h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The 'Great pyramid' of Giza is a member of a group of three great pyramids that are aligned like the three stars in the 'belt of orion' constellation.

This should be addressed or dismissed...

It's too trivial to be worth dismissing. Any three objects in a row can be said to be like the stars of Orion's belt. Unless there is any other part of the constellation present there's not enough to go on.

HAHAHAHAHA, wait...

ok, sorry...

They are offset in size and aligned like orion is, and with the milky way, (oo, whatz that big river called),

uh oh, i feel, uhg pressure, oh crap it's cristianity... we submit,

{no offence to any real christ/god lovers}

I wish this seemes as funny to thou as it dosth to me, and seemed like it made sense.?!

You've piqued my curiosity now.

I don't understand your comment about Christianity, though. Christianity has nothing whatsoever to do with the pyramids.

Well, at first look, the correspondence between the pyramids and the three stars of Orion's belt isn't very good:

The pyramids are on the west side of the river Nile. They are roughly in a line and the line joining them is at an angle of about 45 degrees with the river. They are positioned: large, not quite so large, small.

The stars of Orion's belt are to the East of the milky way and the line going through them is parallel to the milky way. In terms of brightness, they are bright, slightly brighter, not quite so bright, but all basically the same brightness.

I'll analyse the exact positions, based on Flinders Petrie's measurements.

I just take a jab at them/us/history sometimes. I really can't stand religion. Bunch of liars, the way i see it. (please take no offence, churchies, just my free will talkin')

There is a line of thought that says the pyramids may be older than they seem. Or that they are built to represent the sky of an ancient event, based on how the sky appeared in a certain era, and the alignment of the Nile, the Major Pyramids, and the partially buried sphynx. (The sphynx was formed in whole but refilled to represent the cat constellation's appearance just before dawn, thus buried in the light)

To deny any connection between the Giza alingment, and Orion's belt seems unrealistic. They could clearly see the stars, and the milky way; they lived on the river and the sky, to navigate (and probably tell ghost stories!)

The 45% angle point is interesting, and I don't know anything about that. But, the way I understood the situation was that the three, including the final 'Great' pyramids resembled a reflection (interpretation) of the night sky. (It would be hard to perfectly replicate things if the other two pyramids were built before the orion concept)

Along the same line I heard that the slope of the giza pyramids was partly arrived at by one person taking a handful of sand and slowly letting it form a pile. The natural angle that the sand would form was chosen to build the pyramids of giza. (This is also after notable failures of pyramid construction that often went too steep with the sides that then prematurely broke.)

That to me has always seemed like a breakthrough moment for logic.

There's an awful lot of rubbish written about the pyramids. It's very easy to make up a theory that seems to fit the facts. As I said before, any three things in a line could be seen as a map of Orion's belt, but that's unrealistic. It doesn't fit the facts, so the inventor of the theory bends the facts: it's on the wrong side of the Milky Way, so we make it a reflection of the position in the sky. Why would the Egyptians do this? The pyramids do are not aligned the same as the stars of Orion's belt ... so we ignore that fact.

Similarly, the pile of sand is a good theory, but it doesn't explain why all the pyramids had different slopes from each other. And experiments with sand will show that there isn't a constant angle that sand will pile up: it depends very much on the exact shape of the sand grains.

Good points, and I appreciate your interest and patience.

In regard to the pile of sand story, it is hard to prove without architectural documents, or the results of any inquiry that may have been made into the best slope for a pyramid. It seems logical, but unproven. To me it really sounds like an engineer explaining why the angle should be x, and using the demonstration to illustrate the need for a modest slope to an ambitious pharoh.

When you refer to the ground alignment of the Giza pyramids and the Nile, do you say that if laying on the ground the Orion's Belt and Milky Way are not positioned like a reflection?

Is your opinion that there is no relation?

I haven't figured it out yet. I've got the exact co-ordinates of the stars of Orion's belt put into a spreadsheet (after a lot of fiddling - many respectable websites mistakenly leave out a minus sign in front of the declination of the third star). I haven't had a chance to put in the exact coordinates of the pyramids yet, although I have the information in a document somewhere. (Flinders Petrie's complete measurements of the pyramids).

I would be interested to know what you find.

I would like to comment on the idea that any three objects in a line could be claimed as representing the Giza pyramids. This argument is fundamentaly flawed based on the following:

Any TWO objects or points form a line, but have no relative scale in relation to any other two points. When three points are in line it is only the difference between their distances that will distinguish them from any other three points that are in line.

When three points do not form a line, they basically describe a triangle. Even if they are almost in line, there is still an obtuse angle in addition to the distances between the points that can be used as distinguishing characteristics of the group.

Orion's belt and the Giza pyramids are both a group of three points that are not in line. The obtuse angle that they describe is very similar. Their spacing is, in scale, also alike. Finally, Orion's belt can be seen as two bright stars with one less bright star slightly offset from alignment to the others. Giza is similar; two large pyramids with a smaller offset one.

If there were major differences in the angle, relative spacing, or even size this theory would have no ground on which to stand. They are, however, remarkably (and almost undeniably) consistant with each other.

I never got back to you on this because, although I have the exact coordinates of the three pyramids and of the three stars, I can't think exactly how to compare them quantitavely.

Two points:
- the spacing and angle between the pyramids does seem to roughly match the same quantities in the stars. I'll try and see how close exactly. Bearing in mind that the pyramids themselves were built in the order: Khufu, Khafre, Menkaure, I should assume the first two are exactly right and see how far the third one is from where it should be to be an exact copy.

- the fact that there are two big pyramids and a small one does not match the brightness of the stars at all. The stars are all nearly exactly the same brightness.

{hey, take your time if you are working it out, Gnomon. The pyramids, stars and this website will outlast us both (hopefully). My last argument finally clicked in my head in a way that I could describe it without alot of hand gestures and using the word 'like' between every thought!}

I am not familiar with the names of each pyramid, but my understanding of the chronology was that the smallest was built first, then a larger one, followed by the last and just slightly largest.

If such timeline is correct, it would not be difficult for the builders to position the third so that the final group would represent the Belt with regard to offset and scaled spacing. In this way it is not necessary to present the construction of all three in a conscious scheme to represent the stars, only the final pyramid's position would have to be controlled to represent the pattern.

As far as the three stars of Orion's Belt having similar intensity, I would beg to differ. I think (and wish I could see them now) that one of the three is clearly dimmer than the other two.

Of course the (hypothetical) scale of distance cannot be directly transferred to the size/brightness scale (or else the pyramids would be about 10M tall), but viewed independantly it seems harder to assert that there is no connection, than it would be to suggest a purposful design.

If we are to believe that this is not the reason for the offset, then is there any other way to explain the reasoning for the pyramids to not be aligned? With the skill that the builders possesed, it would be a trivial detail to have them align nearly perfectly. Would a people who were so obviously interested in presision not consider this matter?

Good points, all of them.

The biggest pyramid was the first of the three to be built. The second pyramid was slightly smaller, and the third one was about half the size of the other two. Going from a northeast to southwest direction, the pyramids are ordered:

Khufu: 1st to be built and largest
Khafre: 2nd to be built and slightly smaller
Menkaure: 3rd to be built and much smaller

There are six other pyramids as well, which are much smaller again.

As you say, only the positioning of the third pyramid is relevant to the correspondance with the stars.

The three stars have magnitudes: 2.05, 1.70 and 2.23. Star brightnesses work the opposite to the way you would expect: the smaller the number the brighter the star. So the brightest one is the middle one. But the difference of 0.3 magnitudes are barely discernable to the eye.

I am surprised to learn that the timeline was opposite of what I had thought. I guess I always thought that they tended to build larger pyramids than those of their predecessors. That's what i get for assmeing things.

But with respect to the magnitudes of the stars, the brightest star (1.70) is twice as bright as the second (2.05) is, compared to the third (2.23). As long as there is not another factor (as in the Richter Scale) one would logically see the group as having one star that is much brighter than the other two. (Granting that any difference could be detected with the eye). My (remembering of my) experience has been that one seemed dimmer than the others. This effect could be explained if the brightest of the three was in the center of the Belt, thus accenting the difference of the adjacent stars.

Another factor that you may be able to describe is if the Magnitude scale is based on the stars diameter. If this is the case, wouldn't an exponential scale be introduced when considering the visible area?

-
thanks again for having this dialogue, and helping me adjust my faulty knowledge!
{infinity challenged... 3,3,5,4,4,3,5,5,4... ? ...3,3,5... ?!? If that is right I'll be surprised. A hint maybe (please)?}

Nothing further to report on the possible resemblance to Orion's belt yet.

A hint for the sequence: the mystery series is very closely related to one of the other two sequences.