SPHINX
This gigantic enigma faces the rising sun in the east and greets the new day as it sits silently in front of the three great pyramids of the Giza plateau in Egypt. When an why this great work was designed an constructed is still up for debate, but it's more than likely it was originally a statue of a great lion. Eventually the face was re-carved to resemble the reigning Pharaoh. The Sphinx faces the equinox and divides the solstices on the horizon. Some archaeologists believe this sixty-foot high sculpted figure was built before the pyramids and represents Harmakhis, the Egyptian god of the morning.
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This may indeed be its purpose as it faces the east and greets the rising sun. With a sky chart and a little imagination, it is easy to see that the Sphinx has an uncanny resemblance of the constellation Leo.
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PYRAMIDS OF EGYPT
The most well known archaeoastronomical site in the world are the Pyramids in Egypt. Their age and who built them is still controversial, but most scholars agree that it has been almost 5000 years since the Egyptians built the largest stone monuments in the world. The magnificent structure known as the Great Pyramid was constructed in the 27th century BCE, and it is the largest of the pyramids that sit on the Giza plateau on the banks of the Nile River in Egypt. Though there has been considerable speculation about the Great Pyramid
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being an observatory or designed as a source of arcane prophecy, the only factual evidence of its true intended purpose is how and why it was connected to the heavens.
The first example is an obvious and common one for astronomically aligned monuments. The four faces of the Great Pyramid are oriented to the cardinal directions of the skies: north, south, east and west.
The second example lies within the pyramid. Deep inside dwells the supposed final resting-place of the Pharaoh. It is here, in the Kings’ Chamber, that two openings on opposite walls, one to the north and one to the south give testimony as to the true purpose of the Great Pyramid. These two small holes lead to shafts that rise at an angle through many huge stone blocks and nearly exit out from the sides of the pyramid. These two points on the pyramid correspond to points in the sky were the dead pharaoh would take his place among the immortal stars as a god.
The southern shaft was aligned to the constellation of Orion and the northern shaft was directly aligned to the circumpolar region of the Northern Hemisphere and to Egypt’s former pole star. The Egyptian pole star is not the one we use today because the Earth's pole star is ever so slowly and constantly changing due to the “Grand Precession” or wobble of our planet. Every few thousand years we get a new one. When the pyramid was built, the star Thuban in the constellation Draco was the closest object the Egyptians had to a pole star.
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As the earth “wobbled” over the millenniums, the Great Pyramid moved under the skies and has aligned itself to our current pole star, Polaris the North Star.
In addition, a theory has suggested that the configuration of the pyramid complex on earth, precisely matches the three stars in the belt of Orion in the sky. And that the Nile river matches the position of the Milky Way so that the Giza plateau is a "mirror of heaven." This is an entertaining hypothesis, but the most probable true astronomical connection that these three famous mammoth stone structures
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had was the imperishable circumpolar stars of their time. They were astronomically oriented as to connect the heavens to the earth so that the Pharaoh was able to ascend into the sky and take his place in heaven as a God upon his demise.
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