely that it was originally planned for defence purposes. The temple proper, as mentioned,
alludes to the Ramesseum in many details; it develops along two hy posty le halls followed by an
inner sanctuary, with its shrines of the king and of the members of the Theban triad. The axis,
however, is rigorously maintained here. The interior is relatively well preserved; although pillar
statues were destroy ed when the area was converted into a church, many reliefs were only
painted over and have since been recovered.

Photo 10.6. Medinet Habu. The first py lon of the temple of Ramesses III.

As mentioned, the cult of the deceased king in the memorial temples was alway s “united” with
that of Amun of Karnak and Luxor (Arnold et al. 1997; Kemp 2005). The connection between
these monuments and Karnak was made explicit, once a y ear, by the other (besides the Opet)
main festival of Thebes: the “Beautiful Feast of the Valley ”. This festival was instituted during the
Middle Kingdom and originally connected Karnak with the funerary temple of Mentuhotep II at
Deir el Bahri. With the construction of new temples on the west bank, commenced in the early
New Kingdom, the procession acquired more and more stations. At each festival, in fact, the
statue of Amun of Karnak, accompanied by Mut and Khonsu, crossed the Nile with a large flock
of attendants and visited the temples of Amun united with the deified kings on the opposite bank.
The significance of the festival was associated with the remembrance of the dead, but it slowly
assumed aspects concerned with renewal, becoming similar to the Opet.

Again, as we asked ourselves in Chapter 8 with regard to the Karnak-Luxor connection and the
Opet, we have to wonder about the role of astronomy, if any, in the Temples of Millions of Years
and the associated explicit manifestations of roy al power.

One of the most famous astronomical ceilings of the Ramesside period is actually that of the
“Astronomy Room” in the heart of the Ramesseum, and it is difficult to escape the idea that the
priests of the service practised astronomy there. But this conviction does not help much, as the
orientation of the memorial temples is a diabolically intricate puzzle. From Table A.7 we can see
that, apart from the two temples we have already discussed – those of Hatshepsut and
Amenhotep III – which undeniably face the winter solstice sunrise, all the others are oriented at
azimuths to the south of that of the rising sun at midwinter. Yet, two other temples must be
distinguished, those of Seti I and his grandson Merenptah (“beloved by Ptah”), which are similar
in design and both oriented at an azimuth close to 123°. This is at Thebes the azimuth of the moon
when it reaches (every 18.6 y ears) its major southern standstill at a declination around −29°.
Even though there is no substantial evidence to show that lunar standstills were observed by
Egy ptian astronomers, the fact that these two particular temples, closely connected in a dy nastic
sense with two kings particularly devout to Ptah, share this orientation deserves attention (Furlong
2010). The same direction of the axis is also found on the west bank in the Karnak complex,
where a small temple of Ptah is oriented at ~304°. This would correspond approximately to the
setting of the moon at the major northern standstill if the horizon were flat, a situation which, as
we know very well, is not the case at Karnak. However, we can follow the opposite direction,
exactly as we know it has to be done for the main Karnak temple (which opens to the north-west
but was oriented to the south-east), and suppose that the temple of Ptah was also oriented to the
rising of the moon at the major southern standstill, at azimuth ~124°. An explicit connection
between Ptah and the moon has not, as far as I know, been documented in the literature (the
moon god was rather Thoth), but one of the few truly convincing cases of lunar orientation in
Egy pt is found at a sanctuary of the temple complex of Serabit el Khadim, in the Sinai, founded
in the Middle Kingdom. Here there is a shrine to Thoth, but the sanctuary was probably originally
devoted to Ptah (Belmonte, Shaltout and Fekri 2009).

Be that as it may with regard to the Seti and Merenptah temples, all the other azimuths of the
roy al memorial temples at western Thebes fall well below the azimuths of the moon’s southern
standstill and cluster near the inter-cardinal direction 135°. This is clearly a very important aspect
of the project of these wonderful monuments, but why was it devised?

This orientation has the obvious practical result that the façade of each temple is fully
illuminated by the climbing sun every morning during the y ear. Yet it is difficult to accept
“orientation to the sun climbing in the sky ” as adequate justification for the architectural choices
made, because the other side of the coin is that the sun never aligns with the axis of the temples at
ground level, and therefore never penetrates up to the inner recesses. In fact, it is a somewhat
weird experience to visit, for instance, the magnificent temple of Medinet Habu, looking along the
axis which runs straight across the various courts (Photo 10.7), knowing that the sun never follows
the same path up to the end of the temple. So there must be another reason for this orientation. As
for Aby dos, it has been suggested that it was obtained indirectly by determining celestial north
through the movement of circumpolar stars and then rotating this direction 135° clockwise
towards the Nile; the slight discrepancies between the azimuths of the temples would be due to
different choices for the circumpolar stars used to determine north at transit (Belmonte, Shaltout
and Fekri 2009). However, in this case also I do not believe that the idea that the builders wanted
to “mediate” between orientation to true north and orientation orthogonal to the Nile is at all
feasible. In the ancient Egy ptian mind, “preserving order” meant above all “preserving
tradition”, sometimes in an almost manic, time-travelling way, and indeed, as we shall see
shortly , the whole sacred space at western Thebes closely resembles the original sacred space at
Aby dos, where the funerary enclosures – the ideal precursors of the memorial temples – were
oriented inter-cardinally. Consequently the pattern of orientation of the temples might also have
been, purely and simply , borrowed deliberately from there.

Photo 10.7. Medinet Habu. The straight axis of the temple as viewed from the end chapel.

As a result, the memorial temples were probably not oriented specifically towards a celestial
target but rather in a direction that had been considered sacred for almost two millennia and that
still corresponded, albeit roughly , to the rising of the brightest part of the Milky Way .

10.4 The end of an era and its inheritance

In a paper published in the 1970s, Alice and Thom Kehoe wrote that “the archaeologist must
approach his data with the expectation of describing concrete objects that in reality had their
primary cultural existence as percepts in topological relation to one another within the cognitive
schemata of human beings” (Kehoe and Kehoe 1973; Flannery and Marcus 1996; Preucel 2010).

This rather convoluted statement actually expresses a quite natural fact. We should alway s try
to contextualise the object of our study into the time and location of its conception and
construction, taking into account historical, climatic and economic conditions, the phy sical
environment and the landscape, the sy mbolic environment and the cultural (sacred) landscape, as
well as the knowledge, way of thinking and religious beliefs of the builders. A cognitive approach
to archaeological reality should be global in this sense, even if the aim is to understand perhaps
only one specific aspect.

This book has been written with the aim of gaining a better understanding of a series of
“mechanisms of the sacred” which prevailed in Egy ptian architecture over millennia, using as a
key the way in which astronomical and topographical connections were embodied in buildings,
and thus treating as mere “objects” what amount to some of the most wonderful monuments ever
created by man. These “objects” were interrelated with the sky, the natural landscape, and the
“dy nastic” human-built landscape in a sy mbolic, though explicit, way : we can assume that at
least the primary significance of these connections was plainly visible and widely familiar to
every one in ancient times. The perfect instrument for uncovering and analy sing the same
connections today is archaeoastronomy, in its broad meaning of “the science of the ancient
landscape including the sky ”. As an archaeoastronomer, however, there dangles above my head
– like the sword of Damocles – the famous comment made by Jacquetta Hawkes in response to
the first studies on the astronomical implications of Stonehenge, where Gerald Hawkings was
try ing to demonstrate that the monument was a neolithic astronomical calculator. Hawkes ( 1967)
wrote that “every age gets the Stonehenge it deserves – and desires”. However, many y ears
have passed since then, and now we do know that Stonehenge was not a computational machine
for astronomical cy cles, as Hawkings had ventured to suggest. So, in a way, what he was really
searching for was the Stonehenge he wished for but which did not exist, and equally,
archaeoastronomy is not the universal key, the passe-partout that can divulge all the secrets of
such a complex monument. On the other hand, the relevance of astronomy there and in
thousands of other megalithic monuments in neolithic Europe cannot be denied (Ruggles 1999;
Hoskin 2001). Archaeoastronomy , then, is only one key , but an extremely valuable one.

The main finding of our long archaeoastronomical voy age across the Egy ptian sacred
landscapes is that they were developed, and later rearranged and reinterpreted, alway s following
a very limited number of patterns. In a sense, one can say that there was a single overriding
pattern: the wish to maintain Maat, the cosmic order, in the human-built landscape. Preserving
Maat was identified with adherence to a set of canons and, within each landscape, a series of
successive architectural projects were conceived and developed, and a series of ideas were put
into action, to comply with such canons. To some extent, these canons are analogous to rules of
writing, and, indeed, architectural invention was closely interrelated with hierogly ph writing. The
very act of creation in the Egy ptian conception was connected with writing in a structural
analogy between language and cosmos, almost in the same way the sacred landscapes are
“written” by means of objects corresponding to giant versions of hierogly phs: the py ramids, of
course, but also the natural signs of two peaks, and the “solarised” version of the Akhet sign, to
mention only the most important. These objects express the foundation of the divine power of
their builders and are interconnected with each other according to rules which – by placing them
one after another along ordered lines – explicitly refer to the dy nastic and/or divine claims to
kingship on the part of their owners. In a similar fashion, hierogly phs in an Egy ptian text
interrelate with each other, showing the direction of reading to be followed (from left to right or
from right to left) by the direction in which they are “turned”, and gods’ names inserted in words
are put at the beginning even if they are not to be read first.

The first funerary landscape, that of Aby dos, already expresses the seminal “writing” rule:
order is determined by a combination of orientation and topographical criteria. The orientation
rule is obey ed by every single monument; at Aby dos, it is inter-cardinal. The topographical
criterion affects subsequent monuments; it requires a displacement along an inter-cardinal
direction. This is south of east for the enclosures. For the tombs, it is first south of west and later
south of east. In addition, the sacred landscape can be experienced by walking through it; this
reflects the connection of the sacred with the idea of pilgrimage – a connection which was to
become common among numerous other cultures. Here the processional route is along the
meridian, with a prominent natural feature, the Aby dos wadi, located to the south.

When the capital moves to Memphis (after the short period of the step py ramids of the third
dy nasty, of which we know little, and the period of Snefru, unique in many respects), the canons
of the sacred space again appear firmly established. The orientation is switched to strictly
cardinal. The topographical norm that governs subsequent monuments requires a displacement
which is generically to the south-west (with the sole exception of Djedefra, who moves to the
north-west). The displacement of each monument occurs along a line directed to Heliopolis (thus
precisely south of west at Giza, with a more inclined azimuth at Abusir) and later along a dy nastic
inter-cardinal axis at Saqqara and Saqqara south. The natural feature of the Aby dos wadi with its
associated double-peak sign to the south of the necropolis at Umm el Qaab is replaced in the
Memphite necropolis by the artificial double peaks of Snefru at Dahshur. The py ramid
causeway s provide the setting for processional routes separately in each complex.
 With the Middle Kingdom renaissance, the one-half turnaround of the calendar compared to
the the solar y ear probably turns the orientation to the winter solstice sun – which we already find
scattered in some places during the Old Kingdom – in an important orientation pattern, as occurs
for instance in the Mentuhotep temple at Deir el Bahari and in the project of the Karnak axis. Yet
it remains the pattern connected with Thebes, given that the projects of the roy al py ramids – all
built between the old necropolis at Dahshur and the Fay oum oasis – essentially respect the
traditional, cardinal orientation. The way in which such buildings are arranged at Dahshur reflects
the old idea of geometrical order by means of meridian (and dy nastic) connecting lines between
new monuments and of “perspective” connecting lines between new py ramids and the old
(Snefru) projects.

When we move to the New Kingdom, Thebes is established definitively as the heart of the
country. As a matter of fact, someone between Ahmose and Thutmose III – but considerable
evidence points to Ahmose’s successor, Amenhotep I – cleverly devised the organisation of the
funerary landscape in the relatively restricted area of western Thebes in such a way that it
constituted a new sacred landscape in which, however, a series of immediately recognisable, old
sy mbols were present. The roy al tombs are located in the Valley of the Kings, which lies
immediately behind the hills where the sun sets near the summer solstice as seen from Karnak.
The valley is dominated by a prominent, natural peak of py ramidal shape. The landscape is
completed by the memorial temples located at the edge of the cultivation, and the orientation of
these temples generally follows the traditional inter-cardinal pattern inaugurated at Aby dos more
than 1500 y ears before. This impressive series of analogies leads to speculation that perhaps it
was Ahmose’s choice of Aby dos, and the consequent search for a similar sacred space at Thebes
by his successors, to inspire the establishment of the new roy al necropolis in the Valley of the
Kings. Clearly, such a suggestion would be corroborated if definitive evidence emerged
regarding the establishment of the necropolis by his direct successor.

Within this scenario of continuous cultural identity and identification spanning almost two
millennia of Egy ptian history, a few interruptions or “ruptures” can, however, be spotted. In the
two most striking cases, I have tentatively endorsed the idea that they closely correspond to a
parallel “rupture” in the regularity of the celestial cy cles: a total solar eclipse. These correspond
to the reign of Shepsekaf and to the consequent groundbreaking advent of the fifth dy nasty which
follows, and to the foundation of Akhetaten. In the first case, the conceptual break appears as a
return to an older, pre-solar tradition, while in the second, although a dramatic religious revolution
is taking place, the new capital is conceived and planned by rearranging, in an original way, a
series of old sy mbols and references, such as the Akhet hierophany first devised by Khufu.

As a whole, perhaps the famous Arab proverb say ing that time fears the py ramids captures
the ancient Egy ptian sense of time better than any other attempted explanation. In Egy pt, the idea
of “becoming” was somehow associated with cy clical time; it would perhaps be stretching things
to call this sense of time “profane”, although only one other ty pe of “time”, which we are bound
to term “sacred”, existed. It was a “standing time”, a “suspension”, whose traditional master was
Osiris, and Osiris alone. So Egy ptian time is alway s, in a sense, sacred; time in Egy pt is
“unsuitable for history ”, as Assmann ( 2003) put it. And indeed no civilisation possessed such an
unchanging collective identity over the course of such a long period more than ancient Egy pt, and
no civilisation apart from Egy pt expressed this so plainly in its architectural achievements. As a
final example, then, allow me to compare the very first sacred landscape we encountered in this
book with the very last one. The first is that of the Early Dy nastic roy al necropolis, as epitomised
by its last complex, chronologically speaking, that of King Khasekhemwy. Like any sacred
landscape, that of Khasekhemwy is a carefully ordered one. Directionality is fixed in a meridian,
north to south direction, and the elements from north to south are the funerary enclosure oriented
inter-cardinally, a processional pathway running roughly along the meridian, the roy al tomb, a
wadi to the south and a hill to the east of the wadi. The sacred landscape as a whole derives its
integrity from a harmonious interplay between selected natural elements and human-made
elements.

About 1500 y ears separate the first conception of the Aby dos landscape from that of the New
Kingdom roy al necropolis at western Thebes, exemplified also in this case by its last complex in
chronological order, that of king Ramesses III.

Like any sacred landscape, that of Ramesses III is a carefully ordered one. Directionality is
fixed in a meridian, south to north direction, and the elements from south to north are the
funerary temple oriented inter-cardinally, a processional pathway running roughly along the
meridian, the roy al tomb, a wadi to the north and a hill to the west of the wadi.

With the construction of Medinet Habu, the era of great architectural accomplishment in the
New Kingdom is starting to draw to a close, as does this book. Egy pt, however, was to go on to
enjoy a new era of splendour under the so-called reign of Kush, during the twenty -fifth dy nasty.
The kings of this period regarded themselves as direct heirs and keepers of extremely ancient
traditions, and their architecture also reflects such ideas in its orientation and relationship with the
landscape. Later on, ancient Egy ptian ideas and motifs would pervade Hellenistic culture right up
to the end of the Egy ptian civilisation and the Roman conquest.

The cultural continuity of the Egy ptian traditions can be traced up to the inscriptions relating to
the foundation ritual – the Stretching of the Cord – of the last of the great Egy ptian temples,
Dendera and Edfu, built in Ptolemaic times (Photo 10.8).
Photo 10.8. Edfu. The Pharaoh and the goddess Seshat perform the ceremony of the Stretching
of the Cord (Ptolemaic epoch).

These inscriptions make reference to the very same asterism, the Bull’s Foreleg, and indeed to
the very same star, Kochab, towards which the gaze of the statue of the first py ramid-builder, the
Pharaoh Djoser, had been directed some 2600 y ears before.
 Appendix

Table A.1. Approximate azimuths at rising (with a flat horizon) of the stars Acrux, Rigil Kent
and Hadar during Egyptian history, as observed from the main centre of power of the country at
standard reference dates.

Table A.2. Approximate azimuths at rising (with a flat horizon) of the stars Vega and Deneb
as observed from the main centre of power of the country at standard reference dates.
 Table A.3. The royal pyramids of the fourth dynasty, listed in chronological order. The data
for Meidum and Abu Roash are approximate. Most data are from Lehner 1999, but see the text.
Translations of the names are by the author.

Table A.4. The royal pyramids of the fifth dynasty, listed in chronological order. Most data
are from Lehner 1999, but see the text. Translations of the names are by the author.
 Table A.5. The royal pyramids of the sixth dynasty, listed in chronological order. Most data
are from Lehner 1999, but see the text. Translations of the names are by the author.
 Table A.6. The royal pyramids of the twelfth dynasty, listed in chronological order. Original
heights are unsure and slopes mostly tentative. Data are from Lehner 1999, but see also Verner
2002a. Translations of the names are by the author.

Table A.7. Azimuth and declination of the royal funerary temples of the New Kingdom at
western Thebes, listed in chronological order.
 Chronology of the First Twenty Dynasties

All dates according to Baines and Malek (1981); only the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, twelfth,
eighteenth and nineteenth dy nasties are reported in full detail.

First Dynasty 2920–2770 BC

Narmer, Aha, Djer, Djet, Merneith, Den, Adjib, Semerkhet, Qa’a

Second Dynasty 2770–2630 BC

Hotepsekhemwy, Nebre, Ninetjer, Wenedj, Senedj, Neferkare, Neferkasokar, Hudjefa,
Peribsen, Khasekhemwy

Third Dynasty 2630–2575 BC

Djoser 2630–2611 BC
Sekhemkhet 2611–2603 BC
Khaba 2603–2599 BC
Huni 2599–2575 BC

Fourth Dynasty 2575–2465 BC

Snefru 2575–2551 BC
Khufu 2551–2528 BC
Djedefra 2528–2520 BC
Khafra 2520–2494 BC
Menkaura 2494–2472 BC
Shepsekaf 2472–2465 BC

Fifth Dynasty 2465–2323 BC

Userkaf 2465–2458 BC
Sahura 2458–2446 BC
Neferirkara 2446–2426 BC
Shepseskara 2426–2419 BC
Neferefra 2419–2416 BC
Niuserra 2416–2392 BC
Menkauhor 2392–2388 BC
Djedkara Isesi 2388–2356 BC
Unas 2356–2323 BC
Six th Dynasty 2323–2152 BC
Teti 2323–2291 BC
Userkara 2291–2289 BC
Pepi I 2289–2255 BC
Merenra 2255–2246 BC
Pepi II 2246–2152 BC

Seventh Dynasty–Tenth Dynasty (2152–2134 BC)

Eleventh Dynasty 2134–1991 BC
Mentuhotep I, Intef I, Intef II, Intef III, Mentuhotep II, Mentuhotep III, Mentuhotep IV

Twelfth Dynasty 1991–1783 BC

Amenemhet I 1991–1962 BC
Senwosret I 1971–1926 BC
Amenemhet II 1929–1892 BC
Senwosret II 1897–1878 BC
Senwosret III 1878–1841 BC
Amenemhet III 1844–1797 BC
Amenemhet IV 1799–1787 BC
Sobekneferu 1787–1783 BC

Thirteenth Dynasty–Seventeenth Dynasty (1783–1550 BC)

Eighteenth Dynasty 1550–1307 BC
Ahmose 1550–1525 BC
Amenhotep I 1525–1504 BC
Thutmose I 1504–1492 BC
Thutmose II 1492–1479 BC
Thutmose III 1479–1425 BC
Hatshepsut 1473–1458 BC
Amenhotep II 1427–1401 BC
Thutmose IV 1401–1391 BC
Amenhotep III 1391–1353 BC
Akhenaten 1353–1335 BC
Smenkhkara 1335–1333 BC
Tutankhamun 1333–1323 BC
Ay 1323–1319 BC
Horemheb 1319–1307 BC

Nineteenth Dynasty 1307–1196 BC

 Ramesses I 1307–1305 BC
Seti I 1306–1290 BC
Ramesses II 1290–1224 BC
Merenptah 1224–1214 BC
Seti II 1214–1204 BC
Siptah 1204–1198 BC
Tawosre 1198–1196 BC

Twentieth Dynasty 1196–1070 BC

Sethnakht, Ramesses III, Ramesses IV, Ramesses V, Ramesses VI, Ramesses VII,
Ramesses VIII, Ramesses IX, Ramesses X, Ramesses XI
 Notes

1. A land for eternity

1 The so-called Deir Sitt, a mudbrick wall partly enclosing a nearby village, is a more recent
building and not, at least in my view, the remains of an Early Dy nastic enclosure, as is
sometimes supposed.

2 Nekhen was probably the predy nastic capital of Upper Egy pt and in any case was one of the
most important predy nastic/Early Dy nastic settlements. The city was the centre of the cult of a
falcon god later assimilated with Horus, patron god of the kingship; nearby but on the opposite side
of the Nile, the patron deity of Upper Egy pt, the vulture goddess Nekhbet, was worshipped. More
than a hundred y ears ago, a deposit at Nekhen was found containing some of the most famous
works of art of Early Dy nastic Egy pt: the so-called scorpion’s macehead and the Narmer palette.
The most ancient traces of a stable cult in Egy pt, dating back to 3500 BC, have also been
discovered at the edge of the desert, in the form of the foundations of a relatively huge structure
labelled HK29A. Its façade was supported by four timber pillars, of which the holes excavated in
the rock soil remain.

3 For the ease of the reader, the orientation data reported in this book are taken from a unique
source, the Corpus Mensurarum recently published by Belmonte and Shaltout (2009); however,
most of these data have also been taken independently on site by the author, and the
measurements coincide within the errors.

4 Unfortunately, existing Egy ptological literature does not help, since there, traditionally,
orientation problems have been overlooked – if not simply ignored – to the point that one can read
vague descriptions of inter-cardinal oriented buildings like the Shunet, in which reference is made
(alas, “for simplicity ”) to the “north side”, the “east side” and so on, clearly without any hope of
understanding which side is actually being mentioned.

5 It can be easily discovered in the Egy ptological literature that the orientation of Egy ptian
temples is mainly towards the Nile or parallel to it. This assertion is “true” for the simple reason
that the vast majority of the temples do not point their rear to the river. Of the remaining
available azimuths at any place, it is easy to identify roughly one-half as “parallel” and the other
half as “towards”. The specific reasons for the choice of a specific azimuth for each specific
temple – whether it really was governed by the Nile or by other criteria – must therefore be
investigated separately. A statistical analy sis of the histogram of declinations of Egy ptian temples
can be found in Belmonte, Shaltout and Fekri (2009).

2. A king who looks at the stars

1 We shall become deeply acquainted with this kind of relationship starting from the fourth
dy nasty monuments, where their existence and deliberateness is not only indisputable but
fundamental for understanding them. Leaving aside any interpretation here – since the enclosures
are anony mous – and also allowing the possibility that some of these relationships may be casual,
those related to the Ptahhotep enclosure are at any rate quite intriguing. Indeed, the northern
external side of the Gisr el Mudir, when prolonged to the east, passes over the south-west corner
of the second rectangular monument and the centre of the Step Py ramid, and the south-west
corner of the rectangular monument is at the centre of a circle which passes over seven points.
These are four points at the Djoser complex (the outer north-west corner of the dry moat, the
north-west corner of the complex, the centre of the Step Py ramid, the shaft of the southern tomb
of the complex), the south-west corner of the unfinished py ramid of Sekhemkhet, and the middle
of the southern half of the Gisr el Mudir.

2 The astronomical content of the Py ramid Texts is far from being completely decoded
(Mazavelia 2006). In particular, the identification and the role of the moon and the planets is still
the subject of debate. Recently, an interpretation which puts a special emphasis on the role of the
ecliptic has been proposed (Krauss 1997). According to this interpretation, the imperishable stars
are all those stars located north of the ecliptic which can be seen at least for some time every
single night (while, of course, the circumpolar stars are visible during the whole night), and the
Winding Waterway is the ecliptic itself. I tend to disagree with this interpretation because it
requires a series of abstractions. The ecliptic is in fact, of course, an imaginary circle in the sky
and cannot be seen. As a matter of fact, the ancient Egy ptians seem to have alway s preferred
explicit messages and images.

3 The Julian calendar, or better “Julian count” since the calendar itself was put in use by Julius
Caesar, is actually the easiest relatively reliable solar calendar to have been elaborated (Hannah
2009); with respect to the true length of the solar y ear, it loses one day every 134 y ears.

3. The lords of the horizon

1 While the Seila monument is soundly attributed to the king, the Meidum one is attributed to
1 While the Seila monument is soundly attributed to the king, the Meidum one is attributed to
Snefru only on indirect evidence, since there is no contemporary source mentioning him (or
others) as the builder, but only inscriptions left in much later times. This has prompted
considerable debate among scholars, as some tend to credit Snefru’s predecessor, Huni, with
being the original builder of a project later changed and finished by Snefru. However, in my
view, there is no doubt that the project of Seila was conceived together with that of Meidum, so
that Snefru is most likely to have been originally responsible for both.

2 The other unique existing py ramid with such an arrangement of the blocks is a somewhat
enigmatic monument located in Greece, at Hellenico (Theocaris and Liritzis 1997; Theocaris et
al. 1996).

3 For instance, according to these estimates, it took less than 15 days to lay out the first course of
the Red Py ramid. Since the surface of the first course is about 48,000 square metres, this means –
allowing into the bargain one square metre per block surface – a rate of some two blocks per
minute, labouring 24 hours a day .

4 It has been suggested that this py ramidion was prepared for the Bent Py ramid before the
alleged decision to modify its slope (Rossi 1999). This object, however, has actually been found
near the Red Py ramid.

5 It is sometimes said that this inclination – as well as the very close angles which prevail in
almost all descending passages of the py ramids – is sy mbolic and points to the northern stars.
Certainly the position of the entrance on the north side, ty pical of all Old Kingdom py ramids,
stems from this motive. However, the angle corresponds fairly well to the very simple slope 1/2,
and its repetition during several centuries of py ramid construction shows that it did not aim at any
precise “stellar” connotation.

6 Perhaps by chance, in choosing this alternate solution, Khufu’s architects created a structure
which, when viewed in section, resembles the hierogly ph -Djed, a very ancient (at least first
dy nasty ) sy mbol of stability , which would later come to be associated with Osiris.

7 The internal structure of the Great Py ramid also contains a well shaft connecting the Grand
Gallery with the descending passage. This well was most likely used as an exit when the plugs
were slid down until they blocked off the corridor.

8 There exists another value of the slope of this shaft, also given by Gantenbrink, of 32°36′ ,
which should refer to a lower section of the channel. The argument given here about tolerance
clearly has to be applied in both cases, so I shall not claim a high accuracy in the first case or a
failed alignment in the second.

9 Since 45° is within the range of heights that the sun reaches at Giza at culmination, one might
also be forgiven for wondering about a solar orientation for the southern shaft (Hawass 1993);
however, the shaft does not seem to point to any (recognisable) special date of the y ear since
culmination of the sun at 45° at Giza occurred in late October and mid-February, dates which
have only a weak connection with the beginning of the Peret and Shemu seasons in Khufu’s time.

10 For instance, the idea that they were built “for sy mmetry ” (Dormion 2004) or that they must
have been planned using the “Seked” measure, leading to inconsistencies in the timing of the
astronomical targets (Wall 2007), or finally that they were related in some way to the “cosmic
waters” (Sakovitchj 2005).

11 Interestingly, the sy mbolic function for which the Queen’s Chamber was devised and built is
also backed up by the discovery of three items found in 1872 in one of the shafts, probably the
south one. These are a wooden bar (today lost), a small greenstone ball and a small, forked metal
hook, today at the British Museum. The hook resembles the forked instrument employ ed in the
ceremony of the Opening of the Mouth, while the stone might be a hand-hammer tool used for
smoothing. It could also be, however, the weight of a plumb line. If so, then it might be tempting
to interpret the hook as a sighting tool, perhaps originally mounted on the stick. In this case, the
whole set might be the oldest known example of a Merkhet, the instrument employ ed by the
Egy ptians for performing astronomical measurements (Section 2.1 of Box 2).

12 A Sphinx statuette recovered at Abu Roash is sometimes suggested as a precursor, but in my

opinion the sty le of this statuette clearly shows it is a much later work.

13 It has been shown that the use of a simply improved version of this device – based on a
sighting vane – to observe the two circumpolar stars and fix the azimuth at the moment when one
star is directly above the other can give an accuracy of up to ±1′ (Kolbe 2008).

14 Interestingly, the data for the Bent Py ramid and the Red Py ramid also are separated by 3′ ,
reinforcing the idea of contemporaneity in the planning of these two monuments. However, the
deviation of 9′ for the Red Py ramid comes from unpublished material (see Spence 2000), and
we would benefit from a new measurement. I have tried to perform this with a GPS at the east
corners, which were cleaned of sand in summer 2010 for a mapping of the area, but – alas – the
accuracy of my instrument turned out to be no match for the fourth dy nasty standards.

15 The Pharaohs were identified by the roy al titulary, a set of names which, starting from the
fifth dy nasty, stabilised to as much as five. It is easy to identify them in official inscriptions
because each one is coupled to a specific hierogly ph; furthermore, the last two names were
alway s written in the so-called cartouche, an oval with a vertical line at one end. A standard roy al
titulary is composed by the name Horus, the oldest of the official names, representing the king as
the living god Horus; the name Nebti, representative of the king as the point of balance of the
united land; the “golden Horus name”, of somewhat enigmatic significance; the prenomen,
identify ing the monarch as king of Upper and Lower Egy pt; and the nomen, introduced by the
title “son of Ra”. During the Middle Kingdom, proper names became recursive. One example
will be of help. In the eighteenth dy nasty, many kings are called Amenhotep. However, the king
we call Amenhotep II of course did not put a number two after his name; to distinguish him in a
text is sufficient cause to look for another of his official names.

16 According to some nineteenth-century maps, the Khufu causeway continued, with a bend,
bey ond the zone of point O for some 350 metres. For this reason, some authors place the valley
temple farther to the north-east (today, only scant remains of the foundation of a building,
perhaps a small chapel, can be seen in one of the gardened areas of the traffic islands which are
located between the lanes of the main Nazlet el Saman road). Nevertheless, if this were the case,
then the presence of the massive fourth dy nasty building unearthed by Messiha along the
causeway becomes difficult to explain. Possibly the further sector of the causeway was a road
that once led to the temple from the north-east, crossing the inhabited settlement recently
discovered. In any case, for our purposes what really matters is that the area of point O play ed a
distinct role in the geometry of the complex.

17 It might well be that the planners of this gigantic project conceived it also as a sort of
calendrical device. However, since the motion of the setting sun at the horizon does not occur at a
constant rate (it is slower near the solstices and faster near the equinoxes), the azimuths of the
causeway s do not correspond to the intermediate dates between equinoxes and solstices but to
dates which fall more closely towards the equinoxes (around 19 October/21 February and 20
April/19 August). Together with equinoxes and solstices, they thus give a sort of geometrical
division of the course of the setting sun during the y ear.

18 Although the name is usually written sy llabically, the identification of the two readings is
certain bey ond any doubt; the sign of the sun between two peaks came into use at least from the
middle fifth dy nasty and would become sy nony mous with the king’s tomb in the New Kingdom.

19 The Akhet hierophany at Giza was recently documented in a CNN documentary which is
available at http://backstory .blogs.cnn.com/2011/09/01/the-revealer-revealed/.
4. A mirage from Heliopolis

1 Giza is also due south of Letopolis, modern Ausim (Goy on 1977). Letopolis was at that time a
cult center of Horus. However, the importance of the site during the fourth dy nasty is doubtful.

2 I take this opportunity to thank the Egy ptian Ministry of State for Antiquities (former Supreme
Council) for allowing me in the course of the y ears access to several sites mentioned in this book
which were closed for restoration or excavation purposes.

5. Sons of the sun god

1 Within ½° as measured by the author with a precision magnetic compass; a theodolite

measurement would be advisable to ascertain the actual deviation.

2 Suggested connections to the sun, which of course fully illuminates the monument each day of
the y ear, or connections with the arrangement of Djoser’s complex, if any, are in my view quite
subordinate to topographical considerations in explaining the position of the temple, especially if
we consider that an offering chapel was in any case situated at the centre of the eastern base of
the py ramid.

3 It cannot be considered as an approximate orientation to Heliopolis, as Lehner (1999) suggests,

since the azimuth of Heliopolis from Abu Gorab is too different. Another rather unlikely
hy pothesis which has been put forward to explain this orientation takes into account the orientation
of the causeway of the other known sun temple, that of Niuserra, which bears 46° of azimuth
(Wells 1990). According to this hy pothesis, the causeway s and valley temples were oriented
towards regions of the sky where a relevant number of stars would have successively risen
before dawn during the y ear. These stars, working as Decans of the last hour of the night, would
assure the correct timing for sacrifices that took place at dawn in the temple. Yet the theory is
clearly based on too few data (only two orientations) and, furthermore, it simply identifies which
regions of the eastern horizon contained a greater number of visible rising stars, regardless of
their possible presence in known decanal lists.

4 In fact, Neferirkara’s tomb was also larger than that of Menkaura. However, the quality of
construction was not comparable. It started as a six-step py ramid (still visible today ), to be
enlarged later and filled up; the enlargement was never finished. The apparently exaggerated
distance of the py ramid from that of Sahura is due to the necessity of avoiding a slope located in
between (Krejci 2001).

5 If the line is further elongated to the north-west for about 6 kilometres, it also intersects the
south-west corner of the third dy nasty py ramid and the centre of the Great Pit in Zawiet el Arian,
but this may be due to chance.

6 Several effects have to be taken into account. First of all, the horizon has to be considered,
which is, any how, flat when viewed from distant Heliopolis down to the azimuth of Abu
Gorab/Abusir, where the Cairo citadel blocks the view but also defines the last line of interest
here. Second are the atmospheric effects: refraction and extinction. Refraction is negligible at the
latitude of Cairo, while extinction may have a considerable influence (Schaefer 1986). In optimal
conditions, however, extinction is negligible for stars with negative magnitudes and can be
assumed equal to 1° for stars with magnitude around 1.

6. The lost pyramid

1 The beautifully carved hierogly ph inscription visible there was left by Prince Khaemwaset,
son of Ramesses II and high priest at Memphis, who oversaw a restoration program of the
Memphite necropolis around 1250 BC.

2 Currently we do not know whether one or both such dates might have been of special
importance for the king and why ; the sunset along the same alignment to the west occurs around 1
March, which would have been the date of New Year’s Day around 2304 BC and Teti’s accession
y ear in some chronologies (Sholtait, Belmonte and Fekri 2007b), but a connection between an
Akhet sunrise and the sy mmetric sunset some 40 day s earlier strikes me as being excessively
intricate for the way of thinking of the ancient Egy ptians.

3 Some meridian alignments already existed; for instance, the valley temple of the Bent
Py ramid is aligned with the Step Py ramid, but it is not in direct view due to the slope of the terrain
between Saqqara and Dahshur.

7. Renaissance at the winter solstice

1 Dieter Arnold, personal communication to the author.

1 Dieter Arnold, personal communication to the author.

2 To distinguish Hawara from El-Lahun, it is necessary to climb the modern sand dunes which
surround the area of the subsidiary py ramids there.

8. A valley for the kings

1 The reader is advised that the question of who the founder of the Valley of the Kings was is a
delicate and complex Egy ptological issue, of which only some aspects can be discussed here.

2 It is easy to find in the literature the idea that the Egy ptians had a concept of “sy mbolic
cardinal directions” connected to the direction of the Nile. Such alleged sy mbolic directions
should correspond to the local flow of the river; for instance, “local north” should coincide with
the downstream direction of the Nile irrespective of whether it really flows south to north or is
locally skewed in relation to the meridian. “Local directions” are sometimes advocated in
explaining orientations of some monuments and also in interpreting texts where geographical
indications are given, in particular the Abbott Papy rus. However, I have never come across any
convincing proof that such sy mbolic directions really existed. The confusion probably originates
from the perfectly natural fact that any one travelling downstream on the Nile, if asked, would
say that he is travelling “north”, and indeed the Egy ptians were no exception. This is far different
from giving any notion of local sy mbolic north based on the Nile flow.

3 In spite of this, however, there is no recognisable and distinct “double sign” at the horizon on
which an Akhet hierophany at sunset could be observed.

4 Senenmut’s tomb contains a detailed representation of the firmament as the Egy ptians knew it
and thus demonstrates – some 1500 y ears before Vitruvius – the fact, which comes as no surprise
to us, that the architects of ancient Egy pt, like their later Roman counterparts, were well versed in
astronomy .

5 There are, however, documented cases in which the procession appears to have taken place on
the river, and therefore in the upstream direction, with real barks sailing, aided by gangs of men
dragging ropes along the banks of the Nile.
9. The Horizon of the Aten

1 Stelae A, B and F are located on the west bank, all the others on the east bank. Of the latter,
stelae J, K, L and M are on the crag to the south of the city (L is a small tablet very near M);
stelae N, P, Q, H, R and S flank the sides of the wadi which enters the Amarna bay from the
south-east; stelae U and V are on the cliffs north of the wadi, where the tomb of the king is
located; and, finally, stela X marks the northernmost point of the bay. Two of the stelae went
unnoticed by Petrie: stela X was recorded by Norman Davis in 1901 and stela H by Helen
Fenwick in 2006. Perhaps other stelae have been destroy ed and their scanty remains still await
rediscovery .

2 The king’s tomb is fairly similar to previous roy al tombs in the Valley of the Kings, but its
annexes contain additional burial chambers for other roy al family members (the best-preserved
chamber is that of a princess, Meketaten). From the materials recovered, it can be concluded that
the king was buried here, but the tomb was desecrated very early on and the mummy was
moved away ; perhaps it is the one contained in a famous coffin – defaced and with an erased
cartouche – found in the Valley of the Kings in tomb KV55.

10. The last of the greats

1 The find of an ostracon containing a hieratic inscription “with an account of the transport of
stone for the building” and the alleged original name of the Osireion (which should be “Seti is
serviceable to Osiris”) was reported by Frankfort (1926). There is, however, no guarantee that the
subject is not the Seti temple.

2 Dating of the Osireion to Seti I also relies on the discovery of dovetails joining adjacent blocks
and bearing the Pharaoh’s cartouche (Frankfort 1926). These dovetails are, however, made of
granite, and it is therefore obvious that they have a sy mbolic function (dovetails must allow for an
– albeit minimal – elasticity, and making them of the same material as the stones they tail is
almost useless). Thus one might also think that the Seti I architects added the dovetails (or
replaced the pre-existing copper ones which proved to be unnecessary ), although it is claimed
that some are in too recessed a part to have been added. A stratigraphic dating is not possible
because the building was subject to considerable upheaval and was used as a quarry in later
times.
3 The first regnal y ear of Ramesses II has been recently very well dated to 1279 BC, while the
chronology used in this book would give 1290 BC.

4 Unfortunately , such phenomena are traditionally overlooked in the Egy ptological literature; for
instance, one reads – in an otherwise authoritative book – that “Dates of these occurrences are not
as important as is often thought, as the phenomenon would occur with any south-facing structure
of this ty pe at some point or points of the y ear” (Wilkinson 2003). This statement is confused and
partly wrong, as the reader can verify, but it is the consequence of an attitude which I have
repeatedly noted in archaeology, the idea that considering orientations only in general terms
(temples “facing west”, tombs “facing south-east”, and so on) is sufficient. It is, on the contrary,
quite impossible to grasp the astronomical content of a monument – if indeed there is any –
without considering azimuths with an initial accuracy of at least, say, 1° (to be progressively
increased if necessary , as of course is the case for the fourth dy nasty py ramids).

5 The “millions of y ears” terminology was not exclusive to these temples only ; one example is
the Akhmenu at Karnak.
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 Index

Abbott papy rus 173, 185, 252

Abu Simbel 223–225
Abu Sir 131, 135, 140
Abu Gurab 120, 128–133, 140
Abu Roash 90, 115–118, 141
Aby dos 10, 14–18, 20, 23–24, 31–35, 37, 42, 52, 69, 72, 109, 170, 172–174, 183–184, 190,
213, 218–223, 231, 233–236
Ahmose 184–185, 234–235
Akhet
Horizon 44, 97–101, 140, 149, 173, 201–202, 208, 212–213, 233–235
Season 53–54
Akhet-Aten see Amarna
Akhenaten 189, 205–216
Al Nilam 80
Al Nitak 80
Amarna 189, 208–219
Amduat 173–174, 188
Amenemhet I 165–168, 170
Amenemhet II 168–169, 180–182
Amenemhet III 86, 170–171, 174, 175, 183
Py ramid, Dahshur 180–181
Py ramid, Hawara 170, 172, 176–178, 180–182
Amenhotep I 185–186, 234
Amenhotep II 200–202
Amenhotep III 193, 203–207, 212, 229
Amenhotep IV see Akhenaten
Amenemopet 193, 198
Amun 159, 164–165, 184, 188, 191–193, 197–198, 203, 206–207, 219, 224–229
Anubis 24, 94, 173, 190
Arcturus 27, 46, 142, 197, 223
Armant 161–162
Aten 207–217

Bab el Hosan 33, 164

Buto 124–125, 217

Canopus 27, 47, 142, 156

Coffin Texts 167–168
Colossi of Memnon 204–205
 Dahshur 61, 66, 69, 72, 100, 123, 166, 168, 175, 179–181, 234
Decans 19, 55–56, 120, 142
Deir el Bahri 163, 184–185, 188, 191, 225
Deir el Medina 185, 187
Djedefra 90, 92, 94, 115, 118, 127, 139, 141, 156, 234
Djoser 37–42, 49–51, 69, 123, 145, 148, 154, 172, 174, 248n.1
Djed 190, 249n.6
Djew 24, 69, 97, 173
Djedkara Isesi 130, 145, 150, 152
Draco 29, 46, 52
Dra Abu el Naga 184, 186
Dubhe 50–52

El Qurn 163, 172, 188, 225

Festival of the Valley 195, 229

Fomalhaut 120, 142

Geb 106
Giza 11, 53, 71–86, 88, 91, 93–116, 121, 130, 134–135, 141, 148, 155, 156–157, 169, 200–201,
212–213, 221
Gisr el Mudir 34–35, 40, 51, 53

Hatshepsut 164, 191–195, 197, 205, 228–229

Hatshepsut Temple 163–164, 191–192, 229
Heliopolis 19–20, 41, 69, 105–111, 113, 118, 120, 127–132, 134, 138–143, 156–157, 204, 234,
250n.1, 251n.3, 251n.6
Hetep 63, 138, 199
Hetepheres 72
Hierakonpolis 16, 19, 35, 61, 124
Hor-em-akhet 200, 202
Horizon formula 107

Imhotep 41
Inter-cardinal orientation 18–20, 23, 109, 141, 156, 190, 197–198, 222–223, 231, 233–236,
247n.4
Isis 11, 47, 56, 106, 162, 219

Karnak 20, 161, 164–165, 184–185, 188, 192–200, 203, 207, 223, 228–230, 234–235
Ka 12, 40, 64, 93, 157, 196–197, 226
Khafra 86, 88–89, 94, 99, 111, 127
Py ramid 83–89, 92–96, 101, 111, 114, 119, 129, 132, 147, 155
Khaf-khufu 94, 99
Khasekhemwy 15–16, 23–24, 35–36, 236
 Khentiamentiu 15–16, 31
Khentkaues I 123, 126, 134, 221
Khnum 72, 77, 201
Kochab 51–52, 81, 91–92, 237
Khufu 70, 72, 94, 100, 108, 110, 115, 126–127, 201, 203, 205, 249n.9
Py ramid 71–83, 88–90, 93, 95, 99, 100, 105–106, 108–110, 114, 132, 156, 166, 212,
249n.5, 250n.16

Letopolis 250
Lisht 78, 166, 183, 200
Lahun 169–170, 181–183
Luxor
Alley of the Sphinxes 20, 194–195, 198
Luxor Temple 193–198, 227, 229

Maat 10, 123, 128, 158, 179–180, 199, 206, 233

Mastaba el Faraun see Shepsekaf
Medamud 161, 209
Medinet Habu 194, 225, 228, 230–231, 236
Meidum 57–63, 77, 84, 89–90, 103, 166, 182, 248n.1
Memnon Colossi 204–205
Memphis 9–10, 18, 29, 31–33, 38–39, 69, 104, 125–130, 193, 234
Menkauhor 129, 139–140, 145, 148–150
Menkaura 121, 134
Py ramid 83, 90, 105–106, 109–115, 122, 156, 167
Mentuhotep II 33, 161, 163, 229
Mentuhotep Temple 33, 161, 163–164, 234
Mentuhotep III 161, 164
Merenptah 219, 229–230
Merenra 43, 151–154, 156
Meridian orientation 18–19, 34, 52, 60, 151–154, 156, 179–180, 234, 236, 252n.3
Merkhet 55, 92, 249n.11
Meskhety u 45–46, 50, 52, 56, 91–92
Milky Way 19–20, 48, 109, 114, 141, 197
Minor step py ramids 61
Mintaka 80, 114
Mizar 91, 97

Nabta Play a 56
Narmer 15, 247n.2
Neferefra 129, 134–137, 139, 155
Neferirkara 129–130, 132, 134–137, 139, 155, 251n.4
Neferti prophecy 168
 Nefertiti 207, 209–210
Niuserra 129–130, 136–140, 145, 148, 155, 156, 199, 251n.3
Nut 13, 48, 106

Opening of the mouth 12, 46, 49, 198, 249n.11

Opet 195–198, 206, 229
Orientation pattern 18
Osireion 219–222, 253n.1, 253n.2
Osiris 11, 24, 31, 44, 46–48, 56, 106, 108, 167, 170–173, 190, 195, 215, 217, 221, 223, 227,
235, 249n.4, 253n.1

Pepy I 43, 68, 150–154, 156

Pepy II 43, 152, 154–156
Petrie’s Tomb 621 183
Ptah 39, 219, 224, 229–230
Ptahotep enclosure 34–35, 248n.1
Ptahshepses 137
Py ramid Lepsius n1 118
Py ramid Lepsius n25 150
Py ramid Lepsius n29 145, 150
Py ramid Lepsius n25 183
Py ramid of Seila 57–58, 60, 182, 248n.1
Py ramid Texts 14, 19, 42–51, 70, 78–82, 98, 106, 108, 142, 150–151, 153, 156, 166–167, 173,
190, 217, 248n.2

Ra 47, 94, 108–109, 125, 127–129, 164, 167, 173, 203, 205, 207
Ra Atun 47, 106, 108
Ra Horakhty 108, 219, 224
Ramesses II 193–197, 221–227, 253n.3
Ramesseum Temple 223, 226–229
Ramesses III 225–226, 228, 236
Rhind papy rus 102
Rigel 47
Rigil Kent 20, 27, 142–143

Sahura 132–136, 139, 142, 251n.4

Saqqara 31–36, 50, 51, 69, 100, 121, 128, 132, 145, 148, 150–157, 234
Sed Festival 39–40, 195, 203–204, 208
Seked 101–102, 249n.10
Sekhemkhet 35, 51, 148, 153–154, 156, 248n.1
Senenmut 56, 191
Senwosret I 107, 165, 167
Senwosret II 167, 169, 178, 181–183
Senwosret III
Aby dos Tomb 24, 172–173
Py ramid, Dahshur 170–172, 177–181
Serabit el Khadim 230
Seshat 92, 237
Seti I 218–229, 253n.2
Shepsekaf 69, 121–125, 145, 217, 235
Shepseskara 136
Shunet el Zebib 16–18, 42
Sirius 14, 22, 27, 47, 54–56, 81, 118, 120, 141–142, 156, 162–163, 217
Solar eclipse of 1 April 2471 BC 125
Solar eclipse of 14 May 1338 BC 215
Solar eclipse of 16 April 1178 BC 144
Snefru 57, 59
Bent Py ramid 61–68, 79, 89, 100, 103, 174–176, 179–181, 248n.4, 249n.14, 252n.8
Red Py ramid 61, 64–68, 77, 100, 103, 169, 179–180, 248n.3, 249n.14
Solstitial orientation 18, 22, 64, 70, 97–98, 163–169, 188, 192, 208, 234–235
Sphinx 85–87, 100, 126, 130, 200–202, 221, 249n.5
Step Py ramid see Djoser
Stretching of the Cord 35, 92–93, 213, 236–237

Teti 44, 69, 123, 148–150, 155, 157

Thebes 18, 161–162, 166, 184, 188, 206, 209
Thoth Hill 161–163, 189, 209
Thutmose I 187, 191, 200
Thutmose II 191
Thutmose III 174, 186, 188, 191, 199
Thutmose IV 202–203
Tod 161–162

Udjat 174, 190

Umm el Qaab 14–15, 24, 31–32, 37, 172, 221, 223, 234
Unas 34, 42–43, 102–103, 145–148, 150, 153–156
Upuaut 82
Ursa Major see Meskhety u
Ursa Minor 46, 50, 52, 56
Userkaf 125–140, 145, 147–148, 153–156
Userkara 148–150, 153–155

Valley of the Kings 12, 172–173, 185–187, 191, 206, 215, 219, 225, 235, 252n.1
Vega 20, 26, 196

Westcar Papy rus 126–129, 168

Zawy et el Arian
Great Pit 90, 118–120, 130, 134, 141–142, 156, 251n.5
Lay er Py ramid 51, 119