Dear Ian,

First I am glad you are seeing the sense in a civil, balanced debate on these matters rather that the behind-the-scene skulduggery that goes on elsewhere in other quarters.

Let me just clear a few points regarding precessional calculations and Skyglobe. I had, indeed, published the Orion-Giza correlation theory in 1989 in Discussions In Egyptology Vol. 13 in which the declinations and RA of stars had been worked out not by Skyglobe (which did not yet exist) but by astronomers using the Rigorous Formula of Precession. This is made clear in the article and notes attached. You will find a copy of this article in appendix I of Secret Chamber. In The Orion Mystery the same values were used, although Skyglobe was also used to work out the low point at the meridian for Orion's belt in its precessional cycle. Skyglobe correctly gave a date of c. 10,450 BC (the rigorous formula gives 10,400 BC). Even the astronomer Anthony Fairall, my staunch critic in South Africa, also agrees on this one. Skyglobe, however, gives the wrong altitude of 11.5 degrees +- whereas, in fact, it is closer to 9 degrees. Skyglobe does, however, provide a fairly good RA close to 18 hours. This means that Orion's belt, in 10,500 BC, crossed the meridian at the same time the vernal point was on the rise in the east. This does not occur all the time, like you say, but only around 10,500 BC +- 100 years or so. In view that Leo also rose helically at that epoch, it would a most unusual 'coincidence' that the Sphinx happens to set in such a way that it gazed at its celestial counterpart at that epoch as well. In Keeper of Genesis we had the declinations and RA of Orion, Leo and Sirius worked out by an astronomer, Adrian Ashford, using Sky Chart 2000.00 on an Apple Mac computer (very much the same as used by Paolo Piaggio, recently referenced on TDG). Skyglobe was only used for visual effects and other aspects within its range of accuracy (see Keeper of Genesis appendix 2).

But you have raised objections to my claim that the Sphinx represented in the minds of the ancient Egyptians the constellation of Leo in the sky. First let me say that I am puzzled by those like you --Egyptologists or not-- who insist that the ancient Egyptians (who after all were avid observers of the constellations and kept careful timekeeping with the stars) did not bother to identify the constellation of Leo or any other of the twelve zodiacal constellations. I find this not just puzzling but arrogant. The references in the Pyramid Texts, Coffin Texts, Book of the Dead and other texts make it absolutely clear that the Egyptians paid special attention to the daily and yearly (and more probably long-term precessional) apparent motions of the sun across the ecliptic (zodiacal) path. It would seems absurd to suppose that, in view of this fact, they did not bother to charter the various star groups (constellations) through which the sun passed. In any case, there are many allusions in these texts that make it implicit if not explicit that certain zodiacal constellation were perceived as 'The Scales', 'The Bull', 'The Lion' and so forth. But in the case of Leo, the identification with a 'lion' or 'Sphinx' seems certain. In Keeper of Genesis we devote quite a few pages of the book to make this point clear (see Chapter 10). We show that the entity the ancient Egyptians called 'Horus of the Horizon' was identified to both the Sphinx and the constellation of Leo. There can be little doubt of this. Even the ancient Greeks knew that the Egyptians identified the constellation of Leo with the idea of a sphinx, pointing out that they used sphinxes as fountains to symbolise the summer solstice sun in Leo at the time of the Nile's annual flood.

Robert