Egypt's view North in 2600BC

- see this news story for more, also this. Kate Spence, of Cambridge University, has shown that every Old Kingdom pyramid was aligned with celestial North. She has observed that by the time the ground plan of each monument was laid out, the exact position of celestial North had shifted fractionally due to the astronomical phenomenon known as precession. As a result, the pyramid alignments can be plotted and their dates of laying-out determined. The chronology Spence comes up with is, in fact, more than a century younger than that published in the standard academic reference work, Cambridge Ancient History. So it seems the Great Pyramid was aligned to the stars as they appeared in 2,470BC.
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David MacKay <mackay@mrao.cam.ac.uk>
Last modified: Wed Nov 15 23:09:25 2000