Date for building the Pyramid of Khufu

The European Society for Astronomy in Culture (SEAC) 17th annual meeting

Abstract

Nabil Swelim

Pyramid science

Concerning the impossibility of a date for building the Pyramid of Khufu

The 23^rd of August was determined on the assumptions that the builders began this immense undertaking on the first day of the first inundation after the accession of Khufu.

Believing that was the case, they sought the date of the Nile flood. They knew that it comes approximately one month after the helical rising of Sirius (HRS). Thus, they made up a date for that:

From the results, using full power of modern astronomy, of B.E. Schaefer, "The heliacal rise of Sirius and ancient Egyptian chronology", in the JHA xxxi (2000), 149-55 and a selected date for the reign of Khufu in BC 2470 from an acceptable chronology; a calculated HRS was derived. Accordingly the river rose on a date = 23 August BP 4479

The dates in all the chronologies of the ancient Egyptian literature are flexible before Senusert III. Thus, we cannot match any point of these flexible chronologies, with Schaefer's exact dates of the HRS. Moreover we do not have a final king list of the Old Kingdom; and definitely of the 4^th dynasty where the number of kings is probably missing 2 names.

The date of building the Great Pyramid cannot be based on guessing that it was built on an uncertain date of a first flooding day.

I believe that any degree of precision is missing. A pyramid project begins with a designs and preparations before actual work on the site starts. The design takes capabilities into consideration; preparations take economy into consideration, and work on the site needs surveyors and astronomers. The flood comes later and helps with manpower and transportation of material.

Here I remind myself that our knowledge on some subjects of pyramid science: planning, logistics, building techniques and administration; is lacking much evidence.