Exhaustiveness of the sample studied

The hypothesis of the simultaneous transits which Kate Spence, Egyptologist at Cambridge University (30), put forward by the year 2000, leads to date the building of the Giza pyramids from the middle of the XXVth century before our era, that is to say, a century or so after the generally admitted reigns of pharaohs Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure. By the year 2467 before our era, the upper and lower transits of the stars dzeta Ursae Majoris and beta Ursae Minoris occurred simultaneously in the northern sky. The terrestrial projection, with the help of a merkhet mainly made up with a plumb line, of the line joining the one and the other circumpolar stars could therefore have led to the accurate determination of the northern direction (31). Under the effect of the precession of the world axis, the upper and lower transits of the one and the other stars however no more coincided a few decades later. As a consequence, the line joining them progressively moved away from the northern meridian towards the eastern or western direction depending if the lower or upper transit of these stars is considered.

Depending if beta Ursae Minoris and dzeta Ursae Majoris make their upper or lower transit,
the line joining the one and the other stars moves east or west of the northern meridian.

This distancing speed, close to 19 seconds of arc, recalls the slope of the line joining the errors in true east alignment of the pyramids of kings Huni, Snofru, Khufu, Menkaure and Neferirkare (figure), which incited Kate Spence to put forward the hypothesis that the repeated sighting, over hundreds of years, of the simultaneous upper and lower transits of the stars dzeta Ursae Majoris and beta Ursae Minoris, led to the errors in cardinal alignment of seven of the Old Kingdom pyramids : the astronomical orientation of the pyramids of kings Huni, Snofru, Khufu, Menkaure and Neferirkare would thus result from the terrestrial projection of the line joining beta Ursae Minoris and dzeta Ursae Majoris - the star beta Ursae Minoris making its upper transit as dzeta Ursae Majoris makes its lower transit, whereas the errors in cardinal alignment of the pyramids of kings Khafre and Sahure would result from the repeated sighting of the simultaneous lower transit of beta Ursae Minoris and upper transit of dzeta Ursae Majoris.

Applied to the stars gamma Ursae Majoris and delta Ursae Majoris, the theory of the simultaneous transits leads to deduce the orientation of the pyramids of Huni, Snofru, Khufu, Menkaure and Neferirkare from the sighting of their upper transits and to explain the orientation of the pyramids of Khafre and Sahure by the sighting of their lower transits (32). But what about the pyramids of kings Djoser, Djedefre and Unas ? The hypothesis of the simultaneous transits, applied by Kate Spence to the stars beta Ursae Minoris and dzeta Ursae Majoris and by Juan Antonio Belmonte to the stars gamma Ursae Majoris and delta Ursae Majoris (32), does not seem to explain the errors in cardinal alignment of these Old Kingdom monuments. For the record, our new orientation theory, based upon the sighting of the disappearance azimuths of the stars alpha and beta Canis Minoris in the night or twilight sky, does explain the errors in alignment of everyone of the eleven pyramids which make up the sample studied.