Pharaonic Egypt Stretching the Cord

Pharaonic Egypt Stretching the Cord

This continues my postings on "background information" to properly understand the Great Pyramid of Cheops at Giza [Latvian gaissa "in the sky"] in Egypt.

Tompkins in his Secrets of the Great Pyramid writes at pp. 380 and
381 as follows:

"...it appears that there was drawn a plan of the Great Pyramid which included the calculation of the stars to be observed in order to obtain the direction of the north. After this plan was drawn, the ground of the Pyramid had to be cleared in order to proceed to the ceremony called "stretching the cord," which for the Egyptians was the equivalent of our laying of the first stone. This ceremony had the purpose of establishing the direction of true north and, as the Egyptians saw it, suspending the building from the sky by tying the building with an imaginary string to the axis of rotation of the vault of heaven."

How was north determined? Tompkins writes (p. 380):
"If my interpretation of Egyptian sky charts is correct [it is so in my opinion - AK], the line that indicates the north used to be marked so as to pass through the celestial pole AND through the pole of the ecliptic."

For the solar eclipse of July 25, 2430 BC on the Nile Delta this line - according to the Heifetz precessional planisphere - runs straight through the stars Zosma (Duhr) and Chort in Leo (the Sphinx) which are represented by the King's and Queen's Chamber, as shown at
´
http://www.lexiline.com/lexiline/lexi70.htm

In fact the west face of the Great Pyramid "is not oriented to the north, but is oriented 2'30" west of true north." This deviation from orientation to the north is, according to Tompkins, the result of the precession of the equinoxes from the date of the first plan to the actual laying of the first stone - since precession of the equinoxes "displaces the star taken as the polar star in practical calculations to the the west at a rate of about 50" a year.

It is this rate of precession which the Great Pyramid was intended to calculate exactly.

As Tompkins writes at page 382 in concluding his book:
"I have collected a mass of numerical evidence which shows that the inhabitants of the ancient world were acquainted with the rate of the precession of the equinoxes [and solstices] and attached a major significance to it."

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Egyptology, Ancient Geodetics, Stretching the Cord, Sky Charts, Celestial Pole, Ecliptic Pole, Precession, Archaeoastronomy, Great Pyramid, Cheops

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