The Great Pyramid: Funerary Monument, State Centralization Project, Astronomical Observatory

The pyramid-building age in ancient Egypt did not last very long. In fact, the five largest pyramids were all built in the space of only one century, the pyramids that followed for a thousand years afterward becoming much smaller and shoddier. However, these large pyramids still stand to the wonder of our world even today, a reminder of the highly developed culture that existed at that time in ancient Egypt.

Funerary Monuments

But why were such huge and seemingly wasteful structures built? One obvious purpose was their serving as funerary monuments to the pharaoh. However, it is doubtful that any of the large pyramids constructed at the time served the purpose of being an actual tomb, as not one body has been discovered in any of the chambers inside. One supposition is that the pharaoh was buried elsewhere and the pyramid served as a house for his soul. Whatever the real reason may be, there was certainly a funerary purpose to their construction.

Creating a Sense of Nationhood

Were there other reasons for involving thousands and thousands of people in such a massive effort? Part of the answer can be seen by looking at the situation in Egyptian society at that time. Although Upper and Lower Egypt had been united under a common ruler only recently at around 3200 B. C., Egypt before the pyramids were built (the building of the pyramids occurred around 2700-2600 B. C.) was still not really a centrally unified country, the farmers that worked the Nile Valley still persisting to a large degree in African tribal customs. During the four month inundation of the land by the Nile River when farming could not be done, farmers would raid nearby villages, stealing cattle and raping women. The labor that built the pyramids was not slave labor as Herodotus mistakenly claimed, but paid labor done mostly by farmers during the four-month inundation period. During the pyramid building, these farmers, working side by side with farmers from other villages from all over Egypt, got to know their fellow workers, not as strange, suspicious people, but as comrades involved in a great undertaking, the building of prominent structures of great beauty. This, combined with the tremendous administrative oversight and planning which had to have been done, as well as technological advances that had to have been made to accomplish such a task, created something never done before in human history, the creation of a sense of nationhood among a formerly tribal people-a sense of being first and foremost, not inhabitants of some local village, but Egyptians. (Mendelssohn, p. 153)

The Great Pyramid Was Both an Observatory and an Astronomy Classroom

However, as important an accomplishment as this had been, there is still another aspect to the pyramids. That is the actual use of the pyramids, or, should I say, the Great Pyramid in particular, as an astronomical observatory which was able to facilitate, among other things, the exact timing of the transit of stars and the teaching of astronomy. In order to understand how this worked, it is necessary to see how the inside of the pyramid is constructed. A diagram of this can be seen by clicking here. One will notice on the diagram that, to enter the pyramid, there is a descending passageway beginning on the right side of the pyramid. This descending passageway meets an ascending passage that leads to the Queen's Chamber, the Grand Gallery, and then the King's Chamber.

First, in order for the Great Pyramid to serve as an astronomical observatory, it had to be aligned in a perfect north-south direction. This was done by allowing the ray of what was then the North Star, Alpha Draconis, to shine down the entrance passageway, descending at precisely 26 degrees, 17 minutes. This ray would have been able to be seen even in broad daylight for the same reason that stars can be seen in daylight from within a deep well. This allowed the builders to orient the pyramid in a perfect north-south direction as they as they built it upward layer by layer. Above the fifth course of masonry, an ascending passage was erected at the same 26 degrees, 17 minutes, pointing south, leading to the King's and Queen's Chambers, and also the Grand Gallery. In order for the builders to continue the perfect north-south alignment using this second passageway, the first passageway was plugged up at the juncture of the two passageways and the upper part of the plug was filled with water, reflecting the ray of the North Star back into the new ascending southward passageway. At the level of the 25^th course, this passageway opens up into the 28-foot-high Grand Gallery, a feature which maintains an absolute accuracy of orientation with True North for another 25 courses, at which point the pyramid building would have then come to a temporary halt, allowing what had been built up to that point to be used as an astronomical observatory before the upward construction was eventually continued, closing in the view of the sky that would have been seen from the Grand Gallery. (Beaudry, p. 56-58)

Egyptologist Peter Tompkins writes, "With various observers in the Grand Gallery, placed one above the other, on the slanted incline, the southing-or transit across the meridian-of every key star in an arc of about 80 degrees, could be observed with remarkable accuracy. As a matter of fact, the most important object of transit observation is to determine the exact moment at which the observed object crosses the meridian. This was obtained by noting the moment when the star was first seen on the eastern edge (left) of the vertical sky space, and when it disappeared past the western edge (right); the instant midway between these two would be the true time of transit." (Tompkins, p. 152)

Tompkins, referring to the 19^th Century British astronomer Richard Proctor, who originally made this discovery, continues, "Proctor surmises that someone in either the Queen's Chamber or on the flat platform of the truncated pyramid above the Grand Gallery could keep time by hourglass or water clock in coordination with the observers in the Gallery, who would signal the beginning or end of transit across the Gallery's field of view.

"By looking down the Descending Passage into a reflecting pool, an ancient astronomer could have noted the exact second of a star's transit, because only at that moment will its rays be reflected. The very same system is used today at the U. S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D. C., where the daily transit of stars is noted to a split second by their reflection in a pool of mercury." (4)

A related feature of the Grand Gallery was its use as a classroom for astronomy studies where students could sit on reclining benches positioned at the different levels, benches that would have been attached to the two series of 27 slots that had been cut vertically into the masonry. Each night 15 to 25 students would have sat here to study the transit of the stars, while in the day, the blocks at the top of the Grand Gallery would have been removed in order for another 15 to 20 students to study the shadows of the Sun on the eastern and western walls at different times of the day. (Beaudry, p. 58-59)

The Common Heritage of Mankind

The knowledge of astronomy of the Egyptians, however, was not entirely developed by the Egyptians themselves, but, as Herodotus points out, was built upon at least 40,000 years of previous human knowledge. One thing that was known back in the ancient Egyptians' time was the approximately 26,000-year cycle of the precession of the equinoxes, the phenomenon where the earth slowly precesses like a giant top. Imhotep, the Egyptian scientist and architect who lived during the time of the pharaoh Zoser, came very close to our modern-day calculation of this cycle, his being 25,920 years while ours is 25,776 years. (Beaudry, p. 60) This high level of scientific knowledge was added to by other Egyptian scientists such as Eratosthenes, who, in the third century B. C. was able to measure the circumference of the Earth to a very high degree of accuracy. The ancient Greeks built upon the knowledge of the Egyptians, while the knowledge of the Greeks, revived during the Italian renaissance and used to pull Europe out of the Dark Age, still shines its light on us down to this present day.

In conclusion, let us think for a moment what must have gone through the minds of the priests of Heliopolis, the planners of these pyramids. It must have been recognized at the time that there was a political necessity to forge a unified nation out of Egypt and that involving people in a common project of immense proportions would offer a way of accomplishing this. Making the project a funerary monument to the pharaoh, of course, would further this concept of a centralized state. Also, the dovetailing in of the aspect of astronomy, at least for the building of the Great Pyramid, would have been known to have incalculable value for the advancement of scientific knowledge. But just the sheer beauty and imposing size of these monuments (the pyramids were coated at the time with white limestone and would have been seen glistening for miles across the desert landscape), would have certainly been a source of inspiration and pride to the citizenry of the time, just as today, they reflect the greatness of that civilization, the forward strides that had been made then being now the common heritage of all mankind.

List of Sources:

(1) Kurt Mendelssohn, The Riddle of the Pyramids. Thames and Hudson, 1974.

(2) Pierre Beaudry, "Pythagorean Spherics: The Missing Link Between Egypt and Greece," 21^st Century Science & Technology, Summer 2004.

(3) Peter Tompkins, Secrets of the Great Pyramid (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1971), p. 152.

(4) Reference is to: Richard Anthony Proctor, The Great Pyramid, Observatory, Tomb, and Temple (London: Chatto & Windus, 1883).

(5) Pierre Beaudry, op. cit., p. 58-59.

(6) Pierre Beaudry, op. cit., p. 60.

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