Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt

*53. Actually, it is 365.242 days, to be exact.
*54. Some scholars suggest this date is also astronomical—occurring at the beginning of the zodiac Age of Pisces, and
hence the reason why early Christians adopted the fish as the symbol of their age.
*55. The Hebrew called Sirius Sihor, and the Romans called it Sirio or Canicula—the Dog.
*56. The altitude of Sirius is taken as 1 degree above horizon and that of the sun 9 degrees below horizon. Sirius would
have had an azimuth of 109 degrees 16 minutes.
*57. The Orion Mystery was first published by Heinemann in 1994. It was a bestseller in the United Kingdom and was an
international bestseller. It has been translated into more than twenty languages.
*58. The number of days that a star takes to return to the same point, usually measured at the meridian transit. The rising
of a star, such as Sirius, occurs about 4 minutes longer than sunrise each day, thus it “looses” 1 day in the solar year.
*59. 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 (hence the word sidereal). It is four minutes shorter than a solar day, which is
a full rotation of Earth with respect to the sun. Thus there is one extra sidereal day in a standard solar year of 365 days,
as we can see, because one solar-day rotation is taken up by Earth moving around the sun in one year.
*60. The word Hwt (“Hat”) . . . was used in the New Kingdom with the meaning “Temple.”
*61. The heliacal reappearance of Sirius occurred before the day of summer solstice in early dynastic times, before about
2600 BCE, and it occurred after summer solstice in later years up to today.
*62. Lockyer actually took in situ measurements and concluded that the alignment of the Isis temple was 18 degrees 30
minutes south of east; this was also roughly the average of the measurements obtained earlier by Lepsius and Mariette.
*63. Lockyer’s calculations that the main temple was aligned to Dubhe (Alpha Ursa Major), the brightest star in the
Bull’s Thigh constellation, were based on very early dates that do not apply to the existing temple.
*64. Evidence of an earlier presence at Abu Ruwash is attested by found objects that bear the names of kings of the first
dynasty, Aha and Den.
†65. The azimuth of the rising sun at summer solstice was nearly 28 degrees north of east. If we allow for 2 degrees
altitude for the full disk to be seen over a mound or obelisk from Abu Ruwash, the azimuth is nearer to 27 degrees
north of east.
*66. According to Miroslav Verner, the name Abusir derives from the Greek Busiris, which was taken from the ancient
Egyptian Per Usir, meaning the Realm of Osiris.
*67. Actually, the term Neolithic was originally devised by anthropologists in 1865 to refer to a stage of human cultural
development defined by the types of tools used (lithos is “stone” in Greek), rather than to refer to dates. Over the
decades, as scholars developed a sort of canonical view, the actual dates believed to apply to the various cultural
developmental stages (Early Neolithic, Middle Neolithic, Late Neolithic, Terminal Neolithic) gathered an air of
certainty, though the dates of each stage were believed to be different for different geographic regions of the planet.
Over time terms such as Late Neolithic became almost interchangeable with actual dates, rather than cultural type. At
Nabta, however, Wendorf himself notes that, regarding the megalithic constructions there, “[b]uilding large stone
monuments was not expected among such groups.” 1 These very findings have changed the concept of what is Neolithic
and are changing our understanding of the time period to which the term will apply. To avoid confusion, then, we refer
mostly to actual dates rather than conventional terms such as Middle Neolithic.
*68. Sirius is the brightest star of all. At visual magnitude −1.46, it is significantly brighter than Vega, but Sirius is in the
Southern Hemisphere.
*69. Atmospheric refraction affects the apparent viewing angle of a star significantly only when very close to the horizon
—by up to about 0.56 degrees on the horizon. At an altitude of 26.5 degrees, the altitude of the subterranean passage,
the atmospheric refraction would be very small, less than 2 arc minutes.
†70. Of course, we believe our calculations are accurate according to the current knowledge of the long-term motion of
the celestial pole and Vega’s currently measured proper motion, which is quoted in the SIMBAD database as having
small uncertainty. It is always possible, however, that new information might be measured or discovered about the
long-term apparent motion of a star.
‡71. In addition, if we were to consider only the part of the passage that descends through the bedrock, which is about