Dear all,

The ancient Egyptian religion is a sun-based religion and also the yearly cycle of the stars was very important for them to calculate their calender. It would be surprising if their *wasn't* an alignment with certain celestial phenomena. The problem is that until recently hardly any research was done in that area: Egyptologists are no astronomers, and calculations in that field are extremely complex. This was taken for granted, but not a field of research. So nothing to much 'scientific' can be said, simply because of lack of data. That is something else than saying Egyptologists dismiss celestial alignments: they simply never looked into it. That is the disadvantage of a rich culture like that of the Egyptians: one can't do everything.

Now then, the Giza plain. The Giza plain is a natural heighth of limestone in the vicinity of Memphis, the capital of Egypt during the Old Kingdom. The pyramids of the third, fifth and to a lesser extent those of the sixth dynasty were clustered around Saqqara, Abusir and again Saqqara respectively. Only those of the 4th century are scattered around in the Memphis area, mostly at quite a distance from Memphis itself. We find pyramids at Dashur, Meidum, Giza and Abu Roash. Why?

It is important to understand that throughout Egyptian history royal tombs were robbed, often already within a few decades after they were made. The exactness with which tomb robbers dug their way towards the burial chambers proves they knew exactly where they going. Probably they were part of the team that build the royal tombs. This is affirmed by papyri in which trials of tomb robbers are described. The suspects include workmen, officials and guards. The kings of the fourth dynasty tried to avoid being robbed by building their pyramids in remote areas. The experiment failed. The fifth dynasty pyramids are again clustered in Abusir.

Hancock cs. claim that the three pyramids at Giza are placed accurately like the the three stars in the girdle of Orion. This hypothesis is strengthened by the fact that the pyramids at Abu Roash, Meidum and Dashur are placed at the other stars in the constellation of Orion. They even postulate the fourth pyramid in the neighbourhood of Heliopolis at the other side of the Nile. I object.

1) The Egyptians would NEVER even dream about building a pyramid on the east bank of the Nile. All royal tombs were placed in the west: the place where the sun died was the realm of the dead. The west was associated with birth and rebirth. The postulated fourth pyramid never existed, nor could it have existed in the Egyptian way of thinking.

2) The pyramids at Giza are placed roughly on a line, as are the stars in the girdle of Orion. Of course, with the the movement of stars there would be a moment, somewhere in time, when the two alignments are exactly the same. So what? This proves nothing. Even more so: that it doesn't prove anything is embeded in the hypothesis of Hancock cs. The position of all the other pyramids is literally miles out of place. The distance between the stars of Orion and the girdle at both sides of the girdle is roughly equal. The distance between the pyramids of Giza and Abu Roash is about a third or a quarter of the distance Giza-Dashur. The position of the pyramids at Dashur and Meidum is absolutely unrelatable to any star in the constellation of Orion. Why claim a needed accuracy to make your hypothesis fit, when it is obvious that such accuracy is not present in the data used to "prove" the theory? The same is true for the position of the milky way.

3) Observation at the Sphinx is used to test and confirm the hypothesis of Hancock cs. Decay of chiselmarks and the like is placed at about 10,000 BC, which fits the postulated date of the pyramids. The sphinx, however, is a cut-out monument from a rock knoll available in the landscape. It was not built at all, and only the feet, the head and the tail are modelled and the fore paws added in stone. With such a obvious landmark, roughly in the shape of a lying anymal, it would have been surprising if it *didn't* attrack the attention of people earlier and indeed, it shows wearand tear marks from various periods throughout time. Again: it doesn't prove anything, nor does it disprove anything - it is simply useless as an argument in this particular discussion. Also the postulation that we are dealing with a washed away lion from an earlier era is based on thin air.

4) Hancock cs. disregard volumes and volumes of prehistoric research conducted in Egypt. Around 10,000 BC we have a nice, well documented civilisation in the transition from paleolithic to neolithic, not unlike many other prehistoric cultures. To postulate that pyramids were build during that time would be very hard, if not impossible to explain without outragious theories that are based on fiction, not facts.

5) The cultural, technical, religious and artistic development of the Egyptian culture is very well documented and has been subjected to detailed research. Although there are still details to be added and discoverd, the fundament is as solid as rock. The first pramids were build during the third dynasty, when the architect of king Zoser -Imhotep was his name- decided to stack several mastabas (i.e the type of royal tombs during late prehistory and the dynasties 1 and 2, before the era of the pyramids) thus forming the first pyramid. The pyramids of the fourth dynasty follow that principle. Also, within the mastabas a gradual development is visible, and many features seen in the Zoser complex, can be related to late-prehistoric and early dynastic finds. It all fits very well. The research has been done in a sometimes competitve way by Brittish, French, Italian, German, Egyptian, American, Russian, Dutch and many more scholars and is published in publicly available literature. To postulate an "Egyptological maffia" that withholds facts or evidence is in one word ridiculous.

6) Philosophy of Science has found that simple theories are often nearer to the truth than complex ones: we have a nice simply theory that fits the facts well, and doesn't neglect many. Why should we change that to a complex theory that, moreover, only uses a very limited amount of data in a disputable way: many of the arguments presented are either false or irrelevant, while many fact that would pose a problem to the hypothesis are neglected by Hancock cs. Moreover, my argument (2) indicates that the theory of Hancock cs. is not consistent in itself. In my opinion that is not a scientific way to conduct serious science.

An extensive answer this has become, but it was impossible to answer your question in a few lines.

Your's,

Paul Haanen
Visiting Scholar
NW-European archaeology and prehistory, especially the Netherlands. History, prehistory and archaeology of ancient Egypt up to the Old Kingdom; early state formation. Computer applications in archaeology.