Finding Those Indelible Marks Flinders Petrie Left on the Giza Plateau (original) (raw)

AERAgram Volume 18, No. 1 - Spring 2017

• Who Built the Sphinx? The Sphinx Temple Has the Answer • Finding Petrie’s Marks on the Giza Plateau • Season 2018: In Search of Khufu and the Heit el-Ghurab Lower Level • A Roof Over Their Heads • How Egyptians Quarried Their Building Blocks • Memphis Site and Community Development Project Update

New Angles on the Great Pyramid

AERAGRAM, 2012

In this article, we derive new estimates for the size and orientation of the Great Pyramid using data compiled by Mark Lehner and David Goodman in 1984. We can fix the locations of the casing corners to within ten centimeters. The Lehner/Goodman estimates for the location of the casing’s corners proved to be remarkably close to Flinders Petrie’s estimates.

The 2015 Survey of the Base of the Great Pyramid

In 2015, we completed a comprehensive survey of the base of the Great Pyramid. In this paper, we report on the survey’s findings. We began our survey by remapping four control monuments around the base. Here we provide new coordinates for these control monuments. Next, we identified 84 points around the periphery of the Great Pyramid where we found evidence of its original baseline. Using this data set, we then derive new estimates for the size and orientation of the Great Pyramid and compute associated error bounds.

AERAGRAM Volume 13, No. 2

2012

• New Angles on the Great Pyramid • Fifth Dynasty Renaissance at Giza • The Silo Building Complex: A Fifth Dynasty Production Facility • Living on a Slope in the Town of Queen Khentkawes • Egypt's Oldest Olive at the Lost City of the Pyramids

How the Pyramid Builders May Have Found Their True North

AERAGRAM, 2013

The builders of the Great Pyramid of Khufu aligned the huge monument to true north to within six minutes of arc, or one tenth of a degree. How they managed to do that has long been debated. In this article we will examine four prominent theories, test one, and compare and contrast the others.

AERAgram Volume 16, No. 1

• Discovery 2015: House of a High Official • What Was the Original Size of the Great Pyramid? • The Gallery Complex Gives Up Some of Its Secrets • Hidden Details Come to Light with Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) • Meagre: A Mediterranean Delicacy • Jon Jerde: The Space In Between

AERAgram Volume 16, No. 2

• Memphis Site & Community Development: Ambitious Plans, Big Challenges • Memphis: The Once Great Capital City Lost and Rediscovered • The Great Pyramid's Footprint: Results from our 2015 Survey • Catching Up with Yukinori Kawae: Author, National Geographic Explorer • From Dig to Data: AERA-ARCE Field School Students Publish their First Book of Research Papers • A Second Official’s House Discovered • The Pedestal Puzzle • Remembering Kamal el-Deen Waheed • US Ambassador to Egypt Tours the Lost City Site

AERAgram Volume 14, No. 1

2013

• The Lost Port City of the Pyramids • How the Pyramid Builders May Have Found Their True North • First Photos from the Great Pyramid Summit • Weeds and Seeds: On the Trail of Ancient Egyptian Agriculture • Egypt's Earliest Olive Pit Reconsidered: A Case of Mistaken Identity?

Occam’s Egyptian Razor: The Equinox and the Alignment of the Pyramids

Volume 2 (2017), 2017

The Great Pyramid of Khufu, its neighbor, the Pyramid of Khafre and Snefru’s Red Pyramid at Dahshur are all aligned to cardinal points with about the same magnitude and direction of error . They are off by about one tenth of one degree, and they are rotated slightly counterclockwise from cardinal points. How the Egyptians managed to achieve such accuracy has long been debated and many methods have been suggested. Yet there is one straightforward method that scholars have largely ignored, perhaps because it was thought to be too simple. This is the ʽequinoctial solar gnomon methodʼ. It uses a vertical rod to track the movement of the sun on the equinox. In this paper we show that it is a practical method, and reproduces the magnitude and direction of error we see in the alignment of these, the largest pyramids of the Pyramid Age.