JHA, xxxviii (2007)

ON THE ORIENTATION OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN TEMPLES: (3) KEY POINTS AT LOWER EGYPT AND SIWA OASIS, PART II
MOSALAM SHALTOUT, Helwan Observatory, JUAN ANTONIO BELMONTE, Instituto de Astrofsica de Canarias, and MAGDI FEKRI, Minuya University
(Continued from p. 160.)

2. SIX STUDY CASES In Part I of this paper, all the discussion took place using statistics as guiding criteria to establish the importance of the different patterns, and the corresponding families of orienting customs, in the Egypt of the pharaohs. We now show that some selected study cases from the Old Kingdom (2.1, 2.2, and 2.3) and the Late Period (2.5.) offer important additional information, in our attempt to understand further some of the problems and questions that remained open in Part I. A special study case will be devoted to Sothic chronology and a number of controversies about Sopdet and its heliacal rising and setting phenomena. Finally, we will discuss the interesting temples of Siwa. 2.1. Watching the Imperishable Stars: The Serdab of Djoser At the northeast corner of the Step Pyramid of Djoser (or Neterirkhet, c. 2650 B.C.) at Saqqara, and near to his mortuary (north) temple, there is one of the most curious chapels one can nd in Egypt. This is shown in Figure 11. It consists of a trapezoidal chamber some 2m2 with a statue of the king in its interior.39 It is known as the serdab, or secret room. This is the only royal monument of this kind preserved in Egypt and it was probably an innovation (like many other elements of Egyptian architecture) of the reign of Djoser. In front of the chapel, there is a small open court with a quite clear horizon to the north. However, the most peculiar element of the building is the presence of two orices a few centimetres in diameter and nearly a palm long in the northern wall of the sanctuary. These are located just in front of the statue of the king and could have been used as sighting devices for the ka of the king, resident in the statue. A most prosaic explanation suggests that these devices might have permitted the spirit of the king to follow the rituals performed in front of him (and this is most probably true). However, there is an additional plausible possibility. These orices could have acted as connecting channels between the king and the Imperishable Stars. The Imperishable Stars, or Ihemu-seku, were a group of stars in the northern sky, inhabitants of the Field of Offerings; and one of the afterlife objectives of the dead king during the Old Kingdom, according to several statements in the Pyramid Texts, was to be
0021-8286/07/3804-0413/$10.00 2007 Science History Publications Ltd

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FIG. 11. The serdab of Neterirkhet (popularly known as Djoser, c. 2650 B.C.) in the north-eastern corner of the Step Pyramid at Saqqara. This tiny chapel contains a statue of the king (actually a replica) facing the two orices visible in the northern wall. Both orices (or sighting devices) have a dened inclination and orientation (see Table 1) and would have permitted the king to view the court in front of him or, perhaps, some celestial events happening in the appropriate area of the rmament. Photograph by J. A. Belmonte.

among them: you shall set me to be a magistrate among the spirits (lit. Axw), the Imperishable Stars in the north of the sky (PT519, 1220); I have gone to the great island in the midst of the Field of Offerings on which the swallow-gods alight; the swallows are the Imperishable Stars (PT519, 1216); I will cross to that side on which are the Imperishable Stars, that I may be among them (PT520, 1222). The Imperishable Stars are normally linked to the circumpolar stars, although today the opinion that they should be identied with those stars that are visible every night is becoming accepted.40 Apparently, there was an asterism that was the imperishable par excellence: the sky is clear, Sopdet lives, because I am a living one, the son of Sopdet, and the Two Enneads have cleansed themselves for me in Meskhetyu, the imperishable (PT302, 458). Meskhetyu is often represented in Egyptian iconography as a Bulls Thigh or Foreleg, and this is often used, together with a star, as the determinative of its name: Indeed we are once more talking about the asterism of the Plough or the Big Dipper, in our constellation of the Great Bear. Among the Imperishable Stars, there might

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be other constellations, which are seldom mentioned. Especially interesting are the Two Adzes: or Necherty, which are mentioned twice in the Pyramid Texts: may you stand at the head of the Imperishable Stars, may you sit on your iron throne from which the dead are far removed, your Adzes having hacked up the mansion of your sky of water (PT666, 1926); ... and the king spends day and night propitiating the Two Adzes in Unu (PT259, 312). These adzes must be identical to those used by the priests in the Opening of the Mouth ceremonies as shown in Figure 12.41 It is frequently accepted that the Two Azdes could refer to the distinct asterisms, of similar form, of the Big and Little Dippers. There is no doubt that Meskhetyu is to be identied with one of the celestial adzes, since both in the Pyramid Texts and in the Cofn Texts (a similar collection of sacred literature mostly produced during the Middle Kingdom) the name of the constellation is at least once written with the determinative of the instrument used in the Opening of the Mouth ceremony:42

If any doubt remained, it would be settled by a sentence in Spell 399 of the Cofn

FIG. 12. Celestial diagram of the northern skies as seen from Saqqara at the time of Neterirkhet. The two sighting devices of the serdab would have been facing close to the lower culmination of the circumpolar stars Dubhe ( UMa) and Kochab ( UMi). These were located within the two celestial adzes (the Dippers) at the most relevant position of the devices for the important opening of the mouth ceremonies, as shown in the image from the tomb of Inherkha at Deir el Medina (c. 1150 B.C.). Thuban ( Draconis), the Pole Star of the epoch, is also indicated. See the text for further discussion. Celestial diagram by SMM/IAC. Photograph by J. A. Belmonte.

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Texts. This reads: Meskhetyu who opens the mouth of Mr So-and-so.43 Hence, as in our present culture, where the same asterism is known as the Big Dipper (USA), the Plough (UK), the Chariot (continental Europe), or by the ofcial name of Great Bear (Ursa Major), ancient Egyptians would have recognized both a Bulls Foreleg and one of the celestial Adzes in this conspicuous group of stars, simultaneously. Consequently, the identication of the Small Dipper with the second celestial adze is made on the basis of the ample similarity between both asterisms and the circumpolar character of the two. It is however important to note that this has never been established beyond doubt before now. As to the serdab, various scholars44 have recently suggested that the sighting devices would have been orientated to the lower culmination of Alkaid, the star at the toe of Meskhetyu. We showed in Paper 1 that a certain conguration of this star could be relevant to sacred building orientation and thus this result would appear to be perfectly reasonable. However, the hypothesis related to Alkaid is based on the data provided by literature (azimuth of ~3, inclination of both tubes of ~12).45 Our data (see Table 1) reect completely different numbers and hence our results offer a totally different astronomical solution. Furthermore, apart form a small difference in orientation, the inclinations of the two tubes carved in the limestone are far from being identical, since one is much steeper than the other (11 v. 19). The resulting declinations are 71 and 79 for the right and left sighting devices, respectively. These are far from the values of Alkaid but, interestingly, they t close to the lower culmination of Dubhe ( UMa), for the interval 2370 250 B.C., and Kochab ( UMi), for 2705 220 B.C., respectively. The common interval of time (26202485 B.C.) agrees with a date for the reign of Djoser in a mid- or lower chronology.46 Indeed, this solution is far more suggestive than that of Alkaid for a very special reason. Dubhe and Kochab, as shown in Figure 12, are located at that precise section of the Two Celestial Adzes (the Big and the Little Dippers) ritually used to touch and open the mouth of the deceased, as beautifully represented in the tomb of Inherkha at Deir el Medina (c. 1150 B.C.). This painting is much later that the serdab, but there is no good reason to believe that the ritual was differently executed during the Old Kingdom. In fact, we could even dene the devices as channels to allow travel to the stars, or stellar-channels. This interesting hypothesis recalls to mind other controversial devices also found in a pyramid complex of the Old Kingdom: the ventilation channels of the pyramid of Khufu at Giza. Although obviously useful, and indeed necessary,47 for the prosaic use of ventilation, as recently defended by Krauss,48 we must agree with Quirke49 that these channels are incorporated into the design of the building in such a careful manner that it is difcult not to imagine a certain symbolic meaning. The second author has already argued for the (imprecise) ritual orientation of the northern channels to Mizar ( UMa), one of the stars of Meskhetyu, and Thuban ( Dra), the Pole Star of the Pyramid Age (see Figure 12), and these are two more imperishable stars.50 In our opinion, the resulting hypothesis of the orientation of the stellar channels at the serdab of Djoser would mutually reinforce both hypotheses since we could no longer

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apply the Latin adage testis unus, testis nullus to this interesting discussion. The relevance of orientations to the north, and to the stars of Meskhetyu, that we are defending throughout the paper would be clearly indicated as a direct corollary of the hypothesis we have just proposed. This would suggest that the constellation of Meskhetyu was already an important ritual reference at the beginning of the Old Kingdom (if not earlier) and, consequently, a target for the near-meridian astronomical orientation of sacred buildings, including the pyramid complexes. 2.2. Akhet Khufu: Astronomy and Landscape During the 4th Dynasty On 21 March 2005, we went to Giza in the early morning. Our aim was to observe the equinoctial sunrise at the pyramids in an attempt to test various related hypotheses.51 Figure 13 (upper panel) shows the rising sun just in front of the Sphinx, conrming the suggestion that this singular monument is more or less orientated to sunrise at the equinox. This would also reect the general cardinal orientation of the huge 4th Dynasty complex at Giza (c. 2550 B.C.), including the pyramids of Khufu and Khafre and their associated temples, of which the Sphinx is part.52 The Sphinx presumably is a work of the 4th Dynasty, although there are debates over whether its construction should be ascribed to Khufu, or his younger son Khafre, or even his elder brother Djedefre.53 Fifteen months later, on 21 June 2006, we returned to Giza in the evening to observe another spectacular astronomical hierophany (see Figure 13, lower panel). On this occasion the intention was to observe sunset at the summer solstice behind the Sphinx from a position where the statue would be seen in the middle of the two larger pyramids of the plateau. During the New Kingdom, the Sphinx was known as Hor-em-akhet, Horus at the Horizon, and Wilkinson54 has suggested that this name may have been inspired by the similarity between the position of the Sphinx in the middle of the two pyramids and the actual hieroglyphic term for Hor-em-akhet:

The phenomenon we observed at Giza emphasized this similarity, the glare of the suns disk being exactly behind the head of the Sphinx. The implication is that this phenomenology would have been intended and that the triad formed by the Sphinx, the pyramid of Khufu and the pyramid of Khafre was designed with this objective in mind. In recent discussions with Giulio Magli,55 the Italian archaeoastronomer defended the idea that there was no contemporary proof that the pyramid of Khafre was actually built by this pharaoh. However, there are strong proofs that the Egyptians of the following dynasties had no doubts that the second pyramid belonged to Khafre; for example, at the tomb of Qar, priest at the Giza necropolis during the reign of Pepi I (c. 2300 B.C.), one can read the list of the three pyramids with their standard attributions only ten generations after their construction. We speculate here on an alternative to this hypothesis, based on the impressive solstitial hierophany.56 For us, the Sphinx and the two large pyramids, the associated

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FIG. 13. The Sphinx of Giza and its presumed astronomical connections. On the upper image, the Sphinx is facing the equinoctial sunrise on 21 March 2005. On the lower panel, the sun is setting at the summer solstice on 21 June 2006 behind the Sphinx, in the middle of the two large pyramids. This image seems to form the hieroglyph Akhet, Horizon. This image could be a reection of the process of solarization of the king during the reign of Cheops (Khufu, c. 2550 B.C.), perhaps expressed in the name Akhet Khufu, the Horizon of Khufu, related to his pyramid (or possibly the complete complex?). Later, this image may have inspired the identication of the Sphinx with the god Hor-em-akhet, Horus at the Horizon. See the text for further discussion. Photographs by J. A. Belmonte.

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temples and the large necropolis for the other members of the royal family may have formed part of a single master plan to reproduce on Earth the name of the funerary complex of Queops, Akhet Khufu, the Horizon of Khufu.57 Presumably Khufu was unable to nish such a huge project during his reign of some 23 years, and the unnished, or perhaps even merely outlined, second pyramid of the group might have been usurped and nished by his son Khafre a few years later, when he ascended to the throne after the death of his elder brother and Khufus heir, Djedefre. Actually, this act does not need to be seen as a usurpation but rather as a demonstration of lial piety, similar to that performed by Niuserre at Abusir when he claimed for his own complex the presumably unnished valley temple and causeway of his father Neferirkare.58 Afterwards, the name Akhet Khufu would have been applied only to the Great Pyramid while the second one would have received a new name, Khafre is Great.59 This huge planning of construction would have formed part of a large process of solarization of the gure of the king during the 4th Dynasty,60 started by Khufus grandfather, Huni, the rst king to write his name in the cartouche, followed by Khufus father Sneferu, who also planned and built a pair of pyramids at Dahshur,61 and brought to a climax by Khufu, who perhaps identied himself with the Sun-god. As a probable consequence, his son Djedefre would have been the rst king in Egyptian history to use the epithet Son of Re, standard afterwards in the royal titles of the pharaohs. The name Hor-em-akhet would have been a later re-interpretation of something that had already been in the air for many generations. Sneferu also built the pyramid of Seila, overlooking the oasis of El-Fayum. In Paper 2 we speculated on the possibility that this pyramid was the rst to be orientated accurately to the cardinal directions, and we also defended the hypothesis that this orientation would have been obtained through the observation of stars on or near the northern horizon. This precise northern orientation would have been maintained by the king in his later constructions and by his son Khufu. This would be still more probable if he was indeed the planner of the Giza complex (other than the constructions of Menkaure). It has been argued that this extreme accuracy could have been obtained through the observation of the simultaneous transit of stars near the celestial pole.62 However, the situation becomes more complicated when the monuments of Djedefre are considered. Djedefre is a Sehedu star,63 the pyramid of the king at Abu Roash, is so badly preserved that to obtain an accurate measurement of its orientation was for a long time a difcult task. However, after recent excavations, the French team in charge of the work felt capable of offering an orientation of ~49 3 west of north, i.e. an azimuth of ~359, for the average of the four pyramids faces, and of ~26 west of north for the descending corridor.64 If this number were correct, it would pose the simultaneous transit theories a serious challenge. Our own data of the complex, obtained by compass, but checked on this particular occasion with GPS, offer a range of results but are more encouraging, with an average orientation for the pyramid of ~359, with a optimistic precision of ~, for both the pyramid layout and the

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FIG. 14. Astronomy and landscape for the pyramid elds of the Old Kingdom in the area of Cairo. Some important astronomical and topographical alignments, which are discussed in the text, are represented. According to the resulting analysis, the location of the solar temples at Abu Ghurob and the pyramids of Abu Roash, Giza and Abusir, and perhaps the orientation in the case of the pyramid of King Teti, may have been deliberately chosen. The importance of Heliopolis, the city of the sun-god, is emphasized.

descending corridor. Hence, our own measurements do not contradict the plausibility of simultaneous transit theories. We believe that astronomy played a most relevant role in the planning of the monuments of the 4th Dynasty, with important northern alignments, probably with respect to the Imperishable Stars, notably Meskhetyu, and solar alignments of solstitial and perhaps equinoctial character.65 Surprisingly, this impression is strongly reinforced when the area of the necropolises is analysed in a wider general context, as demonstrated in Figure 14. In the late 1960s, Goyon66 discovered that the layout of the three large pyramids of Giza

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suggested a connection with the cities of Letopolis and Heliopolis. The line connecting the southeast corners of the three pyramids, with an azimuth of ~45, was directed towards the sacred city of the Sun-god, while the direction to the north was directed to Letopolis (see Figure 14). Besides, the distance between both Giza and Letopolis, and this city and Heliopolis, was nearly 30,000 royal cubits (or one hundred Egyptian stadia). This interesting proposal would suggest that the emplacement of Giza, and/or that of Letopolis. and/or that of Heliopolis was/were deliberately selected. Later, Jeffreys67 suggested that the majority of the pyramids of the 4th Dynasty, except the rst ones built by Sneferu, were constructed with mutual inter-visibility to the city of Heliopolis (see Figure 14), implying a connection to the process of solarization of the monarchy that we have previously analysed. However, these important but prosaic topographical connections do not offer the only clues, since we are of the opinion that not only the terrestrial but also the celestial landscape made a substantial contribution. In Figure 14, we show some striking astronomical connections. At Giza, the line connecting the necropolis to Heliopolis is nearly the SWNE line that we have already discussed as typical of an important family (VII) of astronomical orientations. We have argued that this could be found by simply turning an original meridian layout through 45. We support the idea that this axis was obtained by the observation of the northern transit of stars of Meskhetyu. Surprisingly, Letopolis was the capital of the Egyptian nomos or province of the Bulls Foreleg (see Figure 14). We believe that the parallelism needs no further discussion. Actually, we wonder if in ancient Egypt there occurred a displacement of semantic meaning similar to that occurring in many European languages, where septentrional and arctic have become synonymous with northern from their original meaning as the places where the Septem Triones or Arctos (from Latin for Seven Oxen and Greek for Bear, respectively) could be seen in the celestial vault. However, the relation becomes still more surprising when we move to Abu Roash. There, the pyramid of Djedefre was built on the top of a rocky outcrop that in Antiquity should have been clearly visible from Heliopolis. In fact, sunset at the winter solstice from the northern limit of the sacred precinct of the Sun temple would have been visible behind the southernmost corner of the pyramid.68 An alternative possibility would have been the setting of Sopdet c. 2600 B.C. This is apparently too early an epoch for the reign of Djedefre, even for the earliest chronology (c. 25892566 B.C.), but still within the errors. Could this be connected with the stellar name of the pyramid? However, Abu Roash has yet another surprise in store. A couple of kilometres to the east of the main complex of Djedefre, there are the scanty remains of what would have been the largest pyramid ever built in Egypt, Lepsius 1 (open triangle in Figure 14). The dating of this pyramid is highly controversial.69 On the one hand, some scholars suggest that this monument was a huge mastaba, or a sort of step pyramid, and place it in the 3rd Dynasty. On the other hand, others, because it is constructed with mud-bricks, place it in the 12th Dynasty when mud-brick pyramids were built in

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Egypt. However, a recent proposal, based on typology and construction techniques,70 suggests that it was a monument of the 4th Dynasty. According to this hypothesis, this would be the second pyramid of the complex of Djedefre, who would have had the intention of building a pair of nearby pyramids as his grandfather Sneferu built in Dahshur and his father Khufu had the intention to do at Giza (according to the proposal defended in this paper). Because of the extremely short reign of Djedefre (only seven or eight years), both projects remained unnished. Of interest here is the important fact is that the two pyramids (Lepsius 1 and Djedefre is a Sehedu Star) could have been seen as an akhet sign from the ~20km-distant city of Heliopolis, and the place where the sun-god would have set on the day of the winter solstice, perhaps the day of his birthday (Meswt-Re). In a recent work,71 it was suggested that the pyramids could have been built (apart from obvious religious, political, social or even economical reasons) with certain astronomical purposes that could have made it possible to check precisely the duration of the solar year at 365 days. From the Palermo Stone, we know that the civil calendar was probably operative at the change of reign between Menkaure and Shepseskaf (c. 2440 B.C.) and we wonder, once more, if the solstitial hierophany manifested at the complex of Djedefre, as seen from Heliopolis, built a couple of decades before, could have been part of the same phenomenology.72 Another pyramid of the 4th Dynasty was probably started at Zawiyet el Aryan (see Figure 14).73 However, there is no obvious astronomical connection between this building and Heliopolis, apart from the fact that, either by chance or by deliberate selection, the star Arcturus, the fth brightest star of ancient Egyptian skies, the closest to the Pole and perhaps an Ihemu-sek star, was rising above Heliopolis c. 2450 B.C. during the 4th Dynasty. This star has been identied as the most important star of Menit (Mooring Post),74 an asterism of the Ramesside star-clocks that is also mentioned in the Pyramid Texts: the doors of the sky are opened for you, the doors of the rmament are thrown open for you, even those which keep out the plebs. The Mooring Post cries to you, the sun-folk call to you, the Imperishable Stars wait on you (PT463, 876). However, this last idea must be considered as rather more speculative and perhaps not at the level of those previously discussed. Actually, the importance of the astronomical landscape in the neighbourhood of the pyramid complexes of the Old Kingdom does not nish here. However, to continue the discussion we must open another fascinating study case. 2.3. The Children of the Sun-god: Sun Temples and Anomalous Orientations First Shepseskaf, and later his successor Userkaf (c. 2470 B.C.), abandoned the family cemeteries to the north of Memphis and decide to build their pyramid complexes nearer to the capital, at Saqqara.75 Userkaf also constructed, at Abu Ghurob in the area of Abusir, the rst of a series of solar temples of which only two examples (Userkafs and Niuserres) have been discovered so far. Their successors, ve solar kings of the 5th Dynasty,76 chose Abusir as their burial ground. According to

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Jeffreys (see also Figure 14), the location of the dynastic solar temples (and perhaps the reason to build the temples themselves) a little north of the pyramid complexes of the kings, would have been deliberately selected so as to remain within sight of Heliopolis, the sacred city of the sun, which would have been lost not only from the elds of Saqqara but also from the pyramid eld of Abusir further north.77 However, in our opinion the sun temples of Abu Ghurob and the pyramid temples of Abusir hide yet further important landscape (both terrestrial and astronomical) connections but, before discussing them, we must go rst to the worst-orientated large pyramid complex ever erected in Egypt, that of Teti. The pyramid complex of Teti (c. 2300 B.C.), rst pharaoh of the 6th Dynasty but most likely an offspring of Unis, the last king of the 5th, is shown in Figure 15 (upper panel). Its temple has an orientation of 80 and it is, together with that of the tiny pyramid complex of Ibi (a petty king of the 7th or 8th Dynasties, see Table 1), the only one with an azimuth clearly far from the average value for the complete series of royal pyramid temples.78 Ibis temple orientation belongs to Family III, or we could even consider the possibility that precise orientation was not a requirement in the troublesome times of the First Intermediate Period. But Tetis does not follow any rule. We had noticed this fact prior to visiting the site and we were especially concerned about this interesting anomaly. For that reason, as seen in Figure 15 (lower panel), we were happy to discover that the axis of the temple was diverted to the single topographical feature of the otherwise almost at eastern horizon of Saqqara. This notch (actually the entrance of Wadi Hof) had the aspect of an akhet sign and it reminded us of similar situations encountered elsewhere in Egypt that have already been discussed in this paper. Sunrise at this notch, for a declination of ~8, does not offer a signicant solar date, nor have we been able to nd any conspicuous star or asterism with such a declination for the epoch we are considering. Perhaps Tetis funerary complex was orientated with very prosaic topographic concerns in mind. However, there is a most striking possibility that we must analyse. The civil calendar of ancient Egypt was 365 days long and thus nearly a quarter of a day shorter than the tropical year. Consequently, the civil calendar wandered through the climatic seasons, and there were epochs when the season of the Flooding (Akhet) occurred at what was in fact the moment of maximum drought or, in contrast, others when that of Shemu (Drought) happened at the moment when the Nile was at its highest level. Besides, because of this wandering character of the calendar, Wepet Renpet (the Egyptian New Years Eve) also wandered through the seasons, completing a round in a little more than 15 centuries. In this sense, if we consider an orientation towards sunset and a declination of 8, instead of sunrise, we get a date close to 28 February or 1 March, with an error margin of four days (corresponding to an error in the declination of ). This would have been the date of Wepet Renpet c. 2304 B.C., with an error margin of 18 years.79 Consequently, if we assume that the pyramid complex ought to have been orientated with sunset at the beginning of the reign of Teti, we might date his ascent to the throne in the interval 23222286 B.C. This corresponds to a medium chronology between the extremes we have been considering

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FIG. 15. Djed Iswt Teti, The Places of Teti are Stable, the pyramid complex of Teti, the rst king of the 6th Dynasty (c. 2300 B.C.). The upper panel shows the remains of the temple in front of the ruined pyramid. The pyramids of Userkaf and Neterirkhet can be seen in the foreground. Of all the large Egyptian pyramids, Tetis is the worst orientated to cardinal points. However, it is aligned with the only signicant topographical mark in the eastern horizon of Saqqara, similar to an akhet, horizon, sign (lower panel, indicated by an arrow), the Wadi Hof. This alignment might also have astronomical signicance because of the suggested connection to sunset at Wepet Renpet (Egyptian New Years Eve) around 2304 B.C., at the beginning of the reign of Teti (see Fig. 14). See the text for further discussion. Photographs by J. A. Belmonte.

so far.80 An interesting corollary of this hypothetical astronomical alignment would be that not only the orientation but also the exact location within the area of Saqqara for the location of Tetis pyramid complex might have been deliberately chosen. This solar alignment of the pyramid complex of Teti would be the rst clearcut instance in which a monument of this type was not orientated with respect to the northern stars.81 However, this could also be the nal and most conspicuous example of a tradition that may have started some generations before, in the time of the 5th, or even the 4th Dynasty. To explore this we must return to Abusir and the solar temples

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of Abu Ghurob. Around the years 23942390 B.C., the wandering Wepet Renpet was occurring close to the spring equinox, so that sunrise on this important day of the year happened close to due east. If Jeffreyss hypothesis suggested a selection of the place for the location of these temples, we now add the further hypothesis that these temples were perhaps created and orientated in such a way as to commemorate such a very important astronomical event. The rst to be built was that of Userkaf and it is almost perfectly orientated due east. If we take into account a ~18-year interval, Nekhenre82 should have been built roughly between 2410 and 2370 B.C. in order to be aligned to the equinox and, simultaneously, orientated to sunrise at New Years Eve. These dates are compatible with those of Userkaf, who reigned for only seven years and who came to power ~110 years before Teti, and the dates proposed before for Tetis ascension to the throne. The case of the temple of Niuserre is most interesting. The building has two clear orientations, one for the axis of the temple and another one, with an azimuth smaller (see Table 1), for the impressive alabaster altar that dominates the centre of sanctuary (see Figure 16).83 Our suggestion is that after a preliminary, not very successful, orientation of the temple, when the altar would have been placed on site, a ne tuning of the orientation was carried out so that, with an azimuth of 90 (declination 1), the altar would not be facing the equinoctial sun but would still be facing sunrise at Wepet Renpet around the year 2380 B.C. This date is compatible with those of Niuserre, who would have begun his reign nearly 80 years before Teti and governed for at least eleven years. A nal piece of evidence for this chronological approach is that we could propose a date for the ascension of Khufu between 2560 and 2505 B.C., in rough agreement with the dates we have already proposed for the alignment of the two pyramids of his mortuary complex.84 Once more a middle chronology is preferred. The pyramid complexes of the 5th Dynasty have an orientation on average further south of east (see Table 1) compared to those of the 4th Dynasty. This might imply that the standard method of orientation, which had been used for several generations since the reign of Sneferu, was becoming useless, as would be the case with the method of simultaneous transits, or that a new method was being developed. Perhaps, due to the solarization of the monarchy and to the wandering nature of the civil year, the date of the equinox and related solar alignments became more and more important. This might well lead to a change of paradigm in the cult, reected in a change of paradigm in the way sacred monuments were aligned. The best example for this would be the anomalous orientation of Tetis complex, although this can be solved within a solar context, as we have previously shown.85 The last hypothesis proposed would apply to one of the questions that remained open in the previous section of this paper: whether the equinoctial, or eastern, family (I) of orientations was due to a preferred meridian alignment, with a later change of 90 for the axes of the temples, or whether these eastern orientations were obtained directly by an alternative (presumably solar) method. The answer now would be that both alternatives were correct. The equinoctial family probably started as a

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FIG. 16. The solar altar of the sun temple of Niuserre at Abu Ghurob, which is almost aligned with the equinoctial sunrise on 22 March 2005. Actually, the EW axis of this huge piece of alabaster (a sun stone according to ancient Egyptians), beautifully created with a couple of hetep signs, deviates to the south of due east. Surprisingly, this could be related to a near equinox sunrise at Wepet Renpet around 2380 B.C., during the reign of Niuserre. Photograph by J. A. Belmonte.

sub-family of the meridian (VI) one, but a different custom in its own right would have independently developed afterwards. This might also shed some light on the mysterious sudden appearance of the Pyramid Texts in the burial chambers of all the royal pyramids after the reign of Unis towards the end of the Old Kingdom. At the end of the 5th Dynasty, condence in the classical orientation procedures was perhaps lost and a new guide for the afterlife was written inside the pyramids for the exclusive use of the deceased. These texts would have been especially useful for the soul of Teti, the second king to write them in his place of rest, who perhaps would never have found his place within the Imperishable Stars if he had used the orientation of his pyramid as his only guide to the celestial realm.

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We now move forward in time and space from the pyramid complexes of the Old and Middle Kingdom near Cairo to the ancient city of Buto, in the marshes of the western Delta (see Figure 1). Buto was a very old city already existing in pre-Dynastic times and was well known as the city of the cobra goddess Uadjet. The archaeological site is dominated by two huge mounds, remains of the ancient quarters of Pe and Dep. Between the two, the remains of the temple of Uadjet have been discovered, but the excavation has only reached the foundations of New Kingdom buildings and most of the stonework dates from the Late Period. Indeed, one of the most interesting discoveries on site is the so-called Estela of Buto,86 dating from the reign of Thutmose III (c. 14791425 B.C.). This human-size slab contains a royal decree concerning the restoration of the temple under Thutmose and the calendar of feasts established accordingly. This calendar is presented in Figure 17. It is precisely this feast calendar that has been the occasion of an important controversy because, as can be seen in Figure 17, the heliacal rising of Sirius, i.e. Peret Sopdet,87 is located between two dates of the rst month of Shemu, in apparent contradiction with what one would expect from the widely accepted chronology of the New Kingdom, which would situate Peret Sopdet at the end of this calendar season, during the reign of Thutmose III. As a consequence, von Bomhard argued for a complete revision of the chronology of the beginning of the New Kingdom, although Spalinger, when analysing the calendar of festivals, avoided this tricky point.88 However, Krauss89 has recently argued that if one concludes that the rising of Sothis in the time of Thutmose III happened in the 1st month of Shemu, because the entry is positioned between two 1st month of Shemu entries, one gets into severe chronological problems. Between year 7 of Sesostris [or Senuseret] III and year 1 of Thutmose III at least 302 years are accounted for. 302 years move the rising of Sothis from IV Peret 16 to III Shemu 1,90 which means that in the time of Thutmose III, the rising of Sothis took place after III Shemu 1. An equivalent conclusion follows from the Elephantine block, which gives III Shemu 28 as rising date of Sothis [c. 1432 B.C., in the second half of the reign of Thutmose III]. There is no Egyptological doubt that the block originated in a building of Thutmose III. Under these circumstances one has to conclude that the position of the Buto date does not mean that the rise of Sothis took place in the 1st month of Shemu in the time of Thutmoses III. The text itself says in any case only that Sothis rises on her calendar day(s). Similar problems are raised by the two Sothic dates which are mentioned on unpublished blocks in Karnak from the time of Amenhotep I.91 In one case, the line with the entry rising of Sothis on ... is positioned between entries which concern the 1st month of Peret. In the other case rising of Sothis on her day(s) comes after an entry in the 4th month of Peret and before an entry in the 1st month of Shemu. The problem, as I see it, is not one of calendars and astronomy, but of organizing the texts of steles and wall inscriptions.

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FIG. 17. The Festival Calendar of the Stele of Buto (with Wepet Renpet in the rst row), dating to the reign of Thutmose III (c. 1450 B.C.). The second line from the bottom contains a reference to the heliacal rising of Sirius (Peret Sopdet) between two feasts celebrated on I Shemu 4 and I Shemu 30. This has created a major controversy because Peret Sopdet presumably occurred on III or IV Shemu during the reign of Thutmose III. This problem could be solved if the text actually reected a prediction related to the heliacal setting of Sirius in I Shemu during that particular epoch. See the text for further discussion. Photograph by J. A. Belmonte.

We will try to demonstrate here that these dates are indeed a problem of calendars and astronomy, but that they do not call for any change in the accepted chronology. We do this by the use of Egyptian grammar, the temple orientation, and a little (serious) speculation. Table 1 shows that the temple of Uadjet at Buto was orientated towards the western half of the horizon to a declination of 18 . Interestingly, during the reign of

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Thutmose III, who is known to have restored the temple, the declination of Sirius was of the order of 18. Considering that there is certain evidence that Uadjet, among other goddesses, was related to Sopdet, at least from the New Kingdom onwards,92 we suggest from our data that the temple at Buto would actually have been orientated to the setting of Sirius at the time of Thutmose III. And this was the nub of the question. Could the temple be related to the heliacal setting (not rising) of Sopdet on the western horizon during the reign of this king? The phenomenon of the heliacal setting of stars was known in ancient Egypt by the term Sni dwAt, Encircled by the Duat, at least from the New Kingdom onwards, if not earlier.93 From Figure 17, we can extract the text associated with Peret Sopdet. This reads as follows: No date is explicitly mentioned and the sentence contains the particle , r, used for a future action or to describe a future task. In contrast, in the mention of Peret Sopdet in the festival calendar of the south wall of the Million Year temple of Ramses III at Medinet Habu, we can read: On this occasion, the particle used to described the action is , m,94 typical of the present tense, and a date is explicitly mentioned, First Month of the Inundation (Akhet). Hence, while the sentence at Medinet Habu can be read as First Month of the Inundation, the Heliacal Rising of Sopdet happens in her day, precisely, the one of the Buto Estela ought to be read as The Heliacal Rising of Sopdet will occur in her days. The former is an explicit statement. The latter, however, seems to be a statement of predictive character. Our hypothesis is that the best moment to make the prediction that the heliacal rising of Sopdet will occur in the near future would have been at the moment of her heliacal setting nearly seven Egyptian decades before.95 We have seen above that an heliacal rising of Sirius took place in III Shemu 28 in the year 1432 B.C. at Elephantine. From simple astronomical considerations, this means that the heliacal setting of the star at Buto occurred, with a couple of days of error because of varying atmospheric conditions, at I Shemu 25. Hence, for the entire reign of Thutmose III, the helical setting of Sopdet at Buto happened roughly between I Shemu 13 and I Shemu 27. This is perfectly contained in the interval between I Shemu 4 and I Shemu 30, as described by the festival list of the Buto Estela (see Figure 17). We therefore believe that the astronomical event actually emphasized at this unusual monumental inscription was the heliacal setting of Sopdet. Now it is the turn of the two dates at the isolated, and out of context, blocks of Karnak. One of them contains a reference to Peret Sopdet between two feasts celebrated at IV Peret (1)96 and an uncertain date of the First Month of Shemu. It reads as follows:

Again, no date is explicitly mentioned and once more the particle

, r, is used in

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this short sentence. The second mentions Peret Sopdet between I Peret 3 and I Peret 20. The inscription is broken at the end but the evidence suggests that it was almost identical to the previous one. As in the case of Buto, the inscription of the two blocks ought to be read as a prediction that the Heliacal Rising of Sopdet will happen in her day. Once more, we speculate that this prediction should be related to the moment of the heliacal setting of the star. The astronomical analysis permits us to calculate that the heliacal setting of Sirius in Thebes occurred between I Peret 3 and 20 for an interval between c. 1976 B.C. and 1908 B.C., with a margin of a couple of years. This interval contains most of the reign of Senuseret I, whichever chronology we consider. Senuseret I was the founder of the temple of Karnak97 and it would be logical to assume that this festival calendar (like the contemporaneous White Chapel) was prepared for that rst temple. Once more, the festival list would include a reference to the interval of the heliacal setting of Sopdet, and, by inference, of her heliacal rising seven decades after. The former mention of Peret Sopdet, contained in a much wider interval, allows for the dates of the heliacal setting of Sirius, according to the same astronomical considerations, within a longer uncertain temporal spectrum of not less than 120 years and a maximum of 240, including part of the reign Amenhotep I. On this occasion we tend to agree with previous assignations of the blocks98 and would date the corresponding festival lists to the reign of Amenhotep I. We have found a reasonable explanation for a serious challenge to the standard chronology of ancient Egypt simply by adopting an alternative reading of three controversial inscriptions and taking into account that the setting of Sirius on the horizon, and its heliacal setting, could have been respectively an important landmark, and time-marker, for ancient Egyptians. In our opinion, the Sothic chronology of Egypt is still in very good shape. 2.5. Tanis, a New Thebes in the North One of the most interesting places in the Delta is the ancient city of Djanet, called Tanis by the Greeks, capital of Egypt during the 21st and 22nd Dynasties. The area was an elevated region in the low lands of the eastern Delta near the Tanitikos branch of the Nile, thus being normally free of ooding. There are no construction remains earlier than the 21st Dynasty, although a lot of movable monuments (sphinxes, statues, obelisks, steles, etc.) dating from the Middle and New Kingdoms were found in the city. However, it is not known whether these monuments were the remains of earlier constructions of these dynasties on site, or whether they were brought to the city from the nearby area of Tell el Dabha and Qantir, where the cities of Avaris and Pi-Ramses were located. Nothing better expresses this striking situation than reading the words of one of the former directors of excavations on site, Jean Yoyotte: The sudden transfer of the monarchy to Tanis and the creation of a Thebes of the North over a vast hill of sand, not occupied before by living people, near the great marshes, constitutes one of the greatest problems of Egyptian history.99 Actually, it

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is believed that Tanis was converted into the new political and commercial capital of Egypt, perhaps from being no more than a minor local village, at the beginning of the 21st Dynasty, replacing Pi-Ramses, 22km to the southeast, which had probably been abandoned because the Pelousiakos branch of the Nile was silting up. Almost from nothing, rst the kings of the 21st and 22nd Dynasties, and later those of the 30th and Ptolemaic dynasties, built a splendid city that was a copy, on a smaller scale, of the old religious capital 800km upstream, including an Amenem-opet temple to the south of the main group in a clear parallelism to the temple of Luxor.100 This Waset Mehyt (the Northern Thebes was an alternative name of the city) became the showcase of the new kings of Egypt to the merchants of the Aegean and the Levant. The important sacred character of the city was emphasized by the erection of no fewer than ve pairs of gigantic obelisks (more than in Karnak) along the main axis of the temple of Amon (see Figure 18). Actually, Tanis had the privilege, together with Thebes, of being named as the city of the sun-god Re, Iunu (Heliopolis). These cities, Tanis and Thebes, were to be known as the (alternative) Northern and the Southern Iunus, respectively.101 Our own data seem to support this special sacred character. The main axis of the temple of Amon is open to the west to a declination of 16 and at the beginning

FIG. 18. The main axis of the temple of Amon, within the sacred complex of the god at Tanis, as aligned at the beginning of the 21st Dynasty (c. 1065 B.C.). According to our analysis, this large complex, erected as a smaller-scale copy of the huge complex of the god at Thebes, would offer a similar orientation pattern combining topography (the Nile) and astronomy (sunrise at Wepet Renpet). Photograph by J. A. Belmonte.

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we were tempted to include it as another, not too well orientated, member of the Sopdet family.102 However, when we noticed that the huge complex, comprising no fewer than ve adjacent temples, was orientated according to the Nile (see Table 2), we thought of another striking possibility (apart from the very prosaic but reasonable that the Nile, and it alone, was prescribing the alignment). This consists of the idea that, if the opposite direction is considered (i.e. a declination of 16 , since the horizon is practically at), then the main axis of the complex would have been orientated to sunrise at Wepet Renpet c. 1065 B.C., with a margin of 15 years, in agreement with the reign of Smendes (c. 10691044 B.C.), founder of the 21st Dynasty and perhaps the rst king to align the sacred complex, although a foundation deposit of the Amon temple itself bears the name of his successor Psusennes I.103 Interestingly, there might be a parallelism with what happened in Thebes, where the temple of Karnak is located at almost the only place in Upper Egypt where the axis of the temple is at the same time perpendicular to the Nile and orientated to winter solstice sunrise (a date that, apart for its intrinsic value, was extremely close to Wepet Renpet during the reign of Senuseret I, founder of the temple). The coincidence between winter solstice and Wepet Renpet happened c. 2004 B.C.104 However, considering the wandering nature of Egyptian New Years Eve and the slow movement of the sun at the solstices (hence the name), the double alignment would have a discrepancy of more than half a solar diameter (18) only 9 days after the solstice, or after 38 civil years (i.e. until c. 1966 B.C.), a date certainly close to the beginning of the reign of Senuseret I.105 So, now, in Northern Thebes, we have a new temple of Amon with one of its axes perpendicular to the Nile and the other orientated to Wepet Renpet at the presumed moment of its construction. Indeed, one inference of this idea could be that the site of Tanis on the corresponding Nile branch was deliberately chosen to emphasize the sacred character of the city, although there are of course several other obvious strategic reasons. This parallelism could be extended to another capital city temple of Amon erected under the inuence of the ancient Egyptian civilization. We refer to the temple of Amon at Meroe, the new capital of the Kingdom of Qush in central Sudan, which was aligned to the winter solstice sunrise at a place similar to Karnak, where the axis of the building was perpendicular to the Nile, as we have recently proposed.106 On this occasion, however, Wepet Renpet does not seem to have played any special role. This might indicate that the date of the winter solstice had taken pre-eminence in the cult of Amon in its own right. Besides, this coincidence of events might have important implications for the selection of Meroe as new capital of the Qushite Kingdom. However, a nal solution for this particular topic must await extensive archaeoastronomical eldwork in Sudan. 2.6. Epilogue at Siwa The Oasis of Siwa is one of the most important areas of Egypt outside the Nile Valley and, from our point of view, is by far the most fascinating of all the oases of

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the Western Desert. Siwa even had a quite different history.107 The area of Siwa was probably under the control of the Temehu, a Libyan people, at least from the end of the Old Kingdom onwards, and was not deeply Egyptianized until the Late Period. During the New Kingdom, the Egyptians dominated the nearby coast, as the fort at ZUR clearly demonstrates (see Figure 1), but if they reached the area of Siwa, they left no archaeological evidence. Only after the foundation of Cyrene by Dorian colonizers in 631 B.C. did the kings of Egypt (rst Apries, but especially Amasis) become interested in the oasis that was administered as a sort of vice-kingdom until Roman times. The Oasis of Siwa is very rich in archaeological sites of Egyptian typology, with as least 12 temples (see Table 1 and Figure 2), of which the temple of the Oracle of Amon at Aghurmi is by far the best preserved and the most interesting (see Figure 19). This temple has a splendid location in a low rocky outcrop above the palm-tree sea of the oasis with open views in all directions. It was built during the reign of Amasis (570526 B.C.), perhaps over an earlier building, but the foundations of the temple have never been excavated in depth. The orientation diagram of the temples of Siwa was presented in Figure 4. As we have already argued, it is very similar to that yielded by the temples of the other western oases, further to the east, that were under Egyptian inuence much earlier. The orientation custom is dominated by a few temples orientated in the solar arc and

FIG. 19. The splendid location of the temple of the Oracle of Amon at Aghurmi, in the middle of the palm-tree forest of the Oasis of Siwa, as viewed form the rock-carved temples of Djebel Takrur. The ruins of the Umm Ubayda temple can be seen at the bottom-left of the image. Photograph by J. A. Belmonte.

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FIG. 20. View across the main gate of the temple of the Oracle, erected in the reign of Amasis (c. 570526 B.C.). The Djebel Takrur covers the southern horizon. The image shows a simulated trajectory of Canopus, the second brightest star on the sky, for the sixth century B.C. Photograph by J. A. Belmonte.

the vast majority of temples aligned near the meridian. Thus, Family VI is by far the dominant one in the oasis. In this sense, it is worth noting that the Oracle temple may have been orientated to the maximum western polar distance of Dubhe, with an azimuth of ~342 (declination of 72) c. 550 B.C., i.e. during the reign of Amasis. A complete series of temples, notably Umm Ubayda, and the two speos of Djebel Takrur, were built along the same axis and with similar orientations and could have played a role within a single celestial and topographic landscape (see Figure 19). However, for the sake of completeness, we shall discuss another interesting alternative explanation of the orientation of the temple. Figure 20 shows the view from the sanctuary of the temple of the Oracle. The southeast horizon is dominated by the hills of Djebel Takrur, where the quarry used in the building of the temple was located and where two small temples (the speos of Tin Ashur and Tin al Fifan) were excavated on the cliffs of the westernmost hill. This terrestrial landscape would have been dominated in Antiquity (sixth century B.C.) by the appearance of Canopus in the winter skies. The temples of Khamisa and Zeitun, both dated to late Ptolemaic or Roman times (see Table 1), would be other examples

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of presumable orientation to the second brightest star in the Siwa skies. However, in our present state of knowledge, we do not feel able to favour one hypothesis over the other. Obviously, further documentary support would be most welcome. 3. CONCLUSIONS As a result of a series of eld campaigns by the Egyptian-Spanish Mission on the archaeoastronomy of ancient Egypt in August 2004, March 2005 and June 2006 (numbers 2, 3 and 4, respectively) we were able to obtain data for nearly a hundred temples of Lower (and Middle) Egypt and the Oasis of Siwa. The analysis of the data presented in this paper allows us to reach the following conclusions: (i) We have proposed the existence of seven different families of astronomical orientation for the temples of Lower Egypt and neighbouring regions. This classication could easily be extended to the rest of the country. (ii) Two of the families (II and III, see Section 1 and Figure 9) have a marked solar character with temples orientated to conspicuous landmarks of the annual cycle (the tropical year), such as the solstices and the equinoxes (this would be the case for some of the monuments of Family I, see below), but also to other important time markers related to the real moments of sowing and harvesting in ancient Egypt. (iii) These solar orientations were transformed, at certain historical periods, with a view to orientating buildings to the beginning of the seasons of the civil calendar, notably Wepet Renpet, the First Day of the rst month of the season of the Inundation, I Akhet 1 or New Years Eve, but also I Peret 1 and I Shemu 1. The coincidence of these dates with these important points of the tropical year, such as summer or winter solstice and spring equinox, could have acted as a mutual reinforcement in the interest of ancient Egyptians for these special days of both the tropical and the civil year. (iv) Following this line of argument, the cases of the sun temples of the 5th Dynasty at Abu Ghurob, a handful of temples in Thebes (presumably including the Amon complex at Karnak), the big temple of Abu Simbel,108 and perhaps the Amon complex at Tanis are paradigmatic. (v) Another two families (IV and V) could be related to the two brightest stars in ancient Egyptian skies, Sirius and Canopus. The case for the former is stronger because of the important, and well documented, mythological, religious and practical (calendric) connections of Sopdet in the course of Egyptian history. (vi) In this sense, we have shown that certain Sothic dates, documented in festival calendars of the Middle and New Kingdoms, which have given rise to controversy (notably the Estela of Buto), can easily be explained if not only the heliacal rising but also the heliacal setting of Sirius was important in ancient Egyptian civilization. As a consequence of this, we can afrm that the Sothic chronology of ancient Egypt enjoys good health.

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(vii) Three families (I, VI and VII) would together form a super-family of the so-called cardinal orientations. This would have consisted essentially of the determination of a near meridian (northsouth) axis for the general layout of a certain sacred structure, through the observation of some of the most conspicuous Imperishable Stars near the celestial pole, notably Meskhetyu. The earliest example of this phenomenon discovered so far would be the serdab of Djoser at Saqqara. Later, the monument could have opened east or west (Family I), north or south (Family VI), or had its axis rotated through another 45 (Family VII). The pyramid complexes of the Old and Middle Kingdom are the paradigmatic examples of Families I (the temples) and VI (the pyramids themselves). In contrast, although useful to explain the orientations at ZUR, Family VII still needs further verication in the temples of Upper Egypt. (viii) However, we have also proposed that, during the 4th and 5th Dynasties, and in a process parallel to that of solarization of the royal person, eastern orientations to near equinox sunrise become independent of meridian orientations. Hence, Family I would actually be a mixture of solar and stellar practices. (ix) We have proposed that a brilliant combination of astronomy and landscape was produced in the pyramid complexes of the Old Kingdom (see Figures 11 to 16). According to this hypothesis, the location and orientation of a number of monuments were deliberately chosen in order to t a general pattern of topographical and astronomical alignments. The apex of this network would have been the city of the sun-god Re, Heliopolis. This emphasizes once more the importance of the stations of the sun. Especially dramatic, although based on circumstantial evidence, is the hypothesis proposed for the general layout of the majority of the Giza complex, including the Sphinx and the two larger pyramids, as an original design from the reign of Khufu (Akhet Khufu conceived as a single gigantic plan c. 2550 B.C.). (x) As a consequence of this, we have proposed a challenging explanation for the anomaly represented by the pyramid complex of Teti, rst king of the 5th Dynasty. This hypothesis has as a corollary the proposal of certain intervals of dates that might help our understanding of the controversial chronology of the Old Kingdom. Our results favour a middle chronology that would locate the ascent to the throne of Teti between c. 2311 and 2286 B.C. (xi) The data of the Oasis of Siwa do not show any peculiarity. This allows us to afrm that the orientation customs at this oasis did not differ from those yielded by the other oases of the Western Desert and that all them could be seen as being within the general pattern of ancient Egyptian alignments, except for the absence of Nile orientations. (xii) Last but not least, the new data in the Delta and the area of Cairo conrm the interest of ancient Egyptians in locating and orientating their temples according to the Nile. Although the evidence is not as strong as in the case of the Nile Valley (see Paper 1), several individual sanctuaries and temple complexes in the Delta were most probably orientated to conform with the course of some of the ancient branches of the Nile.

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With the orientation of more than 250 temples so far measured on site in all parts of Egypt, ours is by far the most ambitious archaeological project of this class ever attempted for the study of the ancient Egyptian civilization. Fortunately, after more than a century after the publication of the rst and controversial work on the topic,109 we believe we are now putting archaeoastronomy on the proper footing it deserves within Egyptological studies. More campaigns in other parts of the country, such as specic sites in Middle Egypt and the Eastern Desert, where a few scattered temples are still awaiting measurement, are planned for the near future. We hope that these will reinforce the idea, clearly stated for the rst time in this paper, that the ancient Egyptians orientated their temples according to their landscape, both terrestrial and celestial, in a permanent quest for cosmic order.110
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We wish to express once again our profound acknowledgement to our colleague Dr Zahi Hawass for his strong support of the Archaeoastronomy Mission as Director of the Supreme Council of Antiquities. We also express our gratitude to the different members of the Council who have supported us during the campaigns, making our work much easier, and to the various inspectors, local guides and escorts who joined us during the eldwork: all were most kind and helpful. Very important comments and criticisms from the Egyptologists Rolf Krauss and Jos Lull and the archaeoastronomers Edwin Krupp and Csar Gonzlez Garca greatly enriched the paper. This work is partially nanced within the framework of the projects P310793 Arqueoastronoma of the Instituto de Astrofsica de Canarias, and AYA2004-01010 Orientatio ad Sidera of the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science.
REFERENCES 39. Actually a replica. The original is at the entrance hall of the Egyptian Antiquities Museum in Cairo. 40. For the Pyramid Texts (PT), see Faulkner, op. cit. (ref. 11). These Ihemu-seku had been normally identied with the circumpolar stars. However, in recent years, Krauss, op. cit. (ref. 11) and several private communications, has defended the idea that the Imperishable Stars would be all those stars north of the ecliptic (for him, the winding waterway or Kha-canal of PT) that can be seen every single night, even though they may either rise or set during the night. For example, according to this hypothesis, the bright star Arcturus, not a circumpolar star but still a celestial body with a declination of ~45 in the pyramid age, would be a most conspicuous Imperishable Star. 41. These are clearly emphasized several times in P. Wallin, Celestial cycles: Astronomical concepts of regeneration in the ancient Egyptian cofn texts (Uppsala, 2002). See also E. C. Krupp, Echoes of the ancient skies (New York, 1983), 21113. Actually, the oldest references, specially the PTs, might refer to two blades that would have been attached to the head of the adzes. These blades were called sometimes sebawy (the two stars) in contemporary sources, a fact seemingly connecting with the hypothesis we will be defending here. See A. M. Roth, Fingers, stars and the opening of the mouth: The nature and function of the nTrwi-blades, Journal of Egyptian archaeology, lxxix (1993), 5779. 42. Wallin, op. cit. (ref. 41), 95.

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43. Wallin, op. cit. (ref. 41), 110. Interestingly, G. A. Wainwright, Iron in Egypt, Journal of Egyptian archaeology, xviii (1932), 315, also observed that the foreleg of an ox was used in the ritual of the Opening of the Mouth. This may imply that Meskhetyu was represented twice in these scenes. 44. For example, Lull, op. cit. (ref. 19), 2856; and R. Bauval (2004), private communication to G. Magli, cited in his Misteri e scoperte dellarcheoastronomia (Rome, 2005), 366. This hypothesis is reected in the same way in his most recent work, R. Bauval, The Egypt code (London, 2006), 531. However, Bauval wrongly considers the angular height of the devices to be equal to that of the inclination of the serdab, i.e. ~16. 45. As reected in M. Lehner, The complete pyramids (London, 1997), 90. 46. See ref. 13. 47. Anybody who has suffered the oppressive atmosphere at the uppermost chamber in the interior of the Red pyramid of Sneferu in Dahshur will understand why the next pyramid to be built with inner chambers, in fact Khufus, would need such devices. This sort of chamber, not directly connected with the exterior atmosphere, was never built again after the reign of Khufu, making ventilation channels unnecessary in the long term. 48. R. Krauss, Sobre los canales de ventilacin de la Gran Pirmide, Lecture and Seminar offered at the Ph.D. course on History of Astronomy and Archaeoastronomy at the University of La Laguna in 2002. 49. S. Quirke, Ra, el dios del sol (Madrid, 2003), 144. 50. Belmonte, op. cit. (ref. 10), and references therein. 51. We also had the intention of testing the lighting phenomena on the concave south and north faces of the Great Pyramid. However, we now believe that this phenomenon is actually quite difcult to observe at the precise moment of sunrise, because the light of the sun is too dim to produce the intense shadows needed to check the phenomenon. This might not have been the case in Antiquity when the limestone casing was on site. 52. For a recent discussion on the equinoctial layout of the complex of Khafre, see Lull, op. cit. (ref. 19), 31222. Despite its being probable that the ancient Egyptians recognized a lion (their constellation Mia) in the stars of Leo, see Lull and Belmonte, op. cit. (ref. 12), we do not support the idea that the Sphinx would have been orientated to the equinoctial Lion in a remote past as defended in R. Bauval and G. Hancock, Guardian del gnesis (Barcelona, 1997), 24253. Indeed, it is worth mentioning that other authors, notably E. Krupp, Dancing with lions http://www.thehallofmaat. com, challenge the idea that the lion of the celestial diagrams is Leo. 53. Most Egyptologists agree on the identication of the head of the Sphinx as a portrait of Khafre. See, for example, Lehner, op. cit. (ref. 45), 1301. However, there is a discrepant group, led by R. Stadelmann, Die gyptischen Pyramiden (Mainz, 1985), who believe that the Sphinx represented Khufu, regardless of whether it was sculpted during his reign or during that of one of his two sons, Djedefre and Khafre. The controversy is fully alive today as one can see by reading the chapters by R. Stadelmann, Las pirmides de la IV dinasta, and by M. Lehner, La Esnge, in the magnicent work edited by Z. Hawass, Tesoros de las pirmides (Barcelona, 2003), 11237 and 17389, respectively. In this respect, Krauss (private communication) is of the opinion that the attribution of the Sphinx is an archaeological question and cannot be solved by intuition. In this sense, he would be surprised if the Sphinx could be ascribed to Khufu on an archaeological basis. However, C. Reader, Giza before the Fourth Dynasty, Journal of the Ancient Chronology Forum, ix (2002), 521, has argued that part of the works in Khafres causeway and other areas near the Sphinx were established some time before Khufus work on site. The debate is clearly open. 54. Wilkinson, op. cit. (ref. 27), Fig. 120. The connection with summer solstice sunset had been already outlined by M. Lehner, Giza: A contextual approach to the pyramids, Archiv fr Orientforschung, xxxii (1985), 13959. Indeed, Lehner went even further, suggesting a connection between the astronomical phenomenon and the name of the Great Pyramid, Akhet Khufu, but not involving the Sphinx in it. 55. The proposal is also discussed in Magli, op. cit. (ref. 44), 37786, where the simultaneous transit

On the Orientations of Ancient Egyptian Temples

439

56.

57.

58. 59.

60. 61. 62.

63. 64.

65.

theory for the orientation of monuments during the Old Kingdom is defended. Curiously, according to C14 data, the pyramids of Khufu and Khafra should be contemporaneous, while that of Menkaure would be between four and ve decades younger. These are the most representative, by the number of measurements of the sample, of the otherwise controversial data from G. Bonani, H. Haas, Z. Hawass, M. Lehner, S. Nakhla, J. Nolan, R. Wenke and W. Wli, Radiocarbon dates of Old and Middle Kingdom monuments in Egypt, Radiocarbon, xliii/3 (2001), 1297320. This idea could be further supported by the recent proposal of F. L. Borrego Gallardo, Estatuas con halcones a la espalda de rey durante el Reino Antiguo: Estudio semiolgico e histrico (Memoria de Investigacin, Universidad Autnoma de Madrid; Madrid, 2004), that the akhet would be the glare of the sun-disc just before sunrise or after sunset. This would not be the only relation of the complex at Giza (and likewise for the Bent Pyramid in Dahshur) to the summer solstice, as shown in Belmonte and Zedda, op. cit. (ref. 26), where an interesting light and shadow effect at the pyramids is described. We also suggest that at the precise location where the astronomical phenomenology was observed there would have been some kind of sacred precinct where the appropriate rituals would have been performed. If they ever existed, the ruins or the foundations of such an enclosure should lie below the oor of the restaurant area of the Light and Sound Spectacle building at Giza. See M. Verner, Abusir, realm of Osiris (Cairo, 2002), 62. The question of the names of the pyramids is a matter of debate. Some scholars read the name of this pyramid as The Pyramid of Khaefre is Great. However, Krauss (private communication) suggests that the adjective wr of the name would make reference to a star in the northern sky, according to certain utterances of the PT. This would connect with an alternative name of the Great Pyramid as Khufu Akhty, i.e. Khufu belongs to the akhet, as proposed by W. Westendorf, Lexikon der gyptologie, v (1984), 5. Our hypothesis would lose much of its weight if this alternative reading is correct. For a very interesting discussion on the different possibilities of reading the names of the pyramids, see H. G. Fisher, On the interpretation of names of the pyramids, Egyptian studies, iii: Varia nova (New York, 1996), 7377. As defended by Quirke, op. cit. (ref. 49). Besides converting his earlier step pyramid at Meidum into a true pyramid of at faces. See, for example, Spence, op. cit. (ref. 10), who defends the use of Mizar and Kochab, or Belmonte, op. cit. (ref. 10), who defends the simultaneous transit of two stars of Meskhetyu, Phecda and Megrez. Here we propose that the two pyramids forming Akhet Khufu might have been orientated to the lower simultaneous transit of Phecda and Megrez in the interval 25602552 B.C. and 25482540 B.C. for the northern and southern pyramid of the pair, respectively. Indeed, under this new hypothesis, this would have occurred during the reign of Queops. Or, The Pyramid of Djedefre is a star of Sehedu. B. Mathieu (ed.), Dtermination de lorientation de la pyramide de Redjdef, in Bulletin de LInstitut Franais dArchologie Orientale, ci (2001), 4579. The French team, formed by . Aubourg and Ch. Higy, has estimated an error of deviation of ~10 cm in their measurement of the orientation of the nearly 100 metres-long walls of the pyramid. We consider this number extremely optimistic. A more realistic value would be closer to 40 cm, giving an error of ~. Relevant to this could be the presumed connection between the layout of the three large pyramids of Giza and the three stars of the Belt of Orion, probably the head of the Egyptian constellation Sah, see Lull and Belmonte, op. cit. (ref. 12), and references therein. However, this hypothesis, known as the Orion Correlation Theory (OCT) and widely known as a result of the best-seller of R. Bauval and A. Gilbert, El misterio de Orin (Barcelona, 1995), plates 6 and 7, is far from being accepted by the scientic community. Northern, solstitial and equinoctial orientations are facts; attempts to explain them are hypotheses that might be falsied with more experiments. A new attempt has most recently been made by R. Bauval, op. cit. (ref. 44), but the hypotheses defended in this new book overtly contradict earlier proposals of the same author. More interesting, however, is the case presented by Christian Tedder in the same book. See C. Tedder, An overview

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of the Orion Correlation Theory, in Bauval, op. cit. (ref. 44), Appendix III, 23249. 66. G. Goyon, Nouvelle observations relatives lorientation de la pyramide de Khops, Revue dgyptologie, xxii (1970), 8598, plate 7. See also Lull, op. cit. (ref. 19), note 77. 67. D. Jeffreys, The topography of Heliopolis and Memphis: Some cognitive aspects, in Stationen: Beitrage zur Kulturgeschichte gyptens, Rainer Stadelmann gewidmet (Mainz, 1998), 6371. 68. Bauval, op. cit. (ref. 44), has likewise pointed out a possible solstitial connection between Heliopolis and the pyramid of Djedefre. 69. The best reference to our knowledge is F. Raffaele, The Abu Roash Lepsius I mudbrick pyramid, in Huni <<http://xoomer.alice.it/frencescoraf/hesyra/dyn3-Huni.html>>, and references therein. 70. S. Aufrre and J. C. Golvin, Lgypte restitue, iii: Sites, temples et pyramides de Moyenne basse gypte (Paris, 1997), 59. 71. Belmonte and Zedda, op. cit. (ref. 26). 72. This might support the widespread idea, found even in classical sources, that the civil calendar, probably a schematic solar calendar, was created by the priests of Heliopolis. See Belmonte, op. cit. (ref. 11), 1826, and references therein. It is also important to notice that August Mariette reported an ethnographical use of the pyramids as reference landmarks to establish the date of the equinoxes by local people during the mid-nineteenth century (M. Isler, Sticks, stones and shadows: Building the Egyptian pyramids (Norman, 2001), 133). 73. This pyramid has been attributed to various candidates to kingship of the royal family of the 4th Dynasty. A most recent hypothesis makes it the unnished burial place of Setka(re), a son of Djedefre, who would have reigned briey after his father or his uncle Khaefre. See Dodson and Hilton, op. cit. (ref. 13), 5061. 74. Lull and Belmonte, op. cit. (ref. 12). Incidently, the hieroglyphic name of Heliopolis includes the glyph of a pole or pillar. 75. Actually, Shepseskaf selected a virgin area to the south, halfway between the monuments of his ancestors Djoser and Sneferu, while Userkaf built his complex close to what were then 200year-old monuments of Djoser. Both sacred precincts, and the associated temples (see Table 1), are quite well orientated to the cardinal directions. 76. Sahure, Neferirkare, Shepseskare, Neferefre and Niuserre. The rst two, together with Userkaf, are identied in the Westcar papyrus as the children of the sun-god Re. For a detailed history of the 5th Dynasty see Verner, op. cit. (ref. 58). 77. Jeffreys, op. cit. (ref. 67). Verner, op. cit. (ref. 58), 59, has also suggested that the pyramids of Abusir were aligned in such a way that they were pointing to Heliopolis, in a similar way as did the pyramids of Giza. However, the alignment at Abusir is difcult to determine and, besides, Heliopolis was not visible from there, probably obscured by the hill where Salah ad-Din was to build his fortress 3500 years later (see Fig. 14). 78. The statistics show an average azimuth of 90 with a standard deviation () of 4. See supra, ref. 20. 79. The idea of monuments orientated to Wepet Renpet was rst tested at the oases of the Western Desert. See Paper 2, Table 2. 80. See ref. 13. Surprisingly, Rolf Krauss (private communication) has recently informed us that his lunar chronology, in Ein Versuch zur Chronologie des spten Alten Reiches im Anschluss an die Monddaten in Neferirkare-Archiv (in press), gives a date for Tetis ascent to the throne c. 2305 5 B.C. See also, Hartung et al., op. cit. (ref. 4). 81. Unless we take into consideration that Kochab had a declination ~81 for 2300 B.C. and at its maximum western polar distance could have given an azimuth of 351 (81 for its perpendicular) for the pyramid complex. However, this would be the only pyramid orientated in such a way. 82. The Place of Re, the proper name of this temple. There are documentary evidences of another four but, of these, only Shasepibre, The One which is the destiny of the heart of Re, built by Niuserre, has been discovered so far. Quirke, op. cit. (ref. 49), 159. 83. The temple of Niuserre was rst measured by E. Krupp, Light in the temples, in Records in stone:

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84. 85.

86. 87.

88.

89. 90.

91.

92. 93.

94. 95.

Papers in memory of Alexander Thom, ed. by C. L. N. Ruggles (Cambridge, 1988), 47399. Krupp found a value for the southern face of the huge obelisk of 91.2, compatible with ours. However, his datum for the altar southern edge was 92.5, far from our 90. The discrepancy could be explained by the particular design of the altar since our own measurement comes from the central EW axis of the huge stone. See supra, ref. 62. Curiously, the pyramid temples of the 5th Dynasty at Abusir, orientated close to due east, could have been aligned to the same topographic feature as the one of Teti. This would have formed the sign akhet with the rising equinoctial sun or with the sunrise of Wepet Renpet. This latter would have happened, at least for a few years, close to the beginning of the reign of Sahure (c. 2400 B.C.), when Abusir was selected as burial ground of the dynasty. Unfortunately, we have been unable to explore this possibility because of the high pollution of the area that makes the observation of sunrise at the exact horizon very difcult (see, for example, Fig. 16). S. Bedier, Ein Stiftungsdekret Thutmosis III aus Buto, in Aspekte Sptgyptischer Kultur: Festschrift fr Erich Winter zum 65, ed. by M. Minas and J. Seidler (Mayence, 1994), 3550. H. Altenmller, Die Apotropaa und die Gtter Mittlelgyptens (Munich, 1965), 127, proposed that a small ivory plaque, dated to the reign of the 1st Dynasty King Djer (c. 3000 B.C.), contained the rst reference to the heliacal rising of Sopdet in Egyptian history, in agreement with the ooding and observation from the city of De(p). However, this opinion has been challenged by A. Spalinger, Three studies on Egyptian feasts and their chronological implications (Baltimore, 1992), 46, and by M. Clagett, Ancient Egyptian science, ii: Calendars, clocks and astronomy (Philadelphia, 1995), 1011. Clagett, in his Fig. III.3.a, recognizes the goddess Sekhet-hor, instead of Sopdet, in the stylized image of a recumbent cow. Actually, there are no obvious references to Peret Sopdet before the Middle Kingdom. Consequently, Belmonte, op. cit. (ref. 11), has proposed that perhaps this celestial event was not widely taken into account in earlier epochs. The relevant works are: A-S. von Bomhard, The Egyptian calendar: A work for eternity (London, 1999), 45; and A. Spalinger, The festival structure of Thutmose IIIs Buto Stele, Journal of the Archaeological Research Centre of Egypt, xxxiii (1996), 6976. R. Krauss (2003), private communication. The dates in the civil calendar are normally expressed by the ordinal number of the month within a certain season (written in Roman numbers from I to IV), the corresponding calendar season (Akhet (Inundation), Peret (Going Forth), or Shemu (Drought)), followed by the day of the month. For example, II Peret 24 is to be read as the 24th day of the 2nd month of the season Peret. These controversial dates and the related festival calendars have been discussed in A. Spalinger, op. cit. (ref. 87), chap. 1. Spalinger dates the corresponding blocks to the reign of Amenhotep I (c. 1520 B.C.) because they were found within the lling material of one of the pylons, together with other blocks bearing the name of this king, but also with material of the early Middle Kingdom. See also Belmonte, op. cit. (ref. 11), 50. The authors of the present paper have recent photographs of some of these blocks at their disposal, obtained at the Open Air Museum in Karnak during one of our eld campaigns. Von Bomhard, op. cit. (ref. 88), 4849, and references therein. The earliest documents are the Cosmology of Nut at some monuments of the 19th and 20th Dynasties. See O. Neugebauer and R. A. Parker, Egyptian astronomical texts, i (Providence, 1960). However, Ch. Leitz, Studien zur gyptischen Astronomie (gyptologische Abhandlungen, xlix; Wiesbaden, 1991), 67, has proposed that the diagonal clocks of the Middle Kingdom and before were not a star-rising device but rather an idealized system to observe star settings, where the heliacal rising of Sirius would always occur in I Akhet 1, or Wepet Renpet. This sign is damaged in the actual inscription, but this is the most logical reconstruction considering the total layout of the text. Traditionally, Sopdet, like the other decanal stars, ought to be in the Duat for 70 days, from its heliacal setting to its heliacal rising. However, the actual length of this period is heavily dependent on the latitude and the epoch. Curiously, for the latitude of Buto, this happened at the beginning

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of the New Kingdom. The predictive character of Egyptian astronomy can be inferred from the Peret Sopdet references of the Illahun Archive; see Belmonte, op. cit. (ref. 11), 51, and references therein. There are problems with the reading of the adjective of the Burning, Rekeh, festival. It should be small but it apparently reads big. See, for example, L. Gaebolde, La date de fondation du temple de Ssotris Ier et lorientation de laxe, in Le Grand Chteau dAmon de Ssostris Ier Karnak (Paris, 1998). In Belmonte, op. cit. (ref. 4), the archaeoastronomical proposals of this paper are challenged. Spalinger, op. cit. (ref. 87). See also supra, ref. 91. J. Yoyotte, Lgypte du Delta: Les capitals du nord, Dossiers darchologie, no. 213 (1996), 31. For an accurate description of the archaeological remains of Tanis, see Aufrre and Golvin, op. cit. (ref. 70), 30919. For the religious importance of Tanis, see Quirke, op. cit. (ref. 49), 1724. For the solar character of the city, see Quirke, op. cit. (ref. 49), 7980. The declination of Sirius at the beginning of the 21st Dynasty (c. 1070 B.C.), when the temple would have been aligned for the rst time, was ~17. However, it is possible that a new axis was established in the successive reconstructions by Shoshenq III (c. 830 B.C.) or Nectanebo II (c. 360 B.C.), when its declination was ~17 and ~16, respectively. Actually, Smendes is not archaeologically attested at Tanis. However, he is mentioned as living at this city in the famous story of Wenamun. Indeed, another possibility is offered by an alternative chronology which dates Psusennes Is ascent to the throne to 1052 B.C. See Hartung et al., op. cit. (ref. 4). For the coincidence between winter solstice and Wepet Renpet, see Belmonte, op. cit. (ref. 11). If a complete solar diameter (36) is considered, then we can go further (after 54 years) until c. 1950 B.C., a year included in the reign of Senuseret I for the majority of chronologies; see ref. 13. However, Krauss (private communication) locates year 1 of Senuseret I in 1920 B.C. In this case, the alignment of Amon temple at Karnak in year 10 of this king would not t the date of Wepet Renpet. However, the alignment would still work for earlier solstitial temples such as Mentuhotep II at Deir el Bahari or Mentuhotep III. See Paper I. J. A. Belmonte and M. Shaltout, Estableciendo la Maat en el antiguo Egipto: La orientacin de los templos, in Proceedings of the III Congreso Ibrico de Egiptologa, Trabajos de Egiptologa (Papers in ancient Egypt), special vol. (2007), in press. A classic work for the history, archaeology and ethnography of Siwa is A. Fakhry, Siwa Oasis, 5th edn (Cairo, 2004). Most recent, and including the latest discoveries and a challenging discussion about the alleged tomb of Alexander the Great at the temple of Bilad ar-Rum (Iskanders temple), is Aldumairy, op. cit. (ref. 8). For the cases of Karnak and Abu Simbel, see also Paper 1. J. N. Lockyer, The dawn of astronomy, new edn (New York, 1993). The rst compilation of relevant astronomical documents is also more than a century old. See Heinrich Brugsch, Thesaurus inscriptionum Aegyptiacarum, i: Astronomische und astrologische Inschriften altaegyptischer Denkmler (Leipzig, 1883). The Egyptian temple ought to be a terrestrial reection of the cosmos. See M. A. Molinero Polo, Templo y cosmos, in Arte y sociedad del antiguo Egipto, ed. by M. A. Molinero and D. Sola (Madrid, 2000), 6994; R. H. Wilkinson, The complete temples of ancient Egypt (London, 2000); Krupp, Echoes of the ancient skies (ref. 41); and idem, Beyond the blue horizon (Oxford, 1991).

96. 97.

98. 99. 100. 101. 102.

103.

104. 105.

106.

107.

108. 109.

110.