Tea at Trianon: The Sphinx, The Pyramids and Astronomy

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, April 24, 2020

The Sphinx, The Pyramids and Astronomy

From Ancient Origins:

Hawass told Egypt Today that ‘the Sun, after falling at sunset on the right side of the Sphinx, heads south, and during the summer it moves to the north’. He believes that this is conclusive evidence that the Sphinx was built with reference to astronomical calculations. Egypt Today states that the discovery of the positioning of the Sphinx shows ‘the tremendous scientific superiority of the ancient Egyptians’. There is evidence that pyramids were aligned based on the movement of the heavenly bodies. Hawass is quoted by Newsweek as stating that: ‘The sun setting between the pyramid of Khufu and Khafra suggests an astronomical link’.

Ancient Egyptians worshipped the sun and they worshipped it as the god Ra . The Sphinx is believed by mainstream archaeology to have been constructed about 4,500 years ago during the Old Kingdom period. It is widely believed to ‘to have been built for, and to represent, the pharaoh Khafre, who was the son of Khufu’ reports Newsweek.

The connection between astronomy and the building of the pyramids has been the subject of intensive investigation for many years. Newsweek states that ‘The Great Pyramid of Giza is known to be almost perfectly aligned to the points of north, south, east and west’. This is a remarkable feat given the limited technology available to the Egyptians . It has been suggested that the remarkable alignment of the pyramid is related to the Autumn or Fall equinox.

Research, undertaken by Glean Dash, an engineer, reported, ‘the Great Pyramid of Khufu, the Pyramid of Khafre and the Red Pyramid… all three were well aligned’ according to Newsweek. All had one small error, they marginally rotated counter-clockwise from the cardinal points (North, South, East and West). He argues that the Ancient Egyptians used a straight measuring rod and they tracked its shadow, to record the movement of the sun during the equinoxes. (Read more.)