The Orion-Theory

In 1994 the book The Orion Mystery by Robert Bauval and Adrian Gilbert caused an uproar in the Egyptological world like no single book before. No wonder, it states on its cover "After more than 4000 years the secrets of the pyramids had been solved" (German paperback edition). The thesis, which purports to have done this, is now called the Orion Correlation Theory or, in short, the OCT.
Although published by two authors the thesis is essentially the work of Robert Bauval. He claims to have found the answer to a questions which has been hotly debated for decades:
Is pyramid placement coincidental? Or is there a wider plan? For many decades this has been discussed. Most of it centres around - oh wonder - the Giza-pyramids (in short Gizamids ;-) ). Some scientists say the distribution is pure coincidence, others say that it is because of the available terrain, others think they have discovered an underlying geometrical pattern to explain the locations. Some examples are listed in the pyramid section of this site. Nearly all "pattern"-theories have one major fault: to explain them the Egyptians needed a knowledge of mathematics and geometry which they never had. Those ideas are therefore pure speculation.
Bauval and Gilbert argue using a mythology-derived distribution. As a result of their investigations they concluded that the Egyptian World of the Dead was located in the sky and that the placement of the pyramids represented the most important stars for them.

The dead kings, and ordinary people later, became the god Osiris after their death. This god had a stellar representation, the constellation Sah which is, according to Bauval, identical to our modern Orion. Since each person had one star soul, each dead king could become one star of Orion, thus the pyramids were placed in a way to represent the specific star the king became.
In later times a new solar cult replaced the older stellar religion, the pyramids of the late 5th and 6th dynasty do not therefore match any stars in the sky.
The best evidence for the Orion cult is the comparison between the 3 largest pyramids at Giza with the so called belt-stars of Orion:

Fig. 1 - Orion and Pyramiden according to Bauval/Gilbert

There is a striking resemblance: three stars in the middle of the Orion constellation, diagonally but with one star deviating, and three pyramids, also with one deviating from the diagonal. And the relative positions of stars and pyramids match each other perfectly.

But the authors found even more similarities which cannot be explained by coincidence:

Star brightness and pyramid size: Giza consists of two almost equally tall pyramids and a smaller one which is only 53% of the height of the other two. The belt of Orion consists of two almost similarly bright stars, and one with only 50% of the brightness of the other two. The smallest pyramid is the one which deviates from the diagonal, as does the dimmest star!
Ohter pyramids: More pyramids in Egypt fit the picture of the sky: the two large pyramids at Dahshur are a match for the brightest two stars in the open cluster "Hyades", two more pyramids near Giza are bright stars of Orion, and the pyramids of Abusir are exactly where the head of Orion should be.

Fig. 2 - Stars and more pyramids according to Bauval/Gilbert
Selection of construction sites: The centre of the pyramid constellation, Giza, was chosen so that the Nile exactly represents the Milky Way at the position of Orion's belt. The Milky Way represents the field of reeds in the legends which had to be crossed to reach the netherworld, just like the pharaoh had to cross the Nile to go from the land of the living on the eastern bank to the place of the dead on its western bank (where all the pyramids and tombs were located).
The shafts: There are four strange and small shafts (20 x 20 cm wide) in the Great Pyramid. Both upper chambers have two of them, one going south and one north. All four shafts rise at angles between 36° and 45°, the shafts of the upper King's chamber were each open at both ends, the shafts of the lower Queen's chamber were each closed at both ends.
These shafts are an unsolved enigma. The German Egyptologist Rainer Stadelmann calls them "model shafts" for the soul of the dead king. The soul could travel through the northern shaft to the imperishable stars in the North. These stars never set and had a special meaning for the Egyptians from the earliest times.
The other three shafts could also be connected with stars. The astronomer Virginia Trimble noticed in 1964 that the southern shaft of the King's chamber points to Orion. Bauval made further calculations and found out that this happened about 100 years after the accepted building date of the Great Pyramid. At that time the shaft pointed exactly to the star the Great Pyramid represents in Orion's belt. Coincidence?
Bauval extended the idea and found to his surprise that the southern shaft of the Queen's Chamber pointed at the brightest star in the sky, Sirius, at almost the same time. And Sirius is the representation of Isis, who was the sister and great love of Osiris (who was represented in the sky by Orion). Another coincidence?
The last shaft also points to a relevant star in the north so, all in all, this really looks sensational.

Fig. 3 - targets of the shafts, after Bauval/Gilbert

Problems

There are some problems with the idea. For example: The inclination of the pyramids relative to the equator was different, at the time of their construction, from that of the belt stars against the celestial equator (and therefore against the horizon) at their highest position in the sky. Therefore Bauval suggested that the pyramids were planned at another time. After some calculations he concluded that the inclinations matched at about 10500 BCE.
The other stars also had their best correlation with their pyramids around that time so the authors concluded that the pyramids were planned around the end of the last ice age. Since the shafts in the Great Pyramid point to a building date of about 2450 BCE, the planning and building dates differ by about 8000 years!
But that "shaft date" also creates problems because it is too young. At present Egyptologists are tending to make the Old Kingdom a little bit older rather than younger.

Such a revolutionary thesis generated objections from academia. The first inconsistency found was about a mixup of the directions implemented into the concept, and shortly afterwards it was discovered that the inclinations did not match at the claimed planning date.
But that is secondary. The biggest question is, if the foundation of the theory is correct, the necessary link with Ancient Egyptian culture. Can the Osiris/Orion-myth be traced back to the beginning of the pyramid building era? My preliminary investigations found some serious problems here.

Therefore the following analysis of the OCT will consist of two parts. I will start with a discussion of the cultural link addressing the following points:

Osiris in the history of Ancient Egypt
Underworld beliefs and funerary ceremonies
Contents of the Pyramid Texts

The second part deals with the "normal" OCT critique including:

Direction and location problems of the pyramids
Targets and dates of the star shafts
Problems with the look and feel

The second part is an expanded version of my old home page with some new points (eg. Milky Way).
But I will give an advanced warning: the first part is very difficult material!!!