Among the mysteries tormenting researchers of Egyptian antiquities, temples and especially the pyramids, among the questions "who?", "When?" And How?" there is a question that can partly confuse modern man. This is the question "why?"
Why, for example, erect gigantic structures with such narrow corridors and small cells inside? Improve health? Hide treasures?
Why use blocks of incredible weight during construction, if the same effect can be achieved with lighter materials? So as not to be pulled apart?
Why direct the inner mines to the cardinal points and the stars with perfect astronomical accuracy, striking modern researchers with the perfection of computing and technology? What for? To plant seeds of search and doubt in the pragmatic minds of the descendants? What for? What for? What for?
One way or another, mankind judges the surrounding phenomena from the point of view of its development, from its "bell tower", which allows you to see further or closer. Looking into the depths of centuries, into mysterious ancient cultures, we have to admit that our "bell tower" is very far from the Egyptian pyramids and temples. But, nevertheless, if you try, you can always see something …
The art of orienting buildings by the stars has existed since time immemorial, when the architect, perhaps for the first time, was told about his role in this world. Even in ancient times, this art was remembered and included in a number of obligatory sections of architecture. Mark Vitruvius Pollio talks about this in detail in his famous "Ten Books on Architecture", in addition to mechanics and architecture, including the science of gnomonics in the sections of architecture. This ancient area of building knowledge was responsible for communication with celestial phenomena, auspicious sides of the world, wind blows, the movement of the Sun, planets and the arrangement of stars. And there is evidence that the masters of antiquity drew much of this knowledge from Ancient Egypt - the cradle of our civilization. But it is obvious that the cradle was in many ways superior to the civilization of its followers.
The diagram demonstrates not only proportional correspondences between pyramids and stars, but also their similar arrangement relative to each other.
The Great Pyramids of Ancient Egypt on the Giza Plateau are perhaps the clearest example of such superiority. The fact that a few millennia ago a structure measuring two hundred by two hundred meters and weighing six million tons was able to be located exactly on the cardinal points, perhaps, is not so surprising. But the fact that deviations in dimensions and directions with such masses do not exceed one tenth of a percent - this is practically unattainable perfection for modern construction technologies. Why such precision? The eyes of a person contemplating the greatness of the pyramids are unable to trace such nuances. In an attempt to answer, one can only come to the conclusion that a culture capable of building in this way knew more than ours. The builders of the Great Pyramids knew why to place them on the Giza plateau so that each literally reflects on Earth the location of “its” star from the constellation Orion. They knew why the masses of these pyramids should be proportional to the stellar magnitudes - and this became known only in our time, thanks to modern science. They knew a lot that we may still have to discover in the future.
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To this day, the pyramids continue to amaze us with discoveries. Quite recently, under the Great Pyramids in Giza, a whole complex of underground temples was discovered, about which Herodotus wrote two and a half thousand years ago. But even 10 years ago, Herodotus was laughed at as an ancient Greek science fiction writer. What about mysterious numbers and predictions? And what about the self-sharpening blades inside the pyramids? There are discoveries and hypotheses that we laugh at today.
Research by American scientists R. Buwell and E. Gilbert, devoted to the location of the pyramids on the Giza plateau, may well indicate the date of their construction, dating back to the time of the legendary Atlantis. At the same time, the angles of inclination of the inner mines of the pyramid of Khufu (Cheops) and their directions to the constellations give full right to relate the time of its creation to the years of the reign of this pharaoh. Both those and other versions are legitimate and are based on knowledge of the laws of motion of heavenly bodies, which the priests of Ancient Egypt possessed no worse than modern astronomers. What other mysteries did the creators of the pyramids put into their creations?
Anyone interested with a pencil in hand can do a simple compositional analysis, based in part on the research of the same R. Bauwell and R. Gantenbrink, and independently discover the amazing features of the section of the Khufu pyramid. The construction is based on the principle of the same golden section, which connects the geometry of the pyramid, the system of internal spaces and directions to the constellations. I would even like to put forward an assumption: if the architecture of the pyramid so simply and accurately points to the stars, then, knowing the location of the stars, the laws of their motion and some compositional techniques, you can use simple constructions to create a project of the future pyramid. And perhaps it is the stars that are the best architects in this matter. But again the question arises: "Why?"
The purpose of such a gigantic "device" will probably continue to cause controversy for a long time among researchers who ascribe all kinds of goals to the pyramids, from occult to health. However, from the point of view of architecture, the very fact of the manifestation of a forgotten science - gnomonics, that amazing connection between composition and astronomy, is interesting, which can push us to unravel the secrets of the now forgotten art of building by the stars, crushed by the problems of requirements and technologies.
orientation of some temples on the east and west banks of Thebes. In particular, the axis directed to the rising of the Sun has the temple of Amun in Karnak and the temple of Queen Hatshepsut in Deir el-Bahri dedicated to Amon.
Architecture is a subtle art and, at the same time, a rather concrete science. This science says that every architectural project, even before its implementation, has its own image - a kind of sensual and speculative model that includes the basic laws and characteristics of the future building. And the basic laws are reflected in its architectural composition. The composition, in turn, is designed to unite an idea, concept, laws and embodied form. Not visible to an inexperienced eye, it, like a pivot, is stringing on itself seemingly incompatible - emotions and technologies, planning structures and religious beliefs.
The architecture of Ancient Egypt serves as an excellent example of compliance with these rules, where all spiritual, emotional and physical states, according to the same laws of architecture, must find their expression in specific material manifestations. Thanks to the knowledge of such interrelationships, we can judge ideas and things less material by the embodied forms and compositional laws. Therefore, when meeting strange combinations of building axes and astronomical phenomena, it is also worth paying attention to their philosophical and symbolic side.
Cord-pulling ceremony - the moment the temple was laid. The cord symbolizes the connection with the Divine and serves as an axis for carrying out construction work. Drawing from the relief, depicting the pharaoh Ramses II and Seshet - goddess of writing, measurement and architecture.
As the researchers say, the stars in the culture of Ancient Egypt were considered one of the manifestations and guises of deities. (The zodiac is also an ancient Egyptian system.) More precisely, each deity of the ancient Egyptian pantheon had its own star or constellation, designed to personify it in the sky. The rise or culmination of the constellation served the architect as a landmark, sign and symbol for construction. And if the Egyptian temple was the embodiment of the path to the Divine, then this path and this Divine, according to the laws of architecture, certainly had to be expressed, concretized to the level of visible and often tangible images. The ancient Egyptians believed that everything visible and measurable is a shadow of the Invisible and Immeasurable.
The presence of "smoke" always indicates the presence of "fire", therefore, in ancient Egyptian architecture, both a specific star and a specific axis of the temple are very important, because they served as the criteria for the right path - the right action, movement in the right direction. It is no coincidence that, probably, every temple in Ancient Egypt has a main compositional axis, which is aimed at some heavenly phenomenon. “I take a wooden peg, I hold a cord with the Goddess Seshet; my gaze follows the running of the stars, my eye is directed to the Big Dipper; God, indicating the time, stands by my clepsydra; this is how I installed the four corners of the temple, "writes Pharaoh Ptolemy III Everget on the walls of the temple of Horus in Edfu that he restored. In other words, already at the time of the laying, the ancient Egyptian temple was associated with a star, a constellation, the Sun - the image of a deity,the home of which he became during the construction process. This image also guided the actions of the architect at the stages of design and construction, and ultimately was a criterion for evaluating all his work. It is possible that not only knowledge of heavenly laws, but also the ability to see these images allowed the ancient Egyptian masters with their art to help people come to the Divine and, which is already little understood for modern man, to help the Divine to maintain contact with the human world.help the Divine to keep in touch with the human world.help the Divine to keep in touch with the human world.
Modern philosophy says that no one and nothing prevents a person from engaging in spiritual searches and going to the Divine. There are many such people, despite the current dominance of materialism, and this is encouraging. But if you count how many of those who are not disturbed, tried to help the Divine come to man, the results will be less optimistic. Of course, the subtle and invisible world is higher and more perfect than the visible and tangible we are used to. But this subtle world is not absolutely omnipotent, and any spiritual principle, in order to somehow act, will need its physical similarity.
Ancient Egyptian architects knew this well, creating their temples - houses for meeting with the gods. The temple, according to the ancient Egyptians, is a reflection of the image and the physical body of a deity, with the help of which this deity can manifest and act in the material world. The light of the Sun, the light of the stars as the highest stage of the existence of physical matter was for the Egyptians the bearer of the spiritual substance, and this light, in fact, “lived” in the temple, illuminated and sanctified its parts and was the “leader” of the main stages of its creation. The creation of a temple, like childbirth, made it possible for the Spirit to have not only a soul in the form of light, but also a body in the form of a temple. From generation to generation, Egyptian priests passed on to their disciples the secret knowledge of how to create "Khat-Neteru" - a home to meet the invisible Principles and their visible images in the sky. So,thanks to temple building, a connection could be made between the world of people and the world of archetypes. A living connection, which is the main characteristic of sacred architecture.
According to the scanty and contradictory sources that have come down to us, we know little about the sacred architecture of Ancient Egypt. It is believed that the temples of Egypt were not designed for the presence of many believers, that they were not "prayed" in the way we are accustomed to, that these were Great Houses, the ancient Egyptian gods lived there, like the ancient Egyptians who lived in their homes, like in small temples.
From our present positions, it is rather difficult for us to judge this, because, hearing the word "temple", we most often rely on typical ideas for us. And the very concept of sacred architecture balances somewhere between museum stereotypes and religious prejudices. Of course, architectural science today can no longer deny the importance of the influence of heavenly phenomena on human life. The matter is not limited only to the rules and regulations for lighting premises and psychological comfort. Home "altars" and "red corners" in apartments are just a small part of this enduring human craving for the sacred. But the now popular material and non-material "ecology", dividing the creations of architects into good and bad feng shui, is guided so far mainly by criteria of practical use in solving life's difficulties and problems. It makes no sense, I guessto say that life difficulties and problems existed in those distant times, but, apparently, people of antiquity treated them differently, but the question "why?" still remains a question of our delighted bewilderment before the great mysteries of the ancient world.
Architecture is a reflection of time. Its stones, like magic mirrors, are able to show us distant times, about which chronicles and legends have long been silent. And what opens to an inquisitive eye tells a lot, giving rise to more and more new questions. The answers to these questions require that we get off our "bell tower" from time to time. Our "bell tower", from which we try to judge things and events, like temples, also has its own architectural prototype. By erecting it, we lay eternal and momentary values in its foundation, build walls of reliable ignorance and break through them windows of possible insight, raising flags of our own criteria of insanity and wisdom over the rooftops. This is how we create fortresses and huts of our beliefs and hypotheses throughout our lives. Meanwhile, the monuments of antiquity continue to stand,neither confirming nor refuting our guesses, and only occasionally break their centuries-old silence.
Looking into the distance, at the mysterious ancient cultures, at their pyramids and temples, one would like to believe that someday humanity, having descended from its present "bell towers" and ascended somewhere else, will really be able to answer the question "why?" The answer that gives a chance to return the Sacred Architecture to the world is the Architecture that the Stars create and live in.
