Blog #6: Constellation “Geb” – The Egyptian Cygnus?
1. While we are primarily interested in the spiritual aspects of ancient wisdom in our book, it must be recognized that there are other aspects of the Ancient Egyptian’s knowledge that are of interest to the modern World. The Giza Plateau is of particular importance. It is the location of the largest structures built by humans using incredibly large stones with great precision using building methods that are totally incongruent with our understanding of the tools of the time.
2. We accept that the Pyramids of Ancient Egypt most likely served multiple purposes. As we discuss in Awakening Higher Consciousness, we see the earliest of human literature found in the Texts of the Saqqara Pyramids a few miles south of the Giza Plateau as offering guidance for awakening our higher Self though initiation (see Blog #1: The Greeks We Love, E.G. Plato & Pythagoras, Gained Wisdom From Egypt. They Weren't Interested In Dead People). But there is practically no writing in the three Great Pyramids of Giza.
3. We have personally tested the proportions of the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid of Giza for its perfection in support of the production of musical tones that can be produced within it. In addition, some authors have suggested that the Great Pyramid was a power plant and/or that it generated a ionizing field in support of agriculture production. There is good evidence that the understructure included a ram water pump. And of course there are those who connect the whole structure of the pyramids to aliens and UFOs.
4. Another aspect of the studies of the Ancient Egyptian constructions on the Giza Plateau involves a search for the logic behind the layout of these great structures. They were constructed with incredible accuracy and attention to detail, especially recognizing the immense stone blocks that were used in their construction. It follows that the builders paid equal attention to their spatial arrangement and the overall layout on the plateau.
5. Robert Bauval developed the Orion Correlation Theory (OCT) in the early 1990’s. It proposed that the layout of the three largest pyramids was fashioned to mirror the three bright stars in the belt of the constellation Orion. In the OCT, the Milky Way is said to be represented by the Nile River.
Figure 1A. Star chart of Orion with the Milky Way in the bottom right hand corner.
Figure 1B. Google Map image of the three great pyramids on the Giza Plateau. The Ancient Nile River occupied the right of the figure roughly where the present desert ends with the encroachment of Cairo city.
6. An alternative interpretation of the Giza Plateau layout has been proposed by Andrew Collins (1999) who looked at the whole arrangement from the opposite side of the heavens as the constellation Cygnus. He proposed that the three great pyramids line up as the cross of the constellation Cygnus, (the Latinized word for “swan” - http://www.andrewcollins.com/page/articles/cygnus_blueprint.htm).
Figure 2A. Map of the pyramids with an overlay of the stars of the constellation Cygnus.
Figure 2B. Star chart of the constellation Cygnus.
7. Although there is no swan in Ancient Egypt astrology, there is a bird in the Dendera zodiac - more goose than swan. The goose is the hieroglyph for the sound “gb” and is commonly found in the hieroglyphic writings and images of the culture.
Figure 3. Dendera zodiac showing a bird in the star chart.
8. The goose is a prominent feature in the earliest writings of humans by the Ancient Egyptians in the Pyramid Texts. The goose hieroglyph represents the neter or “god” named, Geb, the neter of the primeval earth, who is also referred to as the Great Cackler. He was the “mythological divine creator goose who had laid a world egg from which the sun and/or the world had sprung” (Wikipedia.) When writing about this creation neter, might they have been drawing our attention to the symbol of the bird-like constellation that we now call Cygnus - the Great Cackler – Geb?
Figure 4. Geb as cosmic goose. Papyrus of Userbet. Eighteenth Dynasty. (Naydler 1996)
9. Geb is often represented as an awkwardly reclining male figure stretched out on the earth beneath Nut. It is easy to see the top bright star of Cygnus representing the head of Geb and the side stars representing his outstretched arms..
Figure 5A. An Egyptian image of Geb stretched out beneath Nut.
Figure 5B. Milky Way - https://500px.com/photo/209884269/earth-day-aurora-by-rob-dickinson
10. If the great pyramids are arranged on the Giza Plateau to represent Geb, then the Great Sphinx is in the location of the constellation Lyra. This constellation is often represented as a vulture. To the Ancient Egyptians, the vulture represented the neter Mut as the creator mother principle. The constellation also includes the bright star Vega that was the pole star in 14,000 BCE.
Figure 6A. Star chart of the constellations Cygnus and Lyra.
Figure 6B. An outline of the Giza Plateau showing the relative position of the Great Pyramids and the Great Sphinx.
11. Mut was also represented as a lioness and we see that the body and hind end of the Great Sphinx is definitely of lioness form.
Figure 7. The hind end of the Great Sphinx with its lioness form showing the right leg, paw and tail.
12. So a lioness structure on the Giza Plateau representing the vulture constellation, Mut, in relation to the three Great Pyramids, representing Geb, would well represent that specific area of the sky. It places the creator mother principle, Mut, in close proximity to the male earth creation principle, Geb.
13. As for the question of whether the great pyramids themselves are representing Orion/Osiris or Cygnus/Geb, this may be regarded as a frivolous analytical attempt to shoehorn a complex symbology into a simple black or white dichotomous distinction. Schwaller de Lubicz in his book The Temple of Man finds on the temple walls many incidents where the builders of the Temple of Karnak carved a unified symbology on opposite sides of the same stone or on opposing walls of the same room (The Temple of Man, vol. 2 page 1000). He referred to these techniques as “transparency” and “transposition”. Naydler (2004) found similar spatial relationships in the arrangement and layout of the Pyramid Texts upon the various surfaces within the Pyramid of Unas.
14. For a culture with such a high sensitivity to spatial arrangement and complexity of relationships in their symbols, it is very easy to see that they may have used the Giza Plateau structures to capture the both constellations and a relationship between them – especially when we also note that the two are about 180 degrees from one another along the Milky Way. Similar opposition of sky features is strongly highlighted by Sullivan in his exploration of the Incas culture. He found an important juxtaposition of the bright star Vega on one side of the sky to the important non-helical rising of the Milky Way on the other side of the visible sky on June Solstice 650 CE in Cuzco, Peru.
15. While we are in no way experts in archeoastronomy, it is intriguing to consider the multiple interpretations of the layout of the Giza Plateau in search of phenomena that connects to our inner search for our higher Self. Finding a pattern in the sky that captures the theme of our internal development and connects with our experience of an inner creation. Such phenomena may have motivated the builders of the Pyramids to capture this most important information in their constructions. On one side of the night sky we see the original creation of the world represented by the laying of the World egg by the constellation Geb on the Milky Way. On the opposite side of sky we have represented for us Osiris as the constellation Orion slightly separated from the Milky Way in his re-membered and risen form following his journey through the Duat/Milky Way. We explore the potential symbolism of Geb, Osiris and the Milky Way in our next Blog entitled: “Egyptian Symbolism in the Milky Way.”
16. The search is not in the stars or on the face of the earth, but in ourselves.
16a. In 2023 new discoveries at Karahan Tepe in southeastern Turkey find unmistakable connections with Cygnus: Andrew Collins announces new find in Turkey