The Message Of The Sphinx Part 15

So we wonder whether it is possible that the quest of the Horus-King might have had as its ultimate objective the acquisition of knowledge concerning the 'First Time'-perhaps even the acquisition of specific knowledge from that remote epoch when the G.o.ds had walked the earth?

Several pa.s.sages in the Pyramid Texts invite such speculation. For example, we are told that the Horus-King must 'travel upstream'-i.e. must push against the natural drift of 'time'-in order to reach Orion-Osiris in his proper 'First Time' setting: Betake yourself to the Waterway, fare upstream [south], travel about Abydos in this spirit-form of yours which the G.o.ds command to belong to you; may a stairway [road] to the Duat be set up for you to the Place Where Orion Is ...[610]

They have found Osiris ... 'When his name became Sokar' [Memphite necropolis] ... Wake up [Osiris] for Horus ... raise yourself ... fare southward [upstream] to the lake, cross over the sea [sky], for you are he who stands untiring in the midst of Abydos ...[611]

Betake yourself to the Waterway, fare upstream ... traverse Abydos. The celestial portal to the Horizon is open to you ... may you remove yourself to the sky, for the roads of the celestial expanses which lead up to Horus are cleaned for you ... for you have traversed the Winding Waterway [Milky Way] which is in the north of the sky as a star crossing the sea which is beneath the sky. The Duat has grasped your hand at the Place Where Orion Is ...[612]

Likewise there is a striking pa.s.sage in the Coffin Texts which refers to some secret 'spell' or formula to allow the deceased to use the 'path of Rostau' on the land and in the sky (i.e. the path to the Giza necropolis on land and to Orion's belt in the sky) in order to 'go down to any sky he wishes to go down to': I have pa.s.sed on the path of Rostau, whether on water or on land, and these are the paths of Osiris [Orion], they are in the limit of the sky. As for him who knows the spell [formula] for going down into them, he himself is a G.o.d in the suite of Thoth [meaning he is as wise as Thoth, 'the controller of the stars'[613]] [and] he will go down to any sky he wishes to go down to ...[614]

Special numbers

We suspect that the phrase to 'go down to any sky' suggests an awareness-and recording-of precessionally induced changes in the positions of the stars over long periods of time. And we also note its implication that if the chosen initiate was equipped with the correct numerical spell then he would be able to work out-and visualize-the correct positions of the stars in any epoch of his choosing, past or future.

Once again Sellers stands out amongst Egyptologists for being the first to have entertained such apparently outlandish notions. 'It is possible', she writes, 'that early man encoded in his myths special numbers; numbers that seemed to reveal to initiates an amazing knowledge of the movement of the celestial spheres.'[615]

Such numbers, she argues, appear to have been derived from a sustained, scientific study of the cycle of precession and a measurement of its rate and, puzzlingly, turn out to be extremely 'close to the calculations made with today's sophisticated procedures'. Intriguingly, too, there is evidence not only 'that these calculations were made, and conclusions drawn', but also that 'they were transmitted to others by secret encoding that was accessible only to an elite few':[616] In short, Sellers concludes, 'ancient man calculated a special number that he believed would bring this threatening cycle [of precession] back to its starting point ...'[617]

The 'special number' to which Sellers is referring to is 25,920 (and multiples and divisions of it) and thus represents the duration, in solar years, of a full precessional cycle or 'Great Year'.[618] She shows how it can be derived from a variety of simple combinations of other numbers-5, 12, 36, 72, 360, 432, 2160, etc., etc.-all of which are in turn derived from precise observations of precession. Most crucially of all, she shows that this peculiar sequence of numbers occurs in the ancient Egyptian myth of Osiris where, notably '72 conspirators' are said to have been involved with Seth in the murder of the G.o.d-King.[619]

As was shown in Fingerprints of the G.o.ds, the sun's perceived motion through the signs of the zodiac at the vernal equinox proceeds at the rate of one degree every seventy-two years. From this it follows that a movement of the vernal point through 30 degrees will take 2160 years to complete, 60 degrees will take 4320 years, and a full 360-degree cycle will require 25,920 years.[620]

Curiously enough, as the reader will recall from Part I, the Great Pyramid itself incorporates a record of these precessional numbers-since its key dimensions (its height and the perimeter of its base) appear to have been designed as a mathematical model of the earth's polar radius and equatorial circ.u.mference on a scale of 1:43,200. The number 43,200 is, of course, exactly 600 times 72. What we have in this remarkable monument, therefore, is not just a scale model of a hemisphere of the earth but also one in which the scale involved incorporates a 'special number' derived from one of the key planetary motions of the earth itself-i.e. the rate of its axial precession.

In short it seems that secret knowledge is indeed available in the myth of Osiris and in the dimensions of the Great Pyramid. With this secret knowledge, if we wanted to fix a specific date-say 1008 years in the future-and communicate it to other initiates, then we could do so with the 'special number' 14 (72 x 14 = 1008). We would also have to specify the 'zero point' from which they were to make their calculations-i.e. the present epoch-and this might be done with some kind of symbolic or mathematical marker to indicate where the vernal point presently is, i.e. moving out of Pisces and into Aquarius.

A similar exercise could likewise be carried out in reverse. By following the 'eastwards' direction along the ecliptic path we can 'find' (calculate, work out) where the vernal point was at any epoch in the past. Thus if today we wished to use the precessional code to direct attention towards the Pyramid Age we would need to confide to other initiates the 'special number' of 62.5 (72 x 62.5 = 4500 years ago = approximately 2500 bc). Again, we could rule out any ambiguity as to the zero date from which the calculations were to be made if we could find a way to indicate the present position of the vernal point.

We have seen that this is what Sneferu appears to have done with the two Pyramids at Dahshur, which map the two sides of the head of the celestial bull-the 'address' of the vernal point in his epoch. And in a sense, though with a great deal more specificity and precision, this could also be exactly what the builders of the Great Pyramid were doing when they deliberately targeted the southern shafts of the King's and Queen's Chambers on the meridian-transits of such significant stars as Orion and Sirius in the epoch of 2500 bc. To be clear about this, it seems to us well worth investigating the possibility that by setting up such obvious and precise 'time markers' they were trying to provide an unambiguous zero point-circa 2500 bc-for calculations that could only be undertaken by initiates steeped in the mysteries of precession, who were equipped by their training to draw out the hidden portents concealed in certain 'special numbers'.

We note in pa.s.sing that if the Horus-King could have been provided with the 'special number' 111.111, and had used it in the way described above, it would have led him back to (72 x 111.111 years =) 7,999.99 years before the specified 'ground zero', i.e. to almost exactly 8000 years before 2500 bc-in short, to 10,500 bc.

We know this seems like wishful numerology of the worst sort-i.e. 'factoring in' an arbitrary value to a set of calculations so as to procure spurious 'corroboration' for a specific desired date (in this case the date of 10,500 bc, twelve and a half thousand years before the present, that we have already highlighted in Chapter 3 in connection with the Sphinx and the Pyramids of Giza). The problem, however, is that the number 111.111 may well not be an arbitrary value. At any rate, it has long been recognized that the main numerical factor in the design of the Great Pyramid, and indeed of the Giza necropolis as a whole, is the prime number 11-a prime number being one that is only divisible by itself to produce the whole number 1. Thus 11 divided by 11, i.e. the ratio 11:11, produces the whole number 1 (while 11 divided by anything else, i.e. any other ratio, would, of necessity, generate a fraction).

What is intriguing is the way that the architecture of the Great Pyramid responds to the number 11 when it is divided, or multiplied, by other whole numbers. The reader will recall, for example, that its side length of just over 755 feet is equivalent to 440 Egyptian royal cubits-i.e. 11 times 40 cubits.[621] In addition, its height-to-base ratio is 7:11.[622] The slope ratio of its sides is 14:11 (tan 51 degrees 50').[623] And the slope ratio of the southern shaft of the King's Chamber-the shaft that was targeted on Orion's belt in 2500 bc-is 11:11 (tan 45 degrees).[624]

Arguably, therefore, the ratio 11:11, which integrates with our 'special number' 111.111, could be considered as a sort of mathematical key, or 'stargate' to Orion's belt. Moreover, as we shall see, a movement of 111.111 degrees 'backwards along the ecliptic from 'ground-zero' at the Hyades-Taurus, the head of the celestial bull, would place the vernal point 'underneath' the cosmic lion.

Is it not precisely such a location, underneath the Great Sphinx, that the Horus-King is urged to investigate as he stands between its paws 'with his mouth equipped' and faces the questions of the Akhus whose initiations have led him this far? Indeed, does it not seem probable that the 'quest-journey' devised by the 'Followers of Horus' was carefully structured so as to sharpen the mind of the initiate by requiring him to piece together all the clues himself until he finally arrived at the realization that somewhere underneath the Great Sphinx of Giza was something (written or pictorial records, artefacts, maps, astronomical charts) that touched on 'the knowledge of a divine origin', that was of immense importance, and that had been concealed there since the 'First Time'?

In considering such questions, we are reminded of the Hermetic doctrines which transmit a tradition of the wisdom G.o.d Thoth who was said to have 'succeeded in understanding the mysteries of the heavens [and to have] revealed them by inscribing them in sacred books which he then hid here on earth, intending that they should be searched for by future generations but found only by the fully worthy'.[625] Do the 'sacred books of Thoth', or their equivalent, still lie in the bedrock beneath the Great Sphinx of Giza, and do the 'fully worthy' still seek them there?

Seekers after truth

Other questions, too, have been raised implicitly and explicitly in the foregoing chapters: 1. Were the Great Sphinx and the great Pyramids of Giza designed to serve as parts of an immense three-dimensional 'model' of the sky of the 'First Time'?

2. Could other features of the necropolis also be part of this model?

3. If so, then has enough survived for us to compare the model with computer simulations of the skies above Giza in previous epochs and thus arrive at an accurate archaeoastronomical dating for the 'First Time', i.e. for the true 'genesis' of the extraordinary civilization of Egypt?

4. By looking at simulations of the ancient skies would we not, to use the language of the Egyptian funerary texts, be 'going down to any sky we wished to go down to'?

5. Is it an accident that so many of these texts have survived for thousands of years, or could their compilers have intended them to survive and carefully designed them in such a way that human nature would ensure their copying and recopying down the ages (a process that has been promiscuously resumed in the last century and a half, since the decipherment of the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, with the Coffin Texts, the Pyramid Texts, the Book of the Dead, etc., etc., now translated and reprinted in dozens of modern languages and editions-and even available on CD-ROM)?

6. In other words, is it not possible in our readings of the texts, and in our a.n.a.lysis of the rituals to which they were linked, that we have stumbled upon a message of primordial antiquity that was composed not just for the Pyramid Age, and not just for the Horus-Kings of ancient Egypt, but for all 'seekers after the truth'-from any culture, in any epoch-who might be 'equipped' to put texts and monuments together and to view the skies of former times?

Chapter 16.

Message in a Bottle?

'We have reached this fascinating point in our evolution ... we have reached the time when we know we can talk to each other across the distances between the stars ...'

Dr. John Billingham, NASA Ames Research Center, 1995 Together with the ancient texts and rituals that are linked to them, could the vast monuments of the Giza necropolis have been designed to transmit a message from one culture to another-a message not across s.p.a.ce, but across time?

Egyptologists reply to such questions by rolling their eyes and hooting derisively. Indeed they would not be 'Egyptologists' (or at any rate they could not long remain within that profession) if they reacted with anything other than scorn and disbelief to suggestions that the necropolis might be more than a cemetery, that the Great Sphinx might significantly predate the epoch of 2500 bc, and that the Pyramids might not be just 'royal tombs'. By the same token, no self-respecting Egyptologist would be prepared to consider, even for a moment, the outlandish possibility that some sort of mysterious 'message' might have been encoded into the monuments.

So whom should we turn to for advice when confronted by what we suspect may be a message from a civilization so far distant from us in time as to be almost unknowable?

Anti-cipher

The only scientists actively working on such problems today are those involved in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence-SETI for short. They endlessly sweep the heavens for messages from distant civilizations and they have therefore naturally had to give some thought to what might happen if they ever did identify such a message. According to Dr. Philip Morisson of the Ma.s.sachusetts Inst.i.tute of Technology: To begin with we would know very little about it. If we received it we would not understand what we're getting. But we would have an unmistakable signal, full of structure, full of challenge. The best people would try to decode it, and it will be easy to do because those who have constructed it would have made it easy to decode, otherwise there's no point. This is anti-cryptography: 'I want to make a message for you, who never got in touch with any symbols of mine, no key no clue, nevertheless you'll be able to read it ...' I would have to fill it full of clues and unmistakable clever devices ...[626]

In his book, Cosmos, Professor Carl Sagan of Cornell University makes much the same point-and does so, curiously enough, with reference to the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic system. He explains that the 'Egyptian hieroglyphics are, in significant part, a simple subst.i.tution cipher. But not every hieroglyph is a letter or syllable. Some are pictographs ...' When it came to translation, this 'mix of letters and pictographs caused some grief for interpreters ...' In the early nineteenth century, however, a breakthrough was made by the French scholar Champollion who deciphered the famous 'Rosetta Stone', a slab of black basalt bearing identical inscriptions in Egyptian hieroglyphics and in Greek. Since Champollion could read the Greek, all he needed was some kind of 'key' to relate specific hieroglyphs to specific Greek words or letters. This key was provided by the constant repet.i.tion in the Greek text of the name of Pharaoh Ptolemy V and an equal number of repet.i.tions in the Egyptian text of a distinctive oblong enclosure-known as a cartouche-containing a repeated group of hieroglyphs. As Sagan comments: The cartouches were the key ... almost as though the Pharaohs of Egypt had circled their own names to make the going easier for Egyptologists two thousand years in the future ... What a joy it must have been [for Champollion] to open this one-way communication channel with another civilization, to permit a culture that had been mute for millennia to speak of its history, magic, medicine, religion, politics and philosophy.[627]

Professor Sagan then offers a comparison that is highly apposite to our present inquiry. 'Today,' he says: we are again seeking messages from an ancient and exotic civilization, this time hidden from us not only in time, but in s.p.a.ce. If we should receive a radio message from an extraterrestrial civilization, how could it possibly be understood? Extraterrestrial intelligence will be elegant, complex, internally consistent and utterly alien. Extraterrestrials would, of course, wish to make a message sent to us as comprehensible as possible. But how could they? Is there in any sense an interstellar Rosetta Stone? We believe there is a common language that all technical civilizations, no matter how different, must have. That common language is science and mathematics. The laws of Nature are the same everywhere.[628]

It seems to us that if there is indeed a very ancient 'message' at Giza then it is likely to be expressed in the language of science and mathematics that Sagan identifies-and for the same reason. Moreover, given its need to continue 'transmitting' coherently across thousands of years (and chasms of cultural change), we think that the composer of such a message would be likely to make use of the Precession of the Equinoxes, the one particular 'law of Nature' that can be said to govern, and measure-and identify-long periods of terrestrial time.

Durable vehicles

The Pyramids and the Great Sphinx at Giza are, above all else, as elegant, as complex, as internally consistent and as utterly 'alien' as the extraterrestrial intelligence that Sagan envisages (alien in the sense of the tremendous, almost superhuman scale of these structures and of their uncanny-and in our terms apparently unnecessary-precision).

Moreover, returning briefly to Dr. Philip Morisson's remarks quoted earlier, we think that the Giza necropolis also qualifies rather well for the description 'packed full of clues and unmistakable clever devices'.[629] Indeed, it seems to us that a truly astonis.h.i.+ng quantum of ingenuity was invested by the Pyramid builders to ensure that the four fundamental aspects of an 'unmistakable' message were thoroughly elaborated here: 1. the creation of durable, unequivocal markers which could serve as beacons to inflame the curiosity and engage the intelligence of future generations of seekers; 2. the use of the 'common language' of precessional astronomy; 3. the use of precessional co-ordinates to signal specific time-referents linking past to present and present to future; 4. Cunningly concealed store-rooms, or 'Halls of Records' that could only be found and entered by those who were fully initiated in the 'silent language' and thus could read and follow its clues.

In addition, though the monuments are enabled to 'speak' from the moment that their astronomical context is understood, we have also to consider the amazing profusion of funerary texts that have come down to us from all periods of Egyptian history-all apparently emanating from the same very few common sources.[630] As we have seen, these texts operate like 'software' to the monuments' 'hardware', charting the route that the Horus-King (and all other future seekers) must follow.

We recall a remark made by Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend in Hamlet's Mill to the effect that the great strength of myths as vehicles for specific technical information is that they are capable of transmitting that information independently of the knowledge of individual story-tellers.[631] In other words as long as a myth continues to be told true, it will also continue to transmit any higher message that may be concealed within its structure-even if neither the teller nor the hearer understands that message.

So, too, we suspect, with the ancient Egyptian funerary texts. We would be surprised if the owners of many of the coffins and tomb walls onto which they were copied had even the faintest inkling that specific astronomical observations and directions were being duplicated at their expense. What motivated them was precisely what the texts offered-the lure of immortal life. Yet by taking that lure did they not in fact guarantee a kind of immortality for the texts themselves? Did they not ensure that so many faithful copies would be made that some at least would be bound to survive for many thousands of years?

We think that there were always people who understood the true 'science of immortality' connected to the texts, and who were able to read the astronomical allegories in which deeper secrets, not granted to the common herd, lay concealed. We presume that these people were once called the 'Followers of Horus', that they operated as an invisible college behind the scenes in Egyptian prehistory and history, that their primary cult centre was at Giza-Heliopolis, and that they were responsible for the initiation of kings and the realization of blueprints. We also think that the timetables they worked to-and almost everything of significance that they did-was in one way or another written in the stars.

Hints and memories

The powerfully astronomical character of the Giza necropolis, although ignored by Egyptologists, has been recognized by open-minded and intuitive researchers throughout history. The Hermetic Neoplatonists of Alexandria, for example, appear to have been acutely sensitive to the possibility of a 'message' and were quick to discern the strong astral qualities of the textual material and the monuments.[632] The scholar Proclus (fifth century ad) also acknowledged that the Great Pyramid was astronomically designed-and with certain specific stars in mind. Indeed, in his commentary on Plato's Timaeus (which deals with the story of the lost civilization of 'Atlantis'), Proclus reported strangely that 'the Great Pyramid was used as an observation for Sirius'.[633]

Vague memories of an astronomically constructed 'message' at Giza appear to have filtered down to the Middle Ages. At any rate the Arab chroniclers in this period spoke of the Great Pyramid as 'a temple to the stars' and frequently connected it to the Biblical 'Flood' which they dated to circa 10,300 bc.[634] Also of relevance is a report written by the Arab geographer Yakut al Hamawi (eleventh century ad) to the effect that the star-wors.h.i.+ppers of Harran, the Sabians (whose 'holy books' were supposedly the writings of Thoth-Hermes) came at that time on special pilgrimages to the Pyramids at Giza.[635] It has also been pointed out that the very name of the Sabians-in Arabic Sa'Ba-almost certainly derived from the ancient Egyptian word for star, i.e. Sba.[636] And the reader will recall from Part I that as far back as the early second millennium bc-i.e. almost three thousand years before Yakut al Hamawi left us his report connecting the Sabians to the Pyramids-pilgrims from Harran are known to have visited the Sphinx which they wors.h.i.+pped as a G.o.d under the name Hwl.[637]

In the seventeenth century, the British mathematician Sir Isaac Newton became deeply interested in the Great Pyramid and wrote a dissertation on its mathematical and geodetic qualities based on data that had been gathered at Giza by Dr. John Greaves, the Savillian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford.[638] Later, in 1865 the Astronomer Royal of Scotland, Charles Piazzi Smyth, launched an investigation into the Great Pyramid which he was convinced was an instrument of prophecy that incorporated a Messianic 'message'. It was Piazzi Smyth who first accurately measured and demonstrated the intense polar and meridional alignments of the monument, the precision of which he a.s.signed to sightings of the ancient Pole star, Alpha Draconis.[639]

In the first half of the twentieth century, a succession of eminent astronomers-such as Richard Proctor, Eugene Antoniadi, Jean Baptiste Biot and Norman Lockyer-made persistent attempts to draw attention to the astronomical qualities of the Giza monuments. Their efforts, however, had little impact on professional Egyptologists who by this time felt that they had got the whole intellectual business of the necropolis 'wrapped up' (it was a cemetery), did not understand astronomy at all (and claimed that the ancient Egyptians didn't either), and routinely ganged up to debunk, deride or simply ignore any astronomical 'theories' which diverged from their consensus.

Despite this hostile intellectual climate, we are of the opinion at the end of our own research that the big question is no longer whether the monuments of Giza were designed to express key astronomical and mathematical principles, but why.

Once again, the clue may lie in the narrow star-shafts of the Great Pyramid.

The language of the stars

The first major breakthrough in understanding the function of the Great Pyramid's shafts was made in the summer of 1963 by the American astronomer Virginia Trimble and the Egyptologist-architect, Dr. Alexander Badawy. It came about because they decided to follow up Badawy's 'hunch' that the shafts might not be 'ventilation channels' as Egyptologists supposed,[640] but might instead prove to have a symbolic function related to the astral rituals of the Pyramid builders. Virginia Trimble was able to b.u.t.tress her colleague's intuition by showing that the shafts from the King's Chamber had pointed, in the epoch of 2500 bc, to major star systems that were of crucial importance to the Pyramid builders. As readers will recall from Part I, the northern shaft had been targeted on Alpha Draconis-the Pole Star in the Pyramid Age-and the southern shaft had been targeted on Orion's belt.[641]

Today Virginia Trimble is a senior professor of astronomy at UCLA and the University of Maryland and is also the Vice-President of the American Astronomical Society. Her views, as well as being enlightened by a comprehensive grasp of astronomy, accord fully with common sense: Which constellations the Egyptians saw in the sky is still something of a mystery ... but they had one constellation that was an erect standing man, Osiris, the G.o.d. And the one constellation that looks like a standing man to everyone is Orion, and the identification between a deceased Pharaoh and the G.o.d Osiris made Orion immediately a candidate for a shaft whose sole purpose was to enable the soul of the Pharaoh to communicate between earth and sky ...[642]

When we met Virginia Trimble we immediately realized we were in the presence of an acute and formidable thinker. Alexander Badawy had pa.s.sed away in the late 1980s yet she remained undaunted. She had concluded that the shafts were astronomically aligned, she said, and that they had an astronomical function, because logic and evidence dictated that this was the case.

Trimble's views have won general acceptance amongst senior astronomers. To give one recent example, Dr. Mary Bruck of Edinburgh, writing in the Journal of the British Astronomical a.s.sociation in 1995, had this to say about the shafts: 'Their alignments are ... compatible with the hypothesis that they indicate the culmination of certain important stars around the 25th century bc ... The addition of a Sirius shaft [southern shaft of the Queen's Chamber] to the Orion one strongly supports the claim that they have an astronomical significance.'[643]

Thought-tools

We suggest that one of the major objectives of the unseen academy, whose members were known as the 'Followers of Horus', was to 'fix' the epoch of 2500 bc (i.e. 4500 years before the present) by using the Great Pyramid, its precisely angled shafts, and the stars of Orion's belt. We suggest that they envisaged those stars rather like the gauge of a gigantic sliding scale set across the south meridian. Once this 'thought-tool' was in place all they needed to do in order to determine a date either in the past or in the future was mentally to 'slide' the belt up or down the meridian from the 'zero point' targeted by the southern shaft of the King's Chamber.

We also suggest that a second and somewhat similar 'thought-tool' was attached to the ecliptic (the apparent annual path of the sun through the twelve constellations of the zodiac). Here the gauge was the vernal point. By mentally sliding it to the left (east) or to the right (west) of a 'fixed' marker on the ecliptic the 'Followers of Horus' would once again have been able to determine and denominate either a past date or a date in the future ...

In our own epoch, circa ad 2000, the vernal point is poised to enter the sign or 'Age' of Aquarius. For a little over 2000 years it has been pa.s.sing through Pisces (160 bc to ad 2000) and before that it was in Aries (2320 bc to 160 bc). In the Pyramid Age the vernal point slowly swept through Taurus (4480 bc to 2320 bc). Going further back we reach the 'Ages' of Gemini (6640 bc to 4480 bc) and then Cancer (8800 bc to 6640 bc). After six 'Great Months' we reach the Age of Leo (10,960 bc to 8800 bc).

Now imagine that we find an ancient doc.u.ment at Giza which states that it was composed when the vernal point was in the sign of the Ram-i.e. when the sun on the spring equinox rose against the stellar background of the constellation of Aries. Armed with this information all that we can do is roughly bracket the doc.u.ment's date as being somewhere between 2320 bc and 160 bc, What we need in order to arrive at a more precise chronology is some means to 'fine-tune' the vernal point. It is here that the specific utility of the sliding scale at the meridian becomes apparent because if the ancient doc.u.ment not only stated which zodiacal sign housed the vernal point but also advised that the lowest star of Orion's belt crossed the meridian at an alt.i.tude of 50 degrees above the horizon then we would be able, using precession, to calculate with great accuracy that the date in question must be very near 1400 bc.[644]

The Pyramid Age occurred when the vernal point was in Taurus and, as we have seen, the fine-tuning permitted by the 45-degree angle of the Great Pyramid's 'Orion shaft' draws particular attention to the date of 2500 bc. With this date, 4500 years before the present, we can use precession to calculate the exact position of the vernal point-which, as the reader will recall, was near the head of the Hyades-Taurus at that time, close to the right (i.e. west) bank of the Milky Way.

The reader will also not have forgotten that this is the 'address' given in the Pyramid Texts as the starting point for the cosmic journey of the solar Horus-King. It is here that he receives his instructions to board the solar-bark and 'sail' across the Milky Way towards the 'horizon' to meet up with Horakhti. His direction of travel is, therefore, eastwards, i.e. to the left of the vernal point. In terms of the chronology of the 'Great Year' of precession (as distinct from the solar year), this means that the Horus-King is now poised to travel back in time towards the age of Leo-Horakhti and to a specific spot on the ecliptic path-'The Splendid Place of the "First Time" ' ... 'the place more n.o.ble than any place'.[645]

But where is that place? How is the Horus-King (initiate, seeker) to find it in the 2160-year, 30-degree swathe that the constellation of Leo occupies on the ecliptic?

The answer is that he would have to use the gauge of Orion's belt at the meridian to fine-tune the exact place of the vernal point and hence also to arrive at an exact date. In his mind's eye he would have to slide the belt 'down' the meridian to its 'First Time' and then see how far to the east that operation had 'pushed' the vernal point along the ecliptic.

Wherever that place was would be the celestial destination that the 'Followers of Horus' were urging him to reach.