Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt

Footnotes
*1. The English Patient, 1996, features Ralph Fiennes and Kristen Scott Thomas. The so-called Cave of Swimmers
(which is actually in Gilf Kebir’s Wadi Sura), where the heroine, Lady Clayton, dramatically dies, was also filmed not
on location in southwest Egypt but in Morocco. The real Lady Clayton actually died many years later in England by
jumping from the open cockpit of her airplane and breaking her neck against a metal bar.
*2. As the historian of science Jed Z. Buchwald describes, the Dendera ceiling was constructed in the interregnum years
after the death of Cleopatra’s father, Ptolemy Auletes, in 51 BCE, when there was no king and therefore no royal name
to put in the cartouches. We note, however, that is the date of the construction of the ceiling. There is still uncertainty
regarding the date(s) to which the actual contents of the zodiac itself may refer. We caution the curious reader that
before launching off to date the Dendera zodiac again, it is best to be aware that no less than the likes of LaPlace,
Fourier, and Biot expended significant efforts at extracting dates, and their results remained inconclusive.
*3. [Bey is a Turkish title for “chieftain.” —Ed.]
*4. The eccentricity is currently about 0.017, meaning that Earth is 3.4 percent closer to the sun during closest approach
compared to the farthest it is from the sun in the yearly orbital cycle. The gravitational pull from Jupiter, Mars, and the
other planets causes the eccentricity of Earth’s orbit to vary from a mostly round path (0.005) to a more elongated one
(0.058) in a complex cycle of about one hundred thousand years. Also, the time of year when Earth is closest to the
sun varies. Currently, Earth is closest to the sun on January 4 (perihelion).
*5. Oddly, in all subsequent publications on Nabta Playa by Malville et al., there is no more mention of this highly
accurate due-east alignment.
*6. As the primary member of a set of circumpolar stars.
*7. Some scholars who emphasize the cultural approach rather than the physical approach to archaeology claim this
method of analysis or puzzle-solving is invalid, because, they say, any proposed astronomy should be linked directly to
ethnographic justifications—that is, we should have access to other evidence, including writings or stories, already
proving that the specific people who built the structure in question were in fact interested in the proposed astronomy.
We absolutely agree that ethnographic justifications greatly improve the validity of any archaeoastronomical finding,
but we also note that considering astronomy first and then, subsequently, considering the ethnographics is equally
scientific.
*8. Of course, critics chime in at this point: “There is no reason to assume the Calendar Circle builders were interested in
the stars of Orion’s belt. Therefore it is pseudoscientific to consider such a solution to the Calendar Circle puzzle!”
Our answer is that we must not start with ethnographic associations or presumptions. In fact, for the moment, we
exclude from the puzzle as we have defined them ethnographic assumptions in order to have a well-defined question
that involves only simple physical astronomy and a man-made pattern of stones on the ground. Further, to isolate a
problem by employing well-defined parameters is actually good scientific method. If we come up with a solution to the
well-defined simplified astronomy puzzle, then we can consider whether there are or are not ethnographic
justifications. This is at least as scientific a procedure as starting with ethnographic presumptions in the first place.
*9. The constellations change shape very slowly over long periods of time due to the so-called proper motions of stars.
All the stars are moving with respect to each other, like billiard balls scattering on a pool table—though at extremely
slow, angular rates.
†10. The Bible mentions Orion three times: Job 9:9, “He is the maker of the Bear and Orion”; Job 8:31, “Can you loosen
Orion’s belt?”; and Amos 5:8, “He who made the Pleiades and Orion.”
*11. One key aspect of this interpretation is the visibility of the stars on the meridian. Also, given that solar zenith
crossing was considered to be of significance to the Neolithic people and that at Nabta Playa the sun crossed the zenith
two days per year—21 days after and 21 days before the day of summer solstice—we can use this information to
define an operational window for the Calendar Circle (that is, those years when the Orion’s belt stars would have been
visible on the meridian in the proper configuration any time during those six weeks around summer solstice). Further,
we estimate that the stars could be seen in the sky up to about forty-five minutes before the sun rises above the
horizon. This gives an end date to the Calendar Circle operational window of about 4800 BCE. The start of the
window is when the configuration angle and altitude become a good match, which we estimate to be about 6400 BCE.