Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt

esynchronized every 1,460 years—that is, every Sothic cycle. According to the science historian Gerald J. Whitrow,
“there is reason to associate this with the minister of king Djoser of the Third Dynasty known as Imhotep.” 65 Bearing this
in mind and also recalling that Imhotep was the architect of the very first pyramid complex in Egypt, we would expect to
find some indication of the Sothic cycle in the design of his masterpiece, the step pyramid complex at Saqqara.
In The Egypt Code we discuss at length the design of the step pyramid complex and the intense astronomical and
calendrical quality that it exhibits. Intriguing is a very curious architectural feature called a serdab that is linked to the
north face of the step pyramid itself. The serdab consists of a small stone cubicle that is inclined against the slope of the
lowest tier of the step pyramid at an angle of about 15 degrees and oriented about 4.5 degrees east of due north. The
peculiarity of this cubicle is that inside it was a seated statue of King Djoser, which faces north and seems to look out of
the cubicle through two peepholes cut into its north wall. The consensus among Egyptologists today is that the statue
was meant to be gazing into the circumpolar region of the sky, where could be found the important constellation of the
Big Dipper. Our calculations showed that circa 2650 BCE, when the step pyramid was constructed, the exact spot in the
sky on which the gaze of the statue of Djoser seems transfixed was occupied once every twenty-four hours by the star
Alkaid, the lowest star in the Big Dipper, which marked the hoof of the Bull’s Thigh asterism of the ancient Egyptians.
Perhaps the reason behind this alignment was to mark the rising time of the star Sirius in the east. In other words,
precisely when the hoof star Alkaid aligned itself with the direction of gaze of the statue in the north, the star Sirius
would be seen rising in the east. It is interesting to consider again, as we did in chapter 4, why Imhotep chose to orient
Djoser’s statue to gaze at the hoof star, Alkaid, instead of the brighter, upper thigh star Dubhe.
The tracking of the rising of Sirius with the Big Dipper would come naturally to an avid stargazer living in Egypt at
the time of Imhotep, mainly because an interesting simultaneous alignment took place each day between the culmination
of Sirius on the south meridian and the culmination of the brightest star in the Big Dipper, Dubhe, on the north meridian.
We will recall from chapter 4 that two important stars tracked by the prehistoric stargazers of Nabta Playa were Dubhe
and Sirius. Once such a conjunction is noticed, a person such as Imhotep, who was adept in geometry and astronomy,
would realize very quickly that the perpetual circular trajectory of the Big Dipper around the north celestial pole could be
used as a sort of dial to mark the rising, culmination, and setting of the star Sirius.
The Big Dipper contains seven bright stars, with the two brightest being Dubhe and Alkaid. These stars appear to
revolve around a fixed point, the north celestial pole, in one full day—in other words, they travel in a circular,
counterclockwise direction, a bit like the hand of a clock moving backward for twelve hours. If we observe the specific
constellations night after night, month after month, and year after year, their cycles eventually become second nature to us
and become ingrained in our memory. What Imhotep could not help but notice was that when Sirius rose in the east, the
star Alkaid was at about 4.5 degrees east of the meridian. The important pieces for our arugument that Imhotep had to
note were (1) when the star Dubhe was at north meridian, the star Sirius was at south meridian, and (2) when the star
Alkaid was about 4.5 degrees east of north (and at altitude 15 degrees—the line of sight of Djoser’s statue in the small
stone cubicle at Saqqara), the star Sirius was rising in the east. If Imhotep was to have access to earlier observations such
as, say, those made at Elephantine centuries before or even earlier ones made at Nabta Playa, he would have realized that
the position of the star Sirius had changed due to the precession. As we saw in chapter 4, this may explain why Imhotep
directed the serdab toward Alkaid rather than to Dubhe. Imhotep, as the designer of the first major architectural complex
of Old Kingdom Egypt, may have been paying homage to his distant ancestors who originated this astral ritual at Nabta
Playa when the hoof star Alkaid moved into place to initiate the Bull’s Thigh constellation as the circumpolar star group
that would herald the rise of Sirius. Had he known of an earlier, 365-day calendar, Imhotep would also have realized that
New Year’s Day had drifted from the heliacal rising of Sirius at the rate of about one day every four years and would
synchronize again about every 1,460 years (every Sothic cycle). In addition, the fact that a Sothic cycle had begun in
Imhotep’s lifetime or just before would certainly have induced him to commemorate this event in his great architectural
design of the step pyramid complex. It should come as no surprise, then, that the number 1,460, as we will see, comes up
in the design of the massive boundary wall that surrounds the step pyramid complex.
The step pyramid complex of Djoser was named Horus Is the Star at the Head of the Sky, 66 which alone implies
some cosmic function related to the principal or brightest star in the sky, which can be only Sirius. This is confirmed by
the fact that the god Horus, in very early times, was also identified with this star. 67 The most impressive feature of the
step pyramid complex other than the pyramid itself is the huge 10-meter-high (33-feet-high) boundary wall that once
enclosed the entire complex. It is a rectangle 550 meters (1,804 feet) long and 220 meters (722 feet) wide, and even
today it would be considered a masterpiece of architecture. Rather than simply making the wall with a smooth face,
Imhotep incorporated in its design an elaborate system of recesses and protrusions, massive bastions and false doors.