Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt

[North alignment toward Dubhe]: The king joyously stretches the cord, having cast his gaze towards the Big Dipper
[Meskhetiu] and thus establishes the temple in the manner of ancient times. 96
So disdainful are most Egyptologists at possible astronomical alignments of temples and pyramids that one senior
Egyptologist, Cathleen A. Keller of UCLA, even openly admits that “sometimes I think that the more resistant
Egyptologists are more afraid that connections do exist between the orientation and plans of Egyptian temples and the
heavens, than they do not.” 97
The fact is that no Egyptologists approved of Sir Lockyer’s finding at Dendera, at least not until nearly an entire
century later. In 1992 the French Egyptologist Sylvie Cauville, who is well-known for her extensive work on the
inscriptions of Dendera, undertook a detailed study of the astronomical orientation of the temple of Isis. 98 She, too, felt
that its alignments had been greatly ignored and that no one had given much currency to the findings of Lockyer. Cauville
boldly solicited the collaboration of an astronomer, Professor Eric Aubourg, to examine again the orientations at
Dendera, especially those at the temple of Isis.
As we see it today, the temple of Isis was erected in 30 BCE under the directive of the Roman emperor Augustus
(Octavian) Caesar. It was built over the foundations of a much older temple, which are clearly visible even now. Recent
excavations by the French team showed that there had been several interventions at vastly different epochs. In the
foundations of the Roman temple, blocks belonging to the penultimate native pharaoh, Nectanebo I (ca. 350 BCE), were
found. In addition, it would appear that the Ptolemaic kings Ptolemy VI Philometor (ca. 150 BCE) and Ptolemy X
Alexander I (ca. 20 BCE) had carried out innovations here. More intriguingly, Cauville discovered reused stone blocks
from the Ramesside period (ca. 1250 BCE), which bore the name of Prince Kha-emouaset, a son of Ramses II. Aubourg
calculated that the azimuth of the Roman temple built in 30 BCE was 108 degrees 40 minutes, which matched the
azimuth of Sirius. He then determined the azimuth of the lower temple to be 111 degrees 11 minutes, which
corresponded to the orientation of the rising of Sirius in the epoch of Ramses II, about 1250 BCE. Here again, exactly as
at the Satis temple at Elephantine and the Thoth Hill temple in Thebes, the ancient surveyors had responded to the effect
of precession on the star Sirius by changing the orientation of the axes accordingly—very much as their ancestors had
done at Nabta Playa several millennia before.
THE SUN TEMPLES OF THE SUN KINGS
In the fourth dynasty, immediately after the reign of King Khufu, builder of the Great Pyramid, there seems to have been
a sudden shift in religious ideologies. For reasons that have not yet been properly understood, a new solar cult seems to
have been introduced to the pyramid builders. This seems to have happened in the reign of King Djedefre, a son of Khufu.
For example, Khufu’s immediate sucessors, Djedefre, Khafra, and Menkaure, incorporated the name of the sun god Re
(or Ra) into their names. They also took on the title Son of Re. Indeed, according to Egyptologist Mark Lehner, “Djedefre
is the first pharaoh to take the title ‘Son of Re.’” 99
Djedefre chose a promontory some 8 kilometers (5 miles) northwest of the Giza pyramids to build his own pyramid
complex in a region known today as Abu Ruwash. No adequate explanation was given by any of his contemporaries as to
why this king chose to move so far away from Giza. Not even Djedefre himself explained. Being thus at a loss for a good
explanation, Egyptologists have invented a reason: they theorize that there was a family feud—that Djedefre quarreled
with his father, Khufu, and was banished from Giza, thus inducing him to build his own complex at Abu Ruwash. *64
Needless to say, there is not one shred of textual evidence to support this theory. With Carlo Bergmann’s recent
discovery in 1999 of Djedefre Water Mountain in the Sahara, however, a new theory backed by evidence can now be
proposed. An observer at Abu Ruwash who looked east at sunrise at the summer solstice would have witnessed the sun
rising directly over the sun temple of Heliopolis, †65 a fact that can hardly be a coincidence in view of the circumstances
surrounding Djedefre and the solar ideologies introduced in his reign. We can recall that the summer solstice marked the
birth of Re, when the civil calendar was inaugurated, and could be a reason why Djedefre chose the title Son of Re.
We also now know, thanks to Carlo Bergmann, that during Djedefre’s reign an expedition was sent into the deep
Sahara and reached at least 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of Dakhla oasis and that the name of Djedefre is found
inscribed on a mound now called Djedefre Water Mountain (DWM). We can recall from chapter 4 that when we
witnessed the sunrise at DWM in April 2008, we noted that the mound was facing east, directly toward another flat-