The Orion Mystery

The Orion Mystery M ystery The three pyramids of Giza are a perfect reproduction of the 3 stars of Orion’s of Orion’s belt: Like the pyramids, the three stars of Orion are not perfectly aligned, the smallest of them is slightly offset to the East.  All three are slanted in a Southwesterly direction (Note the exact match in the animation). Their orientation to the Nile recreates Orion’s orientation to the Milky Way. The layout of the pyramids, and their relative sizes were a deliberate design plan, and not the result of three king’s enormous egos as been preached as dogma by the so-called Egyptologists. Robert Bauval has spent the last ten years investigating the pyramids themselves and the Pyramid Texts, the oldest writings known to mankind. 

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

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

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The three Pyramids exactly simulate the stars Delta  Orionis [Mintaka ], Epsilon [Alnilam ], and Zeta [Alnitak ] that comprise the Orion Belt. During this era, the Age of Leo, The Sphinx , which originally may have fully resembled a lion, would have been looking directly due east at it’s celestial counterpart as it rose at dawn of the vernal equinox in 10,450 BC.  At the same time, the Nile would have corresponded with the Milky Way .

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

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Introduction to The Orion Mystery Over the past 200 years great advances have been made in our understanding of  ancient Egyptian culture. From knowing virtually nothing we have now reached a stage where we are able to translate directly from hieroglyphs. But many mysteries remain largely unsolved: Why did the Egyptians build the pyramids? How did they achieve such amazing feats of architecture and engineering? When exactly were they built? For many years classical Egyptologists maintained that the Pyramids were merely grandiose tombs to commemorate dead Pharaohs, built by slave labour and laid out in a relatively unstructured manner. However, recent work by Robert Bauval has shed an intriguing new light on the issue. 

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He realized that the relative sizes, and detailed positioning of, the Giza  pyramids  were a faithful mimicry of the stars forming the ’belt ’ in the constellation of Orion. In addition, it transpired that the supposed ’air shafts’ in the pyramids actually pointed directly towards Orion , apparently with the aim of projecting the soul of the deceased king out towards the constellation. These discoveries alone re-wrote our understanding of the motivations for building the pyramids and the state of technological advance of the ancient culture. But the plot continues to thicken with a robotic camera sent into the shafts recently enabling the discovery of a door to a previously unknown secret chamber  deep within the structure. Rumors abound that imminent discoveries may even more radically change our  perception of ancient civilization... The correlation between the Giza Pyramids and Orion’s belt Egyptology and Egyptologists The Importance of Astronomy The Egyptian Star Religion  Ancient Egyptian Culture and Society  About Robert Bauval 

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The correlation between the Giza Pyramids and Orion’s belt

This is an aerial picture of the Memphite Necropolis Site at  Giza , south-west of Cairo. Look carefully at the way the Pyramids are aligned.  At first glance they seem to be imperfectly positioned. Classical Egyptologists maintain that this was either a mistake or a result of the terrain in the Giza Plateau. Compare this to the image of the Belt Stars of Orion and things become a little clearer. Far from being a mistake, the Pyramids are aligned almost exactly as the Belt Stars appear!

Egyptology and Egyptologists Great advances have been made in the study of the Ancient Egyptian Civilization in the last two hundred years. In that time we have gone from having virtually no knowledge whatsoever, to being able to translate directly from the hieroglyphs on the walls of pyramids and temples with a high degree of accuracy. This giant leap forward in knowledge was thanks to a very fortunate find by a group of Napoleon Bonaparte’s soldiers as they secured Egypt for the French in 1798 and 1799. During the late 18th and early 19th centuries Rashid (the town known in the West as Rosetta ) was an important port, lying at the mouth of the Nile, where the Rashid  Tributary leaves for the Mediterranean Sea. Napoleon knew well its significance in securing a port for  the supply of his troops as they swept across Egypt and fought hard to win control. Napoleon was a superb tactician -- he had no real desire to wrest Egypt from the Mamluk Turks for commercial reasons. He had only one intention as he pushed the Turks East, and that was to cut off the supply and trade route for the British to India. 4

 A party of French troops found a black basalt slab, near to the town of Rashid in 1799, inscribed in three languages. The slab was a tribute to the Egyptian King Ptolemy V, with the original hieroglyph, a more modern demotic script, and, the key to our knowledge of Ancient Egypt today, a Greek translation alongside carved in 196 BCE. The French returned control of Egypt to the English, and the Rosetta Stone (click image left to enlarge), as it had become known, was taken to London, where it can still be seen as a prize exhibit in the British Museum , in Bloomsbury. On arriving in London, the Stone was studied intently by Thomas Young, a Westcountry doctor and Egyptologist. Young had studied at London, Edinburgh, Gottingen and Cambridge, qualifying as a physician in 1800. From 1801 to 1803, Young was Professor of Natural Philosophy at the Royal Institution, and it was here that much of his pioneering work on deciphering the Stone was done. Between 1822 and 1824, the French Egyptologist Jean Francois Champollion took up a close study of the Stone , and founded modern scientific Egyptology. These preliminary studies of the Stone allowed Egyptologists their first insight into the mind of the Ancient Egyptians. Things that were once hidden and meaningless began to become apparent, and this small seed of new knowledge soon allowed much more accurate translations of the previously attractive but ill understood hieroglyphics that adorned the walls of pyramids and tombs and temples all over  Egypt. Many of the old theories were overturned and replaced by conclusions arrived at by scientific research. Foremost among the "classical " Egyptologists is the late E. A. Wallis Budge, 18571934. Budge was Keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities at the British Museum, and author of many books that form the basis of our understanding of Ancient Egypt. In particular he is remembered for his work in translating the Book of the Dead , and several hieroglyphic dictionaries, and self-teaching courses. Budge also translated numerous texts directly from the walls of later Fourth and Fifth Dynasty tombs , and cast an unbiased eye over many of the myths of the Egyptian deities and their  legends. Much good work has been done over the last couple of centuries towards understanding something of Ancient Egyptian culture. Some of the most impressive work done in recent years, however, has to be the study of the astronomical significance of the pyramids by Robert Bauval and Adrian Gilbert. 5

They published their preliminary findings in the excellent book "The Orion  Mystery " (click image right) published by Heinemann . They also made a documentary TV program last year that first drew them to the world’s attention. The views expressed in the book and documentaries were initially scorned by the academic mainstream Egyptologists. However, as the evidence strengthens their  case, more and more people are coming on board and the "old school " are looking increasingly isolated.

The Importance of Astronomy  Astronomy is fundamental to Bauval’s Correlation  Theory . Over a cycle of 26 000 years the Earth wobbles slightly on its axis and this leads to an apparent change in the position of the stars. This phenomenon is known as Precession -- the stars precess one another in Declination, their relative position in the sky. This is best described with the aid of the adjacent diagram (image right).  As the Earth wobbles the Pole Star that marks the approximate Celestial Pole changes. Polaris marks the spot now, but at the time of the Pyramids it was marked by Thuban in the constellation of Draconis . In 12 000 AD Vega in the constellation of Lyra will  mark the Pole .  A further change in the stars’ actual position is caused by the expanding Universe. Stars are not stationary in space -- they have what is termed Proper Motion . Some stars are moving towards Earth while others are moving away. Groups of related stars like the Belt Stars of Orion tend to move together through space. The rate of change of a star’s position from the observer’s location is a function, among other things, of its distance. Stars that are very distant appear to move more slowly. This is the case with the Belt Stars which lie approximately 1400 light years from Earth.

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Thus, over the centuries, they have changed in Declination dramatically, causing them to rise and set at widely differing times. They retain their characteristic shape, however, because of their distance. It is vitally important to understand that the sky looked different at the time of the Pyramids. The overall shape of theBelt Stars has remained remarkably similar  although many other parts of the sky have changed dramatically. Thanks to sophisticated computer software it is possible to project the sky back in time, enabling Bauval to verify and build upon his theory.

The Egyptian Star Religion Classical Egyptologists believe that the Egyptians practiced a solar religion, centering on the worship of Ra . This cult of Ra , centered around Heliopolis , the City of the Sun, was no doubt important, but it seems as though it was an offshoot of a much more ancient stellar religion.  All the evidence that is now coming to light suggests that Ra was merely one of the instruments by which the King returned to the First Time, rather than his goal. "O Shining One (Ra)! O Shining One! O Khepera! O Khepera! You are for the King and the King is for you; you live for the King and the King lives for you." (Pyramid Texts Utterance 662) "Go aboard this boat of Ra to which the gods desire to draw near, aboard which the gods desire to go, in which Ra rows to the horizon....... Raise yourself, O my father  Osiris the King, for you are alive!" (Pyramid Texts Utterance 667) The application of astronomy to the study of Ancient Egypt shows that the stars were of the utmost importance as the destination of the King: "O Great One of Atum (another attribute of Khepera, the creator), son of a great one of Atum, the King is a Star in the sky among the gods." (Pyramid Texts Utterance 586A) "O King, you are this great star, the companion of Orion, who traverses the sky with Orion, who navigates the Duat with Osiris; you ascend from the East of the sky, being renewed at your due season......." (Pyramid Texts Utterance 466) The King was very important because he was the link between the gods and men, and was accorded enormous respect in life and in death. From the moment of his birth he was groomed and trained for his return to the First Time. All his life, every aspect of it, was associated with his journey. He was taught spells and incantations to secure a safe passage, many of which are collected in the Book of the Dead and the Pyramid Texts . 7

His sole aim in life was his successful return to the First Time, and the pyramids, far from being a memorial or commemorative tomb, were the starting point of this greatest of journeys. The geometry of the pyramids has been a source of confusion for many years, as was the seemingly imperfect way in which they were laid out on the Necropolis site. The chain of command in Egypt was unbroken -- each King, though a living, breathing being, was a renewal of the covenant which the gods made with man . The dead King, though dead to this world, lived on in spirit as he made his way back to the beginning, to the First Time . His son, the new Horus King , took over his place as surely as the dead King has taken his own, and ensured the continuation of the Great House, the Pr Aa .

Ancient Egyptian Culture and Society  Although we look these days at everything in isolation, for the Ancient Egyptians this would have been unthinkable. What we now term as a holistic approach to life was normal for the Egyptians. In fact, the holistic approach was very common in our own Western culture until the Industrial Revolution. At the end of the Eighteenth Century, life became fragmented into production and consumption, supply and demand. Many people whose life was on the land, and who were intimately acquainted with every aspect of life as a cohesive and living whole (hence holistic) were made redundant by the new machines. The only work, and life, available to them meant going from the land to the towns and cities. Instead of producing to meet their own needs, and then either bartering or selling their surplus from a good year’s harvest, they were forced into wage slavery -- to total dependence upon those who controlled the means of production. In Ancient Egyptian times there was no wage slavery, rather a communal approach to life, and a very stable society. Everyone had their place, their tasks, and cooperated with others to ensure survival, peace and prosperity. The Biblical notion of enforced slavery to the Pharaohs seems to be exaggerated, testified by the meteoric rise in status of the Prophet Yusuf (Joseph ) and his clan. Knowledge of the logistics of building a pyramid like those at the Memphite  Necropolis at Giza put paid to the idea that they were built by ill-treated slave labour. The craftsmanship is of the highest degree -- it is still a mystery to this day how the pyramids were built. 8

About Robert Bauval The pyramids have long fascinated Robert Bauval. He is Egyptian, born in Al-Iskandariyya (Alexandria ) to Belgian parents, and has spent most of his life living and working in the Middle East. For many years he had pondered over the significance of Sah , the constellation of Orion, and its link to the pyramids. One night, while working in Saudi Arabia, he took his family and a friend’s family up into the sand dunes of the Arabian desert for a camping expedition. Bauval knew that the seemingly inconsistent layout of the three Fourth Dynasty pyramids at Giza was no accident, and had applied his own engineer’s mind, and those of many friends to the problem. Most agreed that the alignment, though unusual, was no accident , given the precise mathematical knowledge that the Egyptians had. His friend, a keen amateur astronomer, pointed out Orion , and mentioned, in passing, that Mintaka , the smaller more easterly of the stars making up Orion’s belt was offset slightly from the others. Immediately Bauval saw the answer - the three Belt Stars were aligned in exactly the same way as the three pyramids! Bauval checked the alignment in 2450 BCE by precessing the three Belt Stars back, and found that, due to their close proximity in space, great distance from Earth, and negligible proper motion, they looked exactly the same then as they do today. Of course, they had changed in declination -- then they were just below the celestial equator, at about -1 degree declination. The pyramids were a mirror image, the Earthly representation of the Belt of Orion , the destination of the dead King! The Egyptians were dualists -- everything they thought and believed was a duality. Everything had its counterpart, cause and effect, left and right, East and West, death and rebirth -- nothing was ever seen in isolation. They had constructed at Giza an exact replica of the Duat destination of the King. Far from being a tomb, the pyramid was the starting point of the King’s journey  back to the stars from whence he came, back to the First Time. Bauval initially made use of the astronomy program Skyglobe 3,5 for the PC. Though too inaccurate for serious work - it does not take proper motion, nutation, refraction, for example, into account - it was sufficient to clarify Bauval’s mind as to the value of his discovery. Skyglobe 3,5 will plot the Milky Way on its charts if  requested, and doing so added further proof to Bauval’s theory. 9

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

Orion the Hunter and Sirius the Dog Star 

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TONIGHT FORAUGUST 26, 2012 The first hints of the changing of the seasons can now be seen in the predawn and dawn sky: Orion the Hunter and Sirius the Dog Star. The very noticeable constellation Orion the Hunter rises before dawn at this time of year, recognizable for the short straight line of three stars that make up Orion’s Belt. And the sky’s brightest star Sirius – sometimes called the Dog Star because it’s part of the constellation Canis Major the Greater Dog – follows Orion into the sky at or close to dawn. Have you noticed a very bright, madly twinkling star in the predawn sky? Many do, at this time of year. That star is Sirius. It’s so bright that, when it’s low in the sky, it shines with glints of red and flashes of blue – very noticeable! Orion and the nearby star Sirius will become visible in the evening by northern winter (or southern summer). But presently the Hunter and the Dog Star lord over  the southeastern sky at dawn’s first light. 10

Orion was low in the west after sunset last spring, and, in early summer, this constellation was behind the sun as seen from Earth. Orion only returned to visibility in Earth’s sky about a month ago. (See our July 30 sky chart.) When a constellation becomes visible again, after being behind the sun, it always appears in the east before sunrise. Because – as Earth orbits the sun – all the stars rise two hours earlier with each passing month, Orion is now higher at dawn than a month ago.  As seen from the Northern Hemisphere, Orion precedes Sirius the Dog Star into the sky. After Orion first appears at morning dawn, you can count on Sirius to appear in the morning sky a few weeks later. You should be able to see Sirius at or before dawn right now – unless you live at far northern latitudes. But even there, it won’t be much longer! Starting now, look for Orion the Hunter and Sirius the Dog in the early morning sky!

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