Authors Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval are also attempting to re-date Giza architecture. In the Message of the Sphinx (1996), they write:
"When we say that the Sphinx, the three Great Pyramids, the causeways and other associated monuments of the Giza necropolis form a huge astronomical diagram we are simply reporting a fact. When we say that this diagram depicts the skies above Giza in 10,500 BC we are reporting a fact. When we say that the Sphinx bears erosion marks which indicate that it was carved before the Sahara became a desert we are reporting a fact."
Let us examine these so-called facts to see how well they stand up to scrutiny. In The Orion Mystery (1994), Robert Bauval purported that the Great Pyramid dates to 4th Dynasty Egypt. Subsequently, in the Message of the Sphinx, he proposes that the Giza site was actually planned much earlier, in 10,500 BC. His comments allow for a construction period of several thousand years.
To develop his theory in The Orion Mystery, Bauval draws heavily on research performed in the 1960's by Egyptian Egyptologist Alexander Badawi and Badawi's associate Virginia Trimble, who was then a student and is now an astronomy professor. Badawi and Thimble were able to persuade some Egyptologists that two shafts in the King's Chamber, which extend to the exterior of the outer core masonry, point to stars. One points toward the Orion belt and the other to Thuban (Alpha Draconis), the Pole Star during 4th Dynasty Egypt. Their idea appears in the most widely read book on the pyramids, The Pyramids of Egypt, by British Museum curator I.E.S. Edwards. From there, the theory became more generally accepted.
The shaft alignments fit with the usual interpretation that a pyramid was a device for ritually transporting the deceased pharaoh's soul to its proper place among the stars. Ancient people considered celestial bodies as deities, and custom held that at death the pharaohs joined the gods to rule from heaven.
Extrapolating on the reasonable theory of Badawi and Trimble, Bauval proposed that the Giza pyramids correspond to the three brightest stars in the Orion belt. Astronomer Edwin C. Krupp, Director of the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, California, is particularly qualified to address Bauval's work. Edwin Krupp is one of the few astronomers whose training extensively extends to ancient monuments and their relationship to the celestial bodies. For publication here, Edwin Krupp provided me with the following comments about Bauval's claim that the Great Pyramid was planned in 10,500 BC:
"Although Hancock and Bauval assert the equinox sunrise configuration of Leo and Orion in 10,500 B.C. explains the disposition of the Sphinx and the primary pyramids on the Giza plateau, astronomy actually contradicts the Orion Mystery and the "message" of the Sphinx. In the sky, Orion is separated from Leo by the Milky Way, the "celestial Nile," but the real Nile is east of both the pyramids and the Sphinx. Twelve and a half thousand years of precession can shift the vernal equinox sun back among the stars of Leo the Lion, but the Sphinx is still on the wrong side of the river for matching heaven to earth.
"Also, zodiac constellations are not Egyptian, and there is no evidence that Leo was recognized as a lion by anyone, least of all Egyptians, 12,500 years ago. The Egyptian astronomical system was completely different from the Mesopotamian scheme that eventually gave us the zodiac. The oldest Egyptian representations of a lion constellation are New Kingdom, and there is good evidence that the Lion is not Leo. The zodiac we know was not introduced into Egypt until the Ptolemaic period, and it is a Graeco-Roman transplant.
"If the star-aligned shafts in the Great Pyramid tell us the Egyptians wanted the north sides of their pyramids to face the northern sky, and south sides of their pyramids to face the southern sky, why would they arrange Giza with the southernmost pyramid matching the most northern star of the Belt and vice-versa? If the Egyptians intended the Giza pyramids and the Sphinx to reflect the arrangement of the sky in 10,500 B.C., why is the Sphinx on the wrong side of the Nile? In fact, Bauval and Gilbert had to turn a map of Egypt upside-down to get the Giza pyramids to match the stars in the Orion Belt."
Bauval and Hancock also claim to be reporting a proven fact when they say that the Sphinx exhibits erosion showing it to date before the Sahara became a desert. To make this claim, Bauval and Hancock rely on the work of author John Anthony West and Boston University geologist Robert M. Schoch.
As for the third so-called fact stated by Hancock and Bauval, we have already seen (in excerpt 9) the most relevant flaw in the theories of Robert Schoch and John Anthony West.
Some authors suppose that super-technology, owned and operated by space aliens, is responsible for the world's great ancient monuments. The next excerpt from The Egyptian Pyramid Mystery Is Solved! considers the range of devices that would be needed if we think along these lines.
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