Dear Ian,

Because you mentioned your earlier interest in the "inverting Egypt" problem, please let me take a moment to condense the primary facts. Although they are simple, they are not often clearly understood and described accurately by others.

I first detected this problem in 1995, when I was writing "Skywatchers, Shamans, & Kings: Astronomy and the Archaeology of Power", and I described it briefly in the section of that book on pyramids. I also offered a condensed presentation of the argument in the February, 1997, instalment ("Pyramid Marketing Schemes") of my monthly column on astronomy and culture for "Sky & Telescope" magazine. From 1997 through the present I have committed extensive commentary on it to e-mail, correspondence, and Internet discussions, primarily the HASTRO-L (History of Astronomy) netlist. In May, 1998, allied with Zahi Hawass, I participated in the Visions Travel "The Pyramids, the Sphinx, the Mystery" cruise through Alaska's Inside Passage. In my presentation, as part of a "debate" with Graham Hancock and others, I spotlighted seven serious problems with the Bauval/Hancock astronomical interpretations. Most of the subsequent coverage has focused on my complaint that Bauval, and later Hancock, made Giza map Orion by turning Egypt upside-down.

I am not as interested in establishing what the Egyptians did or didn't do as I am in understanding and evaluating accurately the Orion mapping assertion Bauval and Gilbert originally developed in "The Orion Mystery" and that Hancock and Bauval extended in "The Message of the Sphinx". Because the record of the past is always incomplete, I try to be judicious about the difference between proposal and assertion. Guided by that instinct, I evaluated the Orion's Belt mapping in the context of Bauval's and Gilbert's handling of it.

Originally, Bauval and Gilbert did not ascribe to Giza's plan the "artistic license" now often invoked by Bauval and Hancock, and they did not suggest the pyramids occupied the ground in isolation from the sky. In fact, their argument emerged from, and relied on, the Badawy/Trimble stellar alignment interpretation of the King's Chamber shafts. I first brought this interpretation to wider attention in 1978 in "In Search of Ancient Astronomies", and Bauval and Gilbert quoted and referenced me in "The Orion Mystery" in that connection.

Had Bauval and Gilbert ignored the shaft alignments and simply said three pyramids in a line equal three stars in a row, their argument would have been unfalsifiable and logically uninteresting. I would have left it alone. Instead, however, Bauval and Gilbert first anchored the Giza pyramids with clearly designated directional attachments to the sky. The north shaft, they agreed, was targeted on the upper culmination (meridian occupation, cardinal north) of Thuban, near the north celestial pole. The south shaft, they agreed, was targeted on the transit (meridian occupation, cardinal south) of the Belt of Orion. If you accept the stellar alignment of the shafts, and Bauval/Gilbert/Hancock do, it means the Old Kingdom Egyptians deliberately associated cardinal north on the ground at Giza with north in the sky and cardinal south on the ground at Giza with south in the sky. Of course, you can invert the directionality of the plan on the ground with respect to the sky's distinctive directionality, but doing so contradicts the original premise. Bauval et al, however, embraced that premise.

We know the Egyptians invested in the sky's distinctive directionality, in the pyramids and elsewhere. There is also other textual evidence that confirms the symbolic significance of cardinality in Old Kingdom Egypt, but it is not required for this analysis. It simply supports it.

There is, of course, no question that Bauval and Gilbert matched north on the ground with south in the sky and vice versa. This is evident in the photographic presentation in the book, in the diagrams, and in the orientation of all of the maps with south at the top (unmarked). Whether or not it makes a difference, it did confuse people. Take a look at the artwork on page 136 of "The Secret Language of the Stars and Planets" by Geoffrey Cornelius and Paul Devereux. This sympathetic report of the Bauval/Gilbert Orion Mystery impossibly projects the stars to earth to show the relationship between the pyramids and the stars.

A direct projection of Orion's Belt to the ground actually sends the diagonal line of "stars" across the diagonal line of the three main pyramids at Giza. That means that mapping strategy, which preserves the directional congruence of earth with sky, does not work. To get the configuration Bauval and Gilbert proposed, you have to "slide" Orion down the sky, over the south horizon, and onto the ground. This reverses the directionality of the mapping. The southernmost star in Orion's Belt is then toward the north on the ground, and the northernmost star is toward the south. The inversion clearly exists, and it contradicts key elements of their interpretation of Giza. Of course, Bauval doesn't deny the inversion. He just calls it something different and says it doesn't matter. He and Hancock say, "Just look south." Looking south is, however, the geometric equivalent of turning Egypt upside-down.

I said directionality does matter because Bauval and Gilbert embraced the defined directionality of the King's Chamber shafts and the Queen's Chamber shafts. Bauval and Hancock bypass that argument and refer to the "artistic license" perspective. Recently, however, Bauval claimed Kate Spence appropriated his earlier research and precedence for a stellar dating of the Great Pyramid. To support his claim, he argued again for the significance of the King's Chamber shafts and the Queen's Chamber shafts, particularly the north shaft of the Queen's Chamber, which he says was targeted on Kochab. To support his case, Bauval referenced an illustration of Kochab and Mizar on the Giza celestial meridian in "The Orion Mystery". This again means Bauval thinks north means north and south means south...except when he wants north to mean south. I have argued that this is a logical contradiction, and for me it constitutes a fatal flaw in the Orion mapping argument. It's easy to see it. You just look north.

Direction was originally important for Bauval and Hancock, and it remains important, as the recent squabbling over Kate Spence's paper demonstrates. Bauval's "Orion Mystery" Plate 15a absolutely confirms it was important from the beginning. It only became unimportant when I explained the implication on the Orion map assertion.

I won't burden you at this time with the rest of the details or with all of the other arguments I presented in the cruise "debate," but Bauval and Hancock do run into another big problem with their equinoctial configuration of constellations in 10,500 B.C. If the pyramids are the Belt of Orion (I don't think so), if the Sphinx is Leo the Lion (it isn't, but they say it is), and if the Nile is the Milky Way, then the Sphinx is on the wrong side of the river. I have described the Sphinx problem in weblists, correspondence, and lectures since then and will publish it next year.

If we say the monuments were intended to map the night sky but impose no rules for mapping, we are engaged in a meaningless enterprise. On the other hand, I prefer to start with a simple premise: If we are talking about mapping, then we are talking about one-to-one correspondence. Without accurate representation, mapping cannot be recognized as mapping.

Bauval and Hancock trumpet the extraordinary accuracy and precision of the Giza monuments and the "perfect correlation" the Egyptians forged between the ground and the sky. When held accountable for this accuracy, precision, and "perfect correlation," however, they revise the rules by which they have been playing. There hasn't, for example, been much discussion lately about the stellar correspondences of the pyramids beyond Giza. That is because the arguments against these correspondences are numerous, compelling, and easy to visualize. Apart from issues of proportion and
size, which are problematic, the Giza "Belt of Orion" isn't pointing toward the right pyramid "stars."

The following excerpt from page 271 of "The Message of the Sphinx" also demonstrates the contrast between Bauval's and Hancock's earlier position on the precision of Egyptian intent and their current ambivalence about precision:

Our research has persuaded us that a scientific language of precessional time and allegorical astronomy was deliberately expressed in the principal monuments there and in the texts that relate to them. From quite an early stage in our investigation, we hoped that this language might shed new light on the enigmatic civilization of Egypt. We did not at first suspect, however, that it would also turn out to encode specific celestial coordinates or that these would transpose onto the ground in the form of an arcane 'treasure map,' directing the attention of seekers to a precise location in the bedrock deep beneath the Sphinx." "The Message of the Sphinx" actually concludes with homage to the "awe-inspiring scale and
precision of the monuments.

Further, in "Heaven's Mirror" (page 89), Hancock quotes "The Hermetic Texts" in an endorsement of astonishing accuracy in mapping sky to earth: "Whosoever shall make an exact copy of these forms..."

If precision and accuracy were earlier so key to the understanding of Giza, why are they now abandoned to the fuzzier standards of "artistic license?" If the monumental celestial mapping of Giza is allowed artistic license, how does it pinpoint "a precise location in the bedrock deep beneath the Sphinx?"

Bauval's original inspiration, recall, was the distinctive bend in Orion's Belt and the bend in the Giza diagonal. This is an argument rooted in accuracy and precision. The angle, he informed us, is important, but later, after the issue of accurate mapping was raised, directional accuracy was discounted.

Actually, I know many artists and art historians prepared to take serious exception with the concept of "artistic license." I suspect the Egyptians would, too. They did, after all, cardinally align the Great Pyramid with no error greater than 5.5 arcminutes.

Uprighting Orion,

E.C. Krupp