Sundial

Thanks, METE, I'm going to take this opportunity to get on a soap box. Basically, if you're in a survival situation and you want to know what time it is, just stick a stick in the ground, fairly perpindicular. And then watch the shadow for a day or two, it will also tell you which way is north... if you don't know how to read the Big Dipper or Cassiopoeia. Oh, and if you want to know what time it is, just watch the sun rise, watch high noon, and watch it set.

So that's not my soap box issue, it's this: a lot of New-Age people talk about how the Egyptian pyramids were exactly oriented to the north. Wasn't that amazing? How did they figure that out?
Now these Egyptians were not particularly explorers. What they were was sun worshippers.
So, as any good boyscout knows, you put a perpindicular stick in the ground and you track the shadow of the sun from sunrise to sunset. That gives you your east-west coordinates. If you do this over the course of the year, as any good sun-worshipper would do, you get a median for east-west. Since they are sun-worshippers, they will get the right line to align their perfectly square pyramids along...east to west. Just coincidentally, they also point perfectly to north and south.

Thank you for your nominations to my Nobel Prize for Cryptic Science.

Don
 
Esav, 'Build Your Own --' "all stones are numbered" - a perfect example of the dumbing down of America !!...Part of the reason I posted the watch was that so many 'get away for the weekend' but they don't because they bring all their normal accutriments computer, cell phones etc with them.
 
Coldwood said:
So that's not my soap box issue, it's this: a lot of New-Age people talk about how the Egyptian pyramids were exactly oriented to the north. Wasn't that amazing? How did they figure that out?
Now these Egyptians were not particularly explorers. What they were was sun worshippers.
So, as any good boyscout knows, you put a perpindicular stick in the ground and you track the shadow of the sun from sunrise to sunset. That gives you your east-west coordinates. If you do this over the course of the year, as any good sun-worshipper would do, you get a median for east-west. Since they are sun-worshippers, they will get the right line to align their perfectly square pyramids along...east to west. Just coincidentally, they also point perfectly to north and south.
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There is also the possiblility the three pyramids in Giza are lined up with Orion's Belt. Granted it makes sense if you've ever looked at Orion in the night sky, but you also have to realize I got this off a program having to do with the search for Atlantis so I can't say whether or not this is fact.
 
if you like reading stuff about pyramids and such try out zecharia sitchin at sitchin.com

i have read most of his books and they are very interesting including the when and why the pyramids were built.
 
cssims said:
There is also the possiblility the three pyramids in Giza are lined up with Orion's Belt.
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The individual pyramids are aligned north-south. The Giza area has more than just the 3 main pyramids, and some of the other objects also represent Orion, supposedly. Of course, when you have a large number of items, pick & choose which ones you want to be significant! :)
 
mete said:
... so many 'get away for the weekend' but they don't because they bring all their normal accutriments computer, cell phones etc with them.
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True. There is a difference between hiking into the hills for a few days and car camping, too.

But I give them all credit for at least familiarizing themselves with something new.

Meanwhile, figure out how this one works: the Jerusalem compass.
 
Esav Benyamin said:
Meanwhile, figure out how this one works: the Jerusalem compass.
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Hmmm, lemme see. I know! It's a magnetic compass, but the main needle points east and west! Whether I live in New York City or Beijing, I orient the compass towards Jerusalem...gasp, it says so right there on the compass face...and, Gadzooks, the needle points in that direction!
 
I'm staying up too late. Witchhunter, I have read some of Zecharia Sitchin's articles, but not his books. Interesting stuff, seriously. Right now I'm waiting for the alien lizard people to come back and reclaim our wimmin.
 
cssims said:
There is also the possiblility the three pyramids in Giza are lined up with Orion's Belt. Granted it makes sense if you've ever looked at Orion in the night sky, but you also have to realize I got this off a program having to do with the search for Atlantis so I can't say whether or not this is fact.
Click to expand...
I say coincidence.

Here's the trick. The stars in Orion's belt are basically equidistant from each other, from left to right. In the Northern Hemisphere, they appear to move at angle upward from left to right, but otherwise are equally spaced.

The pyramids are equally spaced, and as we know, they end in a point.

It is perfectly possible, based on perspective, to stand at a point near the pyramids that make their tips appear to touch the stars in Orion's belt.

Impressive, but you can take three, tall metal rods (or 2 x 4s or whatever), and stand them upright in your driveway, evenly spaced. You can reposition yourself, crouch, lean, twist, as you need to, but lo and behold... they will appear to line up with the stars in Orion's belt.

Less impressive, you can do it with your fingers.

It's pure coincidence. As added evidence: the stars in the belt bore no special significance in Egyptian culture (as opposed to Sirius).

Nothing else "lines up" with them in the same area.

There's no magical place you need to stand at any specific point in time to make the trick work... unlike Stonehenge and other known archaeo-astronomical buildings... you're free to walk around until the trick appears to work.

Basically, here's the same trick done with the sun and Manhattan. (Click!). There's no special magic or intent here. Just coincidence.
 
There's a little more to the math, Watchful. Don't think I'm ripping on you: I'm just arguing, not contradicting you.

For the Manhattan example, timing is critical, as they state on the site you linked. Yes, Manhattan's buildings cast a shadow as well as Stonehenge parallel to the sun's path, but that view of the sunset on that street won't be the same in December as in July - that's exactly the point.

The constellation Orion represented Osiris to the Egyptians - very important indeed. Even the Sumerians saw this constellation and included it in their pantheon.

Check out Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval's Riddle of the Sphinx The book is the best attempt I've read so far to reconcile the Giza geometry to a single point in time. Unfortunately for their credibility, the date that comes out is significantly older than traditional Egyptologists agree with. As we all know, constellations 'rotate' through the sky over aeons thanks to the earth's 10,000 year 'wobble'. When you see a kid's toy top wobble - that's the same phenomenon (gyroscopic precession).
They rewound the constellations back to a time when the stars do indeed mirror Orion, both in spacing AND orientation. It's not a symmetrical pattern - the smallest and dimmest star is not in line with the other two and that's an important relationship and it's duplicated precisely on the ground at Giza in the Menkaure Pyramid.

Not only that, but at that time, the Milky Way would have appeared to be perpendicular to the horizon, originating where the Nile met the horizon (it may have been the causeway rather than the river itself - I read it quite a while ago now). That meeting point would have had profound significance to early Egyptians. That's important when you remember that pious Egyptians went 'down' when they died, not 'up'. Which also brings up interesting arguments about the 'ventilation shafts', especially in the Queen's Chamber, but that's another argument for another board....

Some of the proposals are a stretch, but they make you ask more questions.
Questions like, why is the Sphinx's head disproportionally small and why is the lateral plane of the face 'looking' 10 degrees off center (big error for Egyptian engineers) ?

Why does there appear to be water erosion down its flanks when it's spent the majority of its known life buried to its neck in sand ? The degree of erosion in the local sandstone automatically antedates the accepted dating of the Sphinx. Throughout the Pharoanic period, Egypt's climate had already changed from forest to desert and the lions, not being desert animals, left the land when their habitat did.

Why does it not look (according to forensic examiners) like the images we 'know' to be Kephren ?

Why is it the only edifice on the Giza Plateau that's carved from the living rock, not assembled from quarried stones ?

It's an interesting read if one keeps one's mind open, especially since there are so many unaddressed questions in the accepted timeline. I'll always put money on math being right more often than the inherent biases of historical record.

BTW, that watch is great, mete. I was worried about continuing off topic, but the topic is sundials after all....
 
DeadEyeLefty:

I'm not sure you've provided any contrary opinion to my claim.

You indicate that timing is critical for my Manhattan example. Does this mean the Dutch laid out Manhattan specifically for this effect? Or is it coincidence?

Orion appears to have represented Osiris, but to what significance did they attach the three stars of the belt? None, apparently, although one claim says that the constellation of Oriris did in fact consist solely of those three stars... although note, this article also debunks the claim!

The Milky Way's positioning is, as far as I've ever heard their claim, unrelated to Orion's belt.

The "riddle of the sphinx" has nothing to do whatsoever with the long-standing New Age claim that the Pyramids of Giza are "exactly aligned" with the stars of Orion's belt.

As I often say, keeping a truly open mind means exploring both claims, not just the "cool" one!

Not that you appear to buy in to this either...
 
Watchful said:
You indicate that timing is critical for my Manhattan example. Does this mean the Dutch laid out Manhattan specifically for this effect? Or is it coincidence?
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The Dutch only laid out that part of Manhattan below Wall Street, not the approximately east-west grid north of that.

The sun shining directly down the streets is like a broken watch being right twice a day. :p

The "riddle of the sphinx" has nothing to do whatsoever with the long-standing New Age claim that the Pyramids of Giza are "exactly aligned" with the stars of Orion's belt.
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"New Age" are a cross between role-playing and religion-lite. We can examine theories without their input, even if they have bought into some version of them.
 
Esav Benyamin said:
The sun shining directly down the streets {of Manhattan} is like a broken watch being right twice a day. :p
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Agreed, although twice a year is more exact!

Esav Benyamin said:
"New Age" are a cross between role-playing and religion-lite. We can examine theories without their input, even if they have bought into some version of them.
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I would say the theories--and the alleged evidence--originated with that group. I could be wrong. I'm not aware of any other groups making claims substantiated or otherwise that tie into these theories.

Wow. We've gone way off the subject of the thread.
 
Esav, "points toward Jerusalem" are you sure from where you are that it's not just pointing to Williamsburg Brooklyn ????
 
I can't say. You want to get me lost, drop me off in Brooklyn. I am strictly Bronx and Manhattan. Maybe it's pointing to Washington Heights!
 
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