Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt

summer solstice) which is 1,457 Egyptian civil calendar years. These cycles agree with Ingham’s calculations 1 —he
calculated the cycles before and after 2769 BCE and came up with 1,458 and 1,456 Julian years, which equal 1,459 and
1,457 Egyptian civil calendar years. Ingham’s date of 2769 BCE *81 came from stepping back in time and using a
definition of heliacal rising that is slightly different from ours. As our definition, we chose whatever the condition was
on 2781 BCE summer solstice, so clearly the twelve-year difference in our starting dates is not a discrepancy and we
agree on those cycle durations. *82
Now we can reconsider the panels on the Djoser complex monument wall. The eastern wall, with 1,459 panels, may
in fact reflect the 1,459 Egyptian civil years of the Sothic cycle preceding its construction. The 1,461 panels on the
western wall may reflect the average duration since the last time that the first day of Thoth coincided with Sirius heliacal
—a period that lasted for four years, yielding a cycle time of from 1,463 to 1,459 years, which averages 1,461. In
addition, the 1,461panel wall may reflect a standardized or general public knowledge cycle (the cycle if the Sirius year
was exactly 365.25 days, which would be the first estimate immediately when they noticed that a given Sirius appearance
date lasts about 4 years—similar to how the general public today is aware of the simple 4-year “leap year” cycle, but few
are aware of the more esoteric exact year cycle that needs to be adjusted over the millennia). The 1,459-panel wall could
reflect the esoteric knowledge of the exact natural cycle known only to initiates such as Imhotep. In either case, the
difference of 2 years represented on the walls progress in time from east to west could also reflect the changing Sothic
cycle—the next one will be 2 years shorter. Further, the difference between the eastern and western wall representations
—2 years—appears to be reflected in the northern and southern walls, each of which has 722 panels. Two years equal
720 solar days or 722 sidereal days (we can remember that a sidereal day is the time it takes Earth to complete one
rotation relative to the vernal equinox, which is essentially one full rotation with respect to the stars), and it is 4 minutes
shorter than a solar day, which is a full rotation with respect to the sun. Thus there is one extra sidereal day in a standard
solar year of 365 days, as we can also see because one solar day rotation is taken by Earth moving around the sun in one
year. The Sothic cycle is essentially a combination of stellar and solar cycles.
Imhotep seems to be informing us that the ancient Egyptians knew this—and they knew the cycle durations very
accurately, for they show this in symbolizing human’s unity with the cosmos by synchronizing the human civil calendar
with cosmic astrocalendars in their monumental architecture. If we accept that Imhotep knew not only that an
approximation to the Sothic cycle was 1,461 Egyptian civil years but also the precise duration of the previous Sothic
cycle, then we can believe that he knew that this cycle is a combination of solar and sidereal motions and that he had a
concept of the difference between the sidereal day and the solar day. If he did, it is highly likely that he was informed by
careful observations going back at least one Sothic cycle, which brings us back to the period of heavy activity at Nabta
Playa.
We can also note that this interpretation for the step pyramid complex wall, which otherwise would appear as a
needlessly convoluted design, addresses not only the elegant calendar and cosmic meanings of the wall panel design but
also the reason why it was built when it was. It was fashioned to mark the correspondence of the summer solstice and the
heliacal rising of Sirius, something that happens only once every twenty-six thousand years, and to calibrate that with the
first day of Thoth on the Egyptian civil calendar.
Clearly, then, some time around the building and design of the step pyramid complex, a heliacal rising of Sirius
occurred simultaneous with the summer solstice and the first day of Thoth. We cannot get to the precise date without
knowing the exact way in which the ancient Egyptians determined the heliacal rising or by some other constraint. The
Djoser serdab may give us this other constraint. We can remember that the serdab was probably not meant as a precision
device—it shows us the king gazing at the area of the sky where Alkaid was at the time of Sirius’s rising. Finding a best
fit for that alignment may help constrain our date. Somewhere around 2680 BCE may be a good estimate. On that date,
on the day of summer solstice, Sirius was at 1 degree above the horizon, the sun was 8.16 degrees below horizon
(suitable for a reappearance of Sirius), and Alkaid was at 13.4 degrees altitude and 3.14 degrees azimuth—within the
viewing range of the serdab. *83
We can almost hear the massive calendar wall announcing, “We now monumentalize in stone our transition from
the good old days of acting as nomads around Nabta Playa to a more settled existence in monumental cities, which means
that we’re going to have to rely more on that civil calendar that nobody much likes because it drifts with respect to the
wondrous natural astrocalendar of our ancestors. We’re going to have to keep the civil calendar in use for collecting
taxes and enforcing legal contracts—but here, in great splendor, is a monument that shows how the two types of time,
human time and godly cosmic time, work together.”