Free The Egypt Code by Robert Bauval

83
     
    But what was so important about the distance that the sun travelled between the Pleiades and Leo in 2781 BC? The time taken would be about 90 days from 21 March to 21 June (Gregorian), thus from the spring equinox to the summer solstice. We are given a clue in the so-called Carlsberg Papyrus I, which tells us that the star ‘which goes to earth (sets) and enters the Duat. It stops in the house of Geb (i.e under the earth) for 70 days . . . It is in the Embalming House . . . it sheds its impurities to the earth. It is pure and it comes into existence (rises) in the (eastern) horizon like Sirius.’ 84
     
     
    Again using StarryNight Pro. V.4, it can be seen that the days when both Orion’s belt and Sirius are ‘invisible’, i.e. in the Duat, is about 90 days collectively, which corresponds to the 90 days the sun travelled from spring equinox to summer solstice. The astronomer Ed Krupp commented on the Carlsberg Papyrus I that ‘this (rebirth) cycle is the essence of Egypt. It is paralleled by the myth. It is played out in the sky.’ 85
     
    It would seem clear that the rebirth of Osiris was played out not in an imaginary sky but in the sacred Memphis-Heliopolis region, which was developed to resemble the Duat, with star pyramids dotted on the western shore of the Milky Way/Nile.
     

CHAPTER FOUR
     
    As Above, So Below
     
    The cosmos itself is what mattered to our ancestors. Their lives, their beliefs, their destinies - all were part of this bigger pageant. Just as the environment of their temples was made sacred by metaphors of cosmic order, entire cities and great ritual centres were also astronomically aligned and organised. Each sacred capital restated the theme of cosmic order in terms of its builders’ own perception of the universe. Principles which the society considered its own - which ordered its life and gave it its character - were borrowed from the sky and built into the plans of the cities.
    E.C. Krupp, Echoes of the Ancient Skies
     
     
It is certainly possible that the religion of historic times in ancient Egypt had its roots this far back in time, and that its gods, as in historic times, were in the sky . . . it is (also) certainly possible that specific members of a group were given the function to observe and remember the positions and movements of the sun, moon, planets, and stars . . .
    Jane B. Seller, The Death of Gods in Ancient Egypt
     
     
Over a period of a thousand years ancient observers could discern . . . the
secular shifting of the Great Gyroscope . . . The symmetries of the
machine took shape in their minds. And truly it was the time machine, as
Plato understands it, the ‘moving image of eternity’ . . . the Precession
took on an overpowering significance. It became the vast impenetrable
pattern of fate itself . . .
    Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend, Hamlet’s Mill
     

Looking South
     
    In Egypt you are always aware that the country is sliced in half by the Nile. In ancient Egypt you were said to be either in the east, in the land of the living, where the celestial bodies rise, or you were said to be in the west, in the land of the dead, where the celestial bodies set. East was life and west was death. To cross the Nile from east to west was to enter the world of the dead. To cross from west to east was to be born, or, in the parlance of ancient Egypt, to be ‘where the gods are born’.
     
    In ancient times there were no bridges across the Nile. The only way to cross was by ferry. In the royal rebirth rituals of the Pyramid Texts, the dead king is said to ‘ferry across’ a ‘Winding Waterway’ when the ‘Fields of Rushes are flooded’. This is clearly an allusion to the crossing of the flood plains during the season of inundation in the region of Heliopolis. But in the context of the rebirth rites, the event takes place not on the land but in the starry world of the celestial Duat, which is visible in the east of the sky:
    The Fields of Rushes