THE DATE OF THE GREAT PYRAMID’S ERECTION

“Visitors who enter the Great Pyramid in the night-time may see the North Star shining down the Descending Passage. This star did not always occupy its present place, for owing to the precession of the equinoxes the constellations slowly change their apparent positions in the heavens. The celebrated astronomer Sir John Herschel, who had this phenomenon drawn to his attention by Col. Howard Vyse, calculated that the polar star at the time of the building of the Pyramid was Alpha Draconis, the Dragon star.

Thuban, also known as Alpha Draconis, is a white giant star around 300 light years from Earth, it has a mass around 4 times that of sun and a diameter around 7 times greater. Around the period of 4,000 to 2,000 BC Thuban was used by the ancients as the pole star as it was the closest star to the North Pole at that time.

According to Sir John Herschel the date when this star could best be seen from the lower extremity of the Descending Passage, was 2160 B.C., for in that year Alpha Draconis, when at its lower culmination in its apparent daily circuit round the celestial pole, was in the direct line of the special angle of the Descending Passage. Sir John Herschel claimed that the coincidence of this particular star with the angle of the downward passage in the Great Pyramid, was the ancient Architect’s method of memorializing to all future ages the date of the erection of his great monument.

For the benefit of those who have not had their attention drawn to this matter, we may state that the line of the Descending Passage is not directed upward to the very pole of the heavens (the North Celestial pole), but to a point which is 3° 42′ below it. As the total length of the passage, from the outer surface of the original casing-stones, is fully 345 feet, and the height from floor to roof under four feet, it follows that the angle of view which one may obtain of the heavens from the lower end of the passage, does not exceed 1⅓ Hence any star nearer than 3°, or further away than 4⅓ from the celestial pole, cannot be seen from the lower extremity of the Descending Passage.

The present North Star, Polaris, which is the final star in the tail of the constellation called the Little Bear (a Ursa Minoris. “The Little Dipper”), is about 1¼ degrees from the celestial pole, and therefore cannot be observed from very far down in the passage. And even when a star is at the particular distance of 3° 42′ from the pole, it will only shine down the axis of the Descending Passage when at its lower culmination, i.e., when it is passing under the celestial pole on its apparent daily journey round this central point of the heavens.

Professor C. Piazzi Smyth, who readily admitted a scientific or symbolic significance in every feature of the Great Pyramid, reasoned that, as the Descending Passage pointed to the inferior lower, and not to the superior upper, culmination of the circumpolar star Alpha Draconis, it must have been because at that date (which he calculated to be, not 2160, but 2170 B.C.) a much more important star was then crossing the meridian of the Pyramid above the pole. And pursuing his reasoning in harmony with certain symbolism’s connected with the seven overlapping of the sides of the Grand Gallery, he claimed, further, that this important star must have crossed the meridian to the south of the zenith of the Pyramid, and in the direction of the ascending Grand Gallery. He demonstrated that there was just such a notable star crossing the meridian in the required position above the pole, at the same moment when Alpha Draconis could be observed from the Descending Passage crossing the meridian below the pole. The name of this star is Alcyone of the renowned group of seven stars called the Pleiades, which are specially mentioned in the Scriptures (Job. 38:31—See margin).

In Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid, 5th Edition, page 263, Professor Smyth writes: “When they, the Pleiades, crossed the meridian at midnight above the Pole to the south, at the same instant that Alpha Draconis was crossing below the Pole to the north, and at the particular distance from the Pole indicated by the Entrance Passage, then in the Autumn season of the northern hemisphere of that one year (2170 B.C.), the meridian of the equinoctial point of the heavens coincided with the Pleiades.

“That Autumn night, therefore, of that particular year, was not only, in the primeval fashion, the beginning of the year (See note number (1) at bottom of page), but that year was, with the Pleiades to lead it out in that significant manner, the beginning of the first humanly noted example of a period of the precession of the equinoxes, a cycle destined not to repeat itself, in that manner, until 25,827 [or, properly, 25,694-5] years shall have come and gone.”

It is well to notice that Professor Smyth did not consider the year 2170 B.C. to be absolutely fixed as the date of the building of the Great Pyramid. He admitted that it is difficult to compute the very year when the Pleiades and Alpha Draconis were in the required positions relative to the Pyramid; and the year 2170 B.C. he always regarded as more the average, rather than the absolute, date. In his larger publication, Life and Work at the Great Pyramid, Vol. III, page 283, after giving a table of various computations ranging from 2000 B.C. to 2300 B.C., he wrote:

“Having thus exhibited without favor all the widest variations in results, of which the case seems well-nigh capable, we may be pretty certain that the true date will ultimately prove to be contained within them; and will be found, if not actually 2170 B.C., at least closer thereto than the beginning or end of the duration of the Great Pyramid’s building can be to its middle date.”

Later, in the 3rd Edition of his “Our inheritance in the Great Pyramid”, page 444, when reviewing the matter of the building date, Professor Smyth wrote: “though I did, no doubt, years ago mentally conclude and publish 2170 B.C. to be most probably the year intended to be memorialized as the foundation year, by the architect of the Great Pyramid, it was no ridged deduction of scientific exactitude.” Still later, in his 4th Edition of the same publication, page 388, he refers to a certain astronomical table prepared by Dr. Brunnow, Astronomer-Royal for Ireland, in which the date 2248 B.C. instead of 2170 B.C. is given as the year when the particular stars, and the equinoctial point, were in the necessary positions on the meridian of the Pyramid.

This table was re-calculated by R. A. Proctor of Cambridge University, who had his own theories regarding the purpose of the Great Pyramid. Although Professor Smyth did not agree with these theories, he nevertheless recognized R. A. Proctor’s ability as an astronomer. Referring to the latter’s publication on the Pyramid, Professor Smyth wrote: “I am happy to point out that its author does one good thing toward the end of his essay, on his own sound knowledge of modern practical astronomy and its methods of calculation. This good thing is, that he computes the date for the Pleiades stars being in the [desired] position described in No.4 of Dr. Brunnow’s list, and ‘says that he finds it, not 2248 B.C. but more nearly 2140 B.C. To which I can only say for the reasons pointed out . . . very probably.”

This year 2140 B.C. pronounced by Professor C. Piazzi Smyth, after further careful consideration, to be very probably the correct date of the Great Pyramid’s erection, because of the astronomical coincidence of the notable stars, Alpha Draconis and Alcyone of the Pleiades, with the angle of the Descending Passage, and with the meridian of the building, is corroborated by the Pyramid itself, by means of its characteristic use of an inch-year measurement along its time-passages.

Professor C. Piazzi Smyth, when measuring in the upper built part of the Descending Passage during the year 1865, carefully noted on each side wall two vertical joints in the masonry, the two joints on the east wall being opposite the corresponding two on the west wall. Although these joints are conspicuous because running in a different direction to the other joints, all of which are at right-angles to the incline of the passage, they do not appear to have any special significance in themselves. Their purpose seems to be to direct attention to a very peculiar feature in the passage: immediately below them there is, on each side wall, and opposite to one another, a scored line, drawn from roof to floor exactly at right-angles to the incline of the passage (highlighted in red). These scored lines, which may still be seen by all who visit the Pyramid, because of the firmness and truth with which they were drawn by the ancient workman, reminded Professor Smyth of a similar scored line on the floor of one of the corner socket foundations of the Pyramid.

Writing later about the scored lines in the Descending Passage, Professor Smyth said: “I looked at them with still more interest afterwards, when there appeared good reason to consider them the work of the very same hand that laid out in forethought, Promethean manner, the entire proportions of the whole Great Pyramid. For when Messrs. Aiton and Inglis excavated and (with my assistance in finding its site) laid bare the south-west socket of the Great Pyramid in April, 1865,—there, upon the fair white flattened face of the said socket-rock, while three sides were formed by raised edges of rock, the fourth and outer side was defined simply by a line; but a line ruled apparently by the very same hand and selfsame tool which had also drawn these other truthful lines in the entrance passage” (Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid, 3rd Edition, page 435).

The scored lines on the walls of the Descending Passage, therefore, suggest a connection with the foundation of the building, because of the similarity in their appearance to the line drawn on the foundation corner socket-floor. Their existence appears to be for chronological purposes, in order to furnish an additional proof of the great monument’s erection. And so we find, when we apply the usual Pyramid inch to a year, that the scored lines indicate the date  2140 B.C., already independently computed by the latest and most modern method of astronomical calculations as being the probable year of the completion in the erecting of the structure.

When we measure from the north wall of the Grand Gallery as indicating the date 33 A.D., backward down the floor-line of the First Ascending Passage to the “Point of Intersection,” and from thence up the floor-line of the Descending Passage to the scored lines, we find that the total number of Pyramid inches equals the period of years from Spring 33 A.D., back to Autumn 2140 B.C. (This period is 2171.5 years, and the measurement referred to is 2171.5330 + Pyramid inches, as seen in the diagram.)

That we have correctly interpreted the ancient architect’s purpose when he caused these strange lines to be drawn on the walls of the Descending Passage, namely, to mark the year when his mighty building was erected, is further supported by the fact that the lines themselves at that very date pointed directly upward to the Pleiades, just as the Descending Passage in the same manner pointed to Alpha Draconis. R. A. Proctor calculated that in the year 2140 B.C., the Pleiades, when on the meridian of the Great Pyramid, were at an altitude of 63⅔° above the southern horizon (See his publication, The Great Pyramid, page 146). The scored lines are drawn at right-angles to the incline of the passage; and as the passage descends southward at the inclination of, practically, 26⅓°, it follows that the lines on the walls point upward at an angle of 63⅔° above the southern horizon, and therefore directly toward the Pleiades, for 90° minus 26⅓° = 63⅔°.

When drawing attention to the wonderful celestial coincidences with the meridional line of the Great Pyramid, Professor C. Piazzi Smyth is very careful that his readers shall not make the mistake of supposing that the Grand Gallery pointed directly to the Pleiades, in the same way that the Descending Passage pointed to Alpha Draconis. We are to understand, rather, that the vertical plane of the Grand Gallery was, during the period in question, in the direction of the meridian of the Pleiades. Alcyone was at that date, 2140 B.C., very nearly an equatorial star, and had the Grand Gallery been constructed to point directly to it, the angle of the passage’s inclination would require to have been nearly 63° ⅔ instead of 26° 18′ 9″.7. As it is, the direction of the Grand Gallery points upward to a position in the heavens about 34° below the celestial equator.

Since this 2nd volume of Great Pyramid Passages appeared in 1913, we have seen many further corroborations of the date 2140 B.C. for the building of the Great Pyramid, probably the completion of the building-operations in that year. One of these added confirmations we present in Vol. I  Great Pyramid Passages, new and revised edition, Pars. 390-393. This particular feature, which corroborates the exact period of 2138 years between the building of the Great Pyramid in Autumn 2140 B.C., and the birth of the Man Christ Jesus in Bethlehem in Autumn 2 B.C., is connected with the Pyramid geographical mile-distance between the Pyramid in Egypt, and the city of Bethlehem in the Holy Land. In Vol. III of Great Pyramid Passages other corroborative features will be presented. They are so numerous, and all so exact, that no one need doubt that the date 2140 B.C. is correct for the erection of the Great Pyramid.” (We will take a look at this in a little more detail in our next post).

Great Pyramid Passages Page 157-162, par. 384-402

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Note # 1: Autumn in the northern hemisphere is, of course, at the same time that Spring is in the southern hemisphere.

In his article on the “Primitive Year” (quoted at length by Professor C. Piazzi Smyth in Vol. II of Life and Work), Mr R. G. Haliburton, of Halifax, Nova Scotia, clearly proves that the early nations regulated their year by the appearance of the Pleiades or Seven Stars. Their year began on the night when these stars were seen longest, i.e., when they were exactly on the meridian overhead at midnight; and this takes place in the Autumn in the northern hemisphere. Mr Haliburton wrote that in his day (1863) the heathen people of Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, the Islands of the Pacific, etc., still observed the Pleiades Year. Owing to the slow steady progression of the precessional cycle, the Pleiades now culminate on the meridian overhead about two months later than in the time of Noah.