9 INTERMEZZO AT THE PYRAMIDS

Imhotep, the architect of Zoser … is credited by Manetho with having been the inventor of the art of building in hewn stone … his achievements became legendary among later generations of Egyptians, who regarded him not only as an architect but as a magician, an astronomer, and the father of medicine … [and] … the Greeks with their own god of medicine, Asklepios

— I. E. S. Edwards, The Pyramids of Egypt

Of these (the Fourth Dynasty kings) the third was Suphis, the builder of the Great Pyramid, which Herodotus says was built by Cheops. Suphis conceived a contempt for the gods, but repenting of this, he composed the Sacred Book, which the Egyptians held in high esteem.

— Manetho, Aegyptiaca (epitome),
according to Eusebius

I A Meeting of Ways

Driving to Oxford on that cold morning, I had the heater on full blast in the little car. At last I was rid of a persistent lung infection which I had apparently caught while working in Kashmir in northern India. I had gone there on a short consultancy, which was to be my last engineering job before getting down to writing the book. It had taken several months of antibiotic treatment to clean out the infection, but now, on the M40 motorway to Oxford I felt fine.

I wanted to buy a copy of the Hermetica, an ancient collection of texts written in Alexandria sometime in the Second Century AD by Greek-Egyptians who ascribed their works to Hermes Trismegistos, supposedly the Ancient Egyptian wisdom god Thoth, inventor of hieroglyphics and science.¹ The last English translation was in 1924 by the Hellenic historian, Walter Scott, and I was hoping to find a copy in a second-hand bookshop in Oxford. As it turned out, I was out of luck; their last copy had gone years ago, and no one else had any either. Just as I was leaving the bookshop, the young assistant called me. Apparently his computer had shown that a small publisher in Dorset, Solos Press, had brought out a paperback edition only a few days previously. I took the address and said I would order the book direct.

Solos Press is owned by Adrian Gilbert. He had started it two years earlier and had published four books, one of which he had written himself.² His speciality was the re-issue of unusual books which had been out of circulation but were still in demand by specialised readers, and his last project had been a new edition of Scott’s Hermetica. I phoned his distributors and asked for Adrian’s home number but by coincidence he happened to be at his distributors when I called. As we talked, we found that we had a lot in common. Like me, he had long been interested in Ancient Egyptian religion and especially the pyramids. Inside this new edition of Hermetica, Adrian had written his own long Foreword about Ancient Egypt, and I was intrigued by some of his comments and the link he saw between the Hermetica and Ancient Egyptian texts. We happily exchanged views on this fascinating subject until I realised that we had been talking for nearly an hour. I told Adrian about my forthcoming book and asked him whether he would be interested in publishing it. He said he would like to see the text and we agreed to meet soon.

We met early in December, and within an hour we had decided to co-author a series of books, the first of which would be The Orion Mystery. Adrian’s experience was invaluable: he quickly worked out a writing plan and in a week or so The Orion Mystery was on its way. I had been working in isolation far too long, and Adrian brought fresh energy and impetus that got the project off the ground. Being now a team, we decided on further lines of research that we could share between us, so that other neglected aspects of the stellar religion could be developed. There were two major lines which needed study and linking to the mainstream of the thesis: the mysterious relic, the Benben Stone in the Temple of the Phoenix, and a development of the precessional star-clock effects of the shafts in Cheops’s pyramid.³

Soon afterwards, Dr Edwards telephoned to ask if I had done any studies on the shafts in the Queen’s Chamber of Cheops’s Pyramid. I told him that I had published an article in DE 16 two years before. He was eager to know what I thought about them and I told him that my precession calculations showed that the southern shaft had been targeted towards Sirius and that my conclusions, therefore, were that neither the shafts nor the Queen’s Chamber was abandoned. He said that he wasn’t too sure about that, and was going to send me an article he had written on the subject which was due for publication the following year.⁴ Then he suddenly told me that a German scientific team, working under Dr Rainer Stadelmann of the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo, were exploring these shafts at present. This was important news and I decided to take a trip to Egypt as soon as possible. Adrian and his wife, Dee, an amateur photographer who was already working on the pictures for our book, decided they would come too. We planned to leave around the end of February 1993, which would give me time to arrange for the interviews I wanted to secure in Egypt. I was especially keen to meet Dr Stadelmann and find out more about the shaft; I was, of course, hoping to get new data on the slopes and solvethe discrepancies which Petrie’s reading were giving.

By the end of February Adrian and I had completed the first draft of The Orion Mystery. We were not to know that unexpected events would soon force us to rewrite it. We needed a break and it seemed this was a good time to go to Egypt and do some fieldwork as well as taking photographs for the book. A formal meeting with Dr Stadelmann had been arranged by my contacts in Cairo for the first week of March. The international press had been rumbling on about fundamentalist terrorism in Egypt, but the problem seemed to be mostly in Upper Egypt and Cairo was quiet. I telephoned my cousin in Egypt, Josette Orphanidis, and asked if tourists were restricted in that area. Quite the contrary; the Egyptian authorities were anxious to play down the problem and were bending over backwards to make sure that tourists enjoyed their visits. And because the volume of visitors had dropped radically, the archaeological sites were free of the usual crowds. It was the ideal time to go to the Cairo area, and especially propitious for the itinerary we had in mind. Off we went from London on 26 February.

II A Fateful Meeting at the Isis-Sirius Shaft

Adrian and Dee stayed at the old Victoria Hotel, a grande époque hotel in the busy district near Ramses Square; I stayed with Josette and her husband, John, in the quieter residential district of Maadi. The weather was glorious and not too hot. We were in high spirits and Dee was eager to get her first shots of the Giza pyramids.

But the first shot was not from Dee’s camera but a real explosion at Tahrir Square, not far from the Egyptian Museum. Terrorists had placed a powerful bomb in a small and crowded coffee bar where tourists and, more especially, students from the American University in Cairo gathered for their midday break. Two tourists were killed and fourteen others, mostly local people, were badly injured. We were advised not to wander about in central Cairo, and to stick to the major tourist sites which would now certainly receive the best security Egypt could muster. It would be even better to keep away from the crowds and do our own thing, which is what we had in mind anyway.

The first thing we did, of course, was to visit Giza. It was one of those glorious Cairene days when the weather is tender: a gentle, warm sun with limpid blue sky and a soft breeze. We walked for several hours around the pyramid plateau, breathing the soporific air of the desert, rich in oxygen. We started our tour from the south-west, where a high knoll affords the visitor a marvellous view over the whole necropolis. To the north-east were the three giants, with Menkaura’s closest and the Great Pyramid farthest away. Even from this distance, a kilometre or so, it was awesome. We spoke little, preferring to ‘listen’ to the monuments.

We walked down to the third pyramid, the smallest. Standing before its south face, we were confronted by a wall of stone, and our heads had to be tilted back to see the sky above. The two larger pyramids disappeared from sight and, without their size for comparison, the third pyramid was a giant in its own right. We climbed one of the little satellite pyramids behind us, and sat there taking in the full effect of the massive enterprise. We then walked to the east face, and the third pyramid was dwarfed as the two others loomed before us. We passed the east temples with their huge blocks of stone, some apparently weighing over 200 tons, and admired the fine jointing. Then, after a ten-minute walk we were at the foot of the second pyramid, Khafra’s masterpiece. It is impossible to explain the effect this has on the human mind; so many times I had stood there and each time I was awed, humbled and then exhilarated by the sight that towered towards the heavens. We decided not to enter it but to proceed to the main objective: the Great Pyramid and its mysterious shafts.

We clambered the few courses on the north face of Khufu’s (Cheops’s) pyramid which led to the Ma’amoun entrance, and in we went. We went to the foot of the ascending passage and looked up: before us was a long and dimly lit rectangular tunnel shooting high into the pyramid. Crouching in awed silence, we began to climb deep into the monument. After what seemed like an endless journey, we reached the junction of the Grand Gallery and the horizontal passage which leads to the Queen’s Chamber. I looked at Adrian and, almost out of breath, said ‘Isis’. He nodded. Crouching again, this time on a level floor, we made our way towards the Queen’s Chamber. It was 27 February 1993; in eight days from now Rudolf Gantenbrink would be making the same crouched walk carrying the metal case containing the tiny robot, and starting his exploration of this shaft.

The Chamber was empty of tourists — a rare occurrence, but with the bomb at Tahrir Square, they were staying in their hotels. We stood there, the three of us, and gazed at the walls, at the vaulted ceiling and the great ‘niche’ on the east side; then I pointed to the opening of the southern shaft. Only three weeks later Gantenbrink would make his historic discovery.

III A Robot and a Door

During the next few days we visited a kaleidoscope of ancient sites — Saqqara, Dashour, Abusir, and also the bustling bazaars of old Cairo. At Saqqara an old reis and friend of mine, Ibrahim, complained of the drop in tourists, the gauge of his weekly income.Maalesh, I told him: that magical, all-soothing word which loosely translates as ‘never mind, it doesn’t matter’. We made his day by taking a special tour to the few closed mastabas of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties in the south-east side of Zoser’s pyramid. The walls of these mastabas were covered with exquisite carvings of daily scenes, and with few tourists coming to see them, the ancient paintwork had survived almost unscathed, rich in colour and detail. Here a cow giving birth to a calf, aided by two naked Egyptians; there a mother dressing her young, around her baskets of dates, oranges, melons and figs; young men fishing with spears on reed boats, their catch of Nile perch bursting out of the reed baskets. It was moving to see such vivid scenes of people who lived here more than4000 years ago, but the atmosphere dissipated when a group of tourists, who had decided to brave the bomb scares, arrived with cameras clicking and guides shouting commentaries and instructions. It was time to go.

I saw Dr Stadelmann on 2 March. A charming and friendly man in his forties, he was frank about the work inside the Great Pyramid. He explained that it had been started early in 1991, under the project team leader, Rudolf Gantenbrink, an engineer and specialist in robotics, and that it consisted mainly in improving the ventilation of the Great Pyramid.

As we have said, the Cheops Pyramid is unique; not only is it the largest and most geometrically perfect of them all but, unlike the others, it contains an elaborate system of above-ground chambers. It is also the one most visited by tourists and this has had unfortunate consequences which could not have been foreseen when it was built. Each person leaves behind about twenty grams of water vapour in breath and perspiration, and the air inside the pyramid had become unhealthy and overly humid. Not only was this uncomfortable for the tourists, who were paying to go inside, but it was causing leaching of salt crystals inside the passages and chambers, making the porous limestone act like a sponge. In places water was dripping from the ceiling. Salt and minerals within the stone were dissolved by the excessive condensation and seeped through to the surface, forming unsightly growths which would eventually cause flaking. Something had to be done to stop this process before the limestone blocks began to crumble and the whole edifice became unsafe. The task of finding a solution to the problem was put in the hands of the German Archaeological Institute and they called Rudolf in as a consultant to carry out the work.

The most obvious solution to the immediate problem of humidity was to increase the air flow throughout the pyramid. This was not so difficult because there were already in existence two small shafts running from the King’s Chamber (the uppermost of the three) through the core of the pyramid to the outside. It seemed likely that once these air-shafts had been cleaned and made to work more effectively, the atmosphere inside the pyramid would improve. Accordingly, Rudolf and his team designed and built a machine called UPUAUT (meaning ‘opener of the ways’ in Ancient Egyptian and originally the name of a jackal god associated with the dead). This device had a camera mounted on it and could be hauled up and down the shafts by pulleys and cables fixed in the King’s Chamber, allowing inspection of the ducts from the inside. Once the debris of centuries had been removed from the shafts, a series of heavy duty electric fans were fitted into them so that fresh air would constantly be drawn up into the pyramid. By this simple means the humidity inside was brought down to the ambient level of the desert outside, making the atmosphere healthier for visitors and safeguarding the pyramid from further deterioration.

This first phase of the work was now complete and Ganten-brink had returned to his home in Munich, to bring back a new robot, UPUAUT 2, to explore the shafts in the Queen’s Chamber. Unlike the first robot, it had its own traction system so that it could climb up and down the shafts unaided. It also carried headlights, a laser guidance system and a small video camera, to send back pictures to a monitoring console. UPUAUT 2 was a highly sophisticated robot and looked like a remote-controlled moon buggy. Gantenbrink was not due back until 6 March, and Stadelmann said he would arrange a meeting for 7 March. I said this was cutting it fine for me, since we were leaving Egypt that day. Stadelmann hoped Gantenbrink might see me on the evening of the sixth, but he could not promise this.

IV A Meeting With Gantenbrink

On 5 March, after a long evening walk on the Giza plateau, with the constellation of Orion putting on a wonderful display at the meridian, I left a note at his hotel for Rudolf Gantenbrink. I was hoping he would be able to see me the following evening and give a brief interview.

The next evening my cousin John returned from work in his gleaming white Mercedes, which unfortunately attracted a horde of street beggars. It was not a normal sight in Maadi, as John and I knew; it was a sign of the times, and things were far worse than the Egyptian authorities wanted to admit, even to themselves. John then drove me to Gantenbrink’s hotel, where the receptionist said he had just arrived with two colleagues and had left instructions for me to call his room.

Rudolf Gantenbrink is a young and handsome man in his late thirties. He greeted me in friendly fashion and asked me to join him and his team for dinner. With him was a film producer from Los Angeles, Jochen Breitenstein.⁵ Gantenbrink explained that they would resume exploration in the southern shaft of the Queen’s Chamber the following day; tonight they wanted to relax over a good meal and a few beers. We took to each other immediately, and the conversation, of course, was of Egypt and the Pyramids. We talked of the worrying political situation brewing in Egypt and the pitiful condition of the archaeological sites. Jochen Breitenstein felt very strongly about this, and was depressed that the monuments were suffering from lack of attention and vandalism by tourists who were not properly supervised. Gantenbrink was particularly concerned with the Seti I cenotaph at Abydos and the tomb at Luxor. He said that the wonderful paintings and reliefs, many depicting astronomical scenes, had suffered badly from vandalism and perhaps even more from the alarming increase in humidity. The Seti I tomb, like many others such as the tomb of Tutankhamen, was now closed but little was being done about repairing it because few know how to proceed. Apparently the roof of the cenotaph was slowly collapsing.

Rudolf’s interest in Egyptology had begun when he heard of the shafts and realised that his robots could help in this sort of exploration. He had already taken his new robot, UPUAUT 2, about twenty metres up the southern shaft of the Queen’s Chamber, showing that the shaft was not abandoned by its original builders. They had stopped the exploration to make some modifications to the machine so as to go deeper into the shaft. Gantenbrink had no idea how deep, but said we might be surprised by what might be found in the end. He wondered what my prognosis was now that he had been told of my astronomical findings. I said that whatever was found would be something to do with Isis and Osiris, something connected with their stellar identity. He smiled and assured me I would be one of the first to know the results. He also promised to send me his new measurements on the slopes of the shafts, and hinted that Petrie’s measurements were not quite right. This was exciting news. The data would be ready within a week or so, and he promised to fax me the new reading as soon as he had clearance to do so. We parted with the usual exchange of addresses and hoped to meet again.

It was quite late when we got back to Cairo that evening, though the streets were full of people. This was Ramadan, the month of fasting, and the Cairenes loved to come out late at night to ‘smell the breeze’ of the Nile. I picked up Adrian and Dee and drove through Heliopolis and to the airport. They had returned the night before from Luxor and were eager to tell me about the wonderful sights they had seen. I told them of the meeting with Gantenbrink, and we all agreed that we had accomplished more than we had hoped.

V UPUAUT at the End of the Shaft

I decided to tackle the precession problems with the shafts as soon as Rudolf sent the new measurements. By the end of March, I had sent a few faxes to Gantenbrink reminding him of the data I needed, but had received no replies. I assumed he was busy and would attend to it when he could. Deep in our own research, we forgot about his exploration until we heard on the news on 30 March that a bomb had exploded in the pyramid of Khafra. The story was confusing and it was not clear what had actually happened. I sent a fax to Dr Stadelmann asking if Rudolf was all right, but got no answer. On the first of April I decided to telephone: Stadelmann was not in Cairo and Rudolf was back in Munich. Stadelmann’s secretary assured me that it had not been a bomb but a faulty electrical connection which had caused the explosion in the second pyramid. It was then that I received a fax from Rudolf apologising for the delay and giving the measurements for the slopes of the King’s Chamber shafts. As I suspected, they were slightly different from Petrie’s and consequently from those used by Badawy and Trimble in their calculations.⁶ The table shows the comparison.

I realised immediately that because all slopes were slightly steeper than previously assumed, the age of the Great Pyramid would prove slightly younger, and I quickly did the calculations. The south and north shafts of the King’s Chamber were targeted to A1 Nitak (Zeta Orionis) and Alpha Draconis respectively; the south shaft of the Queen’s Chamber to Sirius. The dates I got were:

The conclusion was inevitable. The Great Pyramid was built somewhere between 2475BC and 2400BC, thus an average epoch of c. 2450BC. This was news. I quickly called Dr Nibbi and she agreed to take two articles, one in Discussions in Egyptology 26 and the other in the following issue.⁷

The real excitement was that Rudolf’s latest measurements confirmed that the two southern shafts were built at about the same time and that the top shaft pointed to Al Nitak, the lowest star in Orion’s Belt (and not Al Nilam, the middle star), which corresponded to the Great Pyramid in the Orion Correlation Theory. The three shafts now locked in perfectly to the stars and the epoch of c. 2450BC. Rudolf had no data yet on the northern one in the Queen’s Chamber, but he thought it might be closer to 39 degrees. A quick check suggested the same date of c. 2450BC for the centre of the four stars forming the ‘head’ of Ursa Minor, the Little Bear constellation.⁸

Rudolf had told me of his discovery on the telephone and on 4 April a video tape arrived from Munich. I quickly put the tape in and watched as the robot appeared outside the Great Pyramid. Rudolf put the robot into the opening of the southern shaft in the Queen’s Chamber and then guided it with the controls on a worktop inside the chamber. The robot began filming inside the shaft. Slowly and laboriously it climbed, going upwards for about sixty-five metres before coming to a stop. In front of it, clearly visible, was what looked like a miniature portcullis slab, of the sort used by the Egyptians to seal off a burial chamber. Attached to the slab, or sliding door, were two copper fittings, one of which was broken, a fragment of it lying on the floor of the shaft. This last part of the shaft was lined with polished Tura limestone, which as far as we know was used inside the pyramids only for lining chambers and was considered sacred by the pyramid builders. It could also be seen from the movement of the robot’s laser beam that the slab at the end of the shaft was not fully in contact with the floor but left a gap of about half a centimetre; there was a triangular chip removed from one corner, providing a tantalising glimpse of a grooved channel and a dark recess beyond. Though not conclusive, the video evidence was that what we were looking at was a hatchway leading, perhaps, to some hidden chamber.

I grabbed the phone and called Rudolf. I congratulated him on the amazing discovery and we discussed the details that I had observed on the video. He was, of course, reluctant to speculate what might be beyond the ‘door’, but he had trouble hiding his excitement. I told him this was big news and that he should go to the press; in fact, I was really surprised that nothing had come out in the Egyptian papers. He had heard that they were preparing a statement, but he was not sure. I urged him to consider letting me go to the British media and at least make sure that the story named him as the discoverer. I decided that I should try The Times or the Daily Telegraph. I called the Telegraph and got one of the editors, Christine McGourty; an interview was arranged and the story was due to appear on 7 April.

Meanwhile I asked Rudolf if I could show the tape to Dr Edwards, and he agreed. He allowed me to show it to anyone who was interested, provided it was not broadcast on TV channels or photographs taken from it. I contacted Adrian and suggested he come over right away.

15. Orientation of the four shafts in the Great Pyramid

On 6 April, the day before the article came out in the Telegraph, Adrian and I arranged to show the tape to Dr Malek and his colleagues at the Griffith Institute at the Ashmolean Museum. They were stunned, and a vigorous debate ensued as to what exactly we had all seen. One thing was certain; there was no doubting the importance of Rudolf’s discovery. Even assuming that no chamber existed beyond the slab, this was the first time that any ancient metal has been found inside the pyramid and if the copper fittings on the door turned out to contain more than about 2 per cent of tin, the entire bronze age would have to be redated (Appendix 8). Even the sceptics in our audience couldn’t help being excited at the possibility of a find comparable with Tutankhamen’s tomb.

We then drove to Dr Edwards’s home and showed him the tape. He was thrilled at the discovery, and wondered if more data were available. We called Rudolf in Munich, and he and Dr Edwards had a long conversation. Dr Edwards wanted to see the tape several times, each time picking out new details and asking more questions. He was, of course, keen to know how far the shaft extended above the floor of the King’s Chamber. A rough calculation showed that it went about twenty metres above that level, and this alone suggested that the Queen’s Chamber had not been abandoned. It was pyramid history in the making, and Dr Edwards suggested that Rudolf should come to England immediately to give a talk at the British Museum.

The next day the Telegraph article appeared. It was on page 4 and barely a dozen lines were devoted to the discovery. Dr Edwards said he’d had trouble finding it; surely it deserved more than this? Rudolf was satisfied with the content, but he too was surprised at the small space devoted to it. I contacted Christine McGourty and asked if they were not interested in doing something bigger. She said that the Easter Holidays were coming and most editors were eager to tie up their stories before then, and without pictures there was not much they could do. Rudolf and I agreed that I should go to Munich to discuss the question of pictures that he might provide for me.

Rudolf showed me various video tapes on the shafts and one which he thought would especially please me. It was the filming of the ‘Orion’ shaft, the southern one of the King’s Chamber. It had been taken by UPUAUT I, and the pictures were breathtaking, the faint speck of light from the outside of the south face of the pyramid becoming larger and larger until it was a sizeable rectangular opening. Rudolf’s assistant, who was on the outside of the pyramid, standing precariously on the face of the monument, pulled the robot out and the video camera kept on filming the stunning view of the second and third pyramids below and the Nile Valley to the east. It was for me, in many ways, far more exciting than the film showing the ‘door’. UPUAUT I, in a way the ancient architects would never have imagined, had made the voyage of the soul of Khufu through the narrow shaft leading to the stars.

I returned to England on the tenth of April with six photographs for the newspapers. The Telegraph said that they might consider doing something after Easter, but that I was free to try other papers. Eventually the story came out in the Independent on 16 April. That same day Channel 4 News contacted me and we arranged to show some of the photographs on the seven o’clock bulletin that evening. Rudolf was interviewed by telephone and Dr Edwards made a live appearance. To our surprise and excitement, when asked what might be behind the ‘door’, Edwards said he thought there might be a statue of the king gazing out at the constellation of Orion.⁹ The Orion Mystery had made it on to nationwide news.

The next few weeks saw us busy with the British Museum conference, which took place on 22 April, one month after the historic discovery.¹⁰ Adrian and I organised Rudolf’s arrival with UPUAUT 2 and the technical preparations for the video and slide showing. Many of England’s top Egyptologists were there and eager to see the films: George Hart, an expert on Ancient Egyptian religion; Richard Parkinson, a specialist in Egyptian texts; Carol Andrews, a senior member of the profession and old friend of Dr Edwards; T. G. H. James, the previous Keeper; Dr Vivien Davies, the present Keeper, and Dr Robert Anderson, the Director of the British Museum. Such an eminent gathering was a great honour for Rudolf, who returned the gesture by a surprise donation of UPUAUT 2 to the British Museum on the condition ‘that I may be allowed to borrow it when the exploration resumes’. Assuring him that the famous robot was in good hands, Dr Davies and his colleagues wished him a successful continuation of his work. There was no speculation about what might be behind the ‘door’, but there was no doubt that each person there had his or her own idea.

In the meantime, Rudolf had other plans: his ambition was to create a foundation for the preservation and restoration of monuments in Egypt, and he hoped that his high-tech approach was going to rouse the interest and raise adequate funds for this cause. His immediate concern was the alarming deterioration of the Seti I tomb and cenotaph, which was to be the first task of his new foundation. He began the legal and administrative paperwork to create the Upuaut Foundation, and announced that its purpose was to ‘do for archaeology what Jacques Cousteau had done for oceanography’: popularise a fascinating world which had been forgotten.

Adrian and I were working on a big conference planned for 21 June at the Fédération Nationale des Travaux Publics in Paris. Through this I met Professor Jean Kerisel, who presided at the conference. Kerisel, an active man in his early eighties, is regarded as the grand engineer of Egyptian archaeology. Holder of the Légion d’Honneur, the Croix de Guerre and a long list of titles and important posts in scientific engineering, he is at present the Secretary-general of the Franco-Egyptian Society in Paris.¹¹ His advice in the coming month would be invaluable.

The Paris conference was a resounding success for Rudolf, with many of the big names in French Egyptology present: Jean-Philippe Lauer, author and expert on the Saqqara step-pyramids; Jean Vercoutter, author and president of the French Egyptological Society, previously the famous Mission Française d’Egyptologie, begun under Napoleon; Jean Leclant, discoverer of pyramid texts in Saqqara and Secrétaire-Perpetuel de l’Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, where 150 years ago Champollion had made his celebrated announcement of the deciphering of hieroglyphics, and many other prominent members and scholars of the scientific sectors of France. Kerisel had been interested in my Orion Correlation Theory and the recent precession calculations relating to the shafts, and had asked me to show a few overhead slides to Jean Leclant and others who had expressed interest. Leclant seemed to agree that the Pyramid Texts were expressing textually what the Fourth Dynasty had expressed in the astronomical-architectural media of the monuments themselves. Many of the French researchers present felt that the star religion of the Pyramid Texts needed a fresh approach. At last my mission was reaching its goal.

The latest measurements for the shafts confirmed the uncanny accuracy of the builders of the Great Pyramid when they focused on Sirius and Orion’s Belt. Since the chances were that they had been aware of precessional changes, they probably knew that the shafts were marking an epoch (c. 2450BC). In Egyptian religious texts we often hear of the First Time, when Osiris ruled Egypt during a first golden age.¹² When was this First Time? Could the shafts be used with precession to work this out? And was it to do with the precessional cycle of Orion’s Belt?

The excitement surrounding Rudolf’s discovery had now to be put behind us as we got back to our own project. We decided to look more deeply into the question of precessional cycles and went back to Skyglobe 3·5 to work out when Orion’s Belt began its last cycle.