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Male narrator: The ancient pyramids of the pharaohs...
were they built as merely colossal burial tombs?
The pyramids are an enormous feat of engineering.
Narrator: Or was their real purpose not of this Earth?
The pyramid is this cosmic engine on the grandest scale.
Narrator: Were these mounds of stone designed as transport
ships to carry a pharaoh's soul and all his riches deep into the
- heavens? - The pharaoh was thought to
- travel among those stars. Narrator: - What might hold the
ultimate secrets about how and why they were built?
Those kinds of shafts, with specific stellar destinies, do
not exist anywhere else except in the Great Pyramid.
Narrator: From the searing sands of Egypt to the brilliant
beacons deep within our galaxy, we embark on a journey to
finally unlock an age-old mystery.
Are the ancient pyramids of Giza connected to the universe?
Ancient mysteries shrouded in the shadows of time.
Now, can they finally be solved by looking to the heavens?
The truth is up there, hidden among the stars...
in a place we call... the universe.
Sync and corrections by n17t01 www.addic7ed.com
The ancient pyramids of Giza, mystical stacks of stone that
loom above the desert sands of Egypt.
These astonishing feats of engineering continue to inspire
awe and wonder. They also hold one of mankind's
oldest secrets. Could they be cosmic links
between Earth and the unknown universe above?
Basically what you're seeing with the pyramids is this cosmic
engines on the grandest scale, so by getting the king resurrected in this pyramid, in
this cosmic engine, you basically ensure the survival
- into the netherworld. Narrator: - All we know for
certain is that these elusive monuments once entombed the
great pharaohs who reigned during Egypt's fourth dynasty
4,500 years ago.
The Great Pyramid, the largest of the three, is one of the
Seven Wonders of the ancient world.
It's built for the pharaoh Khufu, the most powerful ruler
of the old kingdom. The second largest is made for
his son, Khafre, and the smallest for his grandson,
Menkaure. For 4,000 years, the great
pyramid is the tallest man-made structure on Earth.
Built from over 2 million blocks of stone, the iconic
structure covers an area of seven city blocks.
The finished masterpiece is originally coated with
glistening white limestone and topped with a gold-covered
capstone. What drove this ancient
civilization to create such grand burial tombs?
Or were they burial tombs? Is it possible that the pyramids
of Giza have a more profound purpose?
The pyramids were first and foremost a burial place because
they held the body of the pharaoh in a sarcophagus, but
it's also a symbolic way to help the soul of the pharaoh to get
- to his final destination. Narrator: - Were the pyramids
built as cosmic engines to beam the pharaohs to the hereafter,
and where in the universe did the Egyptians believe this life
beyond the grave existed?
The burial remains and treasures once sealed in these tombs are
plundered within years of their completion, and no written
documents exist about their construction.
No blueprints have survived. To decode these mysteries,
egyptologists consult the sky for answers.
To the Ancient Egyptians, the sky was incredibly important.
Perhaps you can imagine in a world without electricity, where
there's no light pollution at night the stars are very clear.
You can see the milky way, so it's like a world up there that
is very much present and very much observed.
Narrator: Cryptic clues about the pyramid's connection to the
sky can be found within the pyramid texts, a series of
funeral rituals and spells inscribed on the walls of a
later tomb from the fifth dynasty.
The pyramid texts come about in the late fifth dynasty,
perhaps 150, 200 years after the fourth dynasty, but we can guess
that those texts reflect what was important to their ancestors
- as well. - These spiritual texts
describe the pharaoh going forth into the northern sky and living
among the "Imperishable Ones." These are the circumpolar stars
that never rise or set below the horizon.
After death, a pharaoh's soul is destined to live among these
eternal beacons that symbolize immortal gods.
When the pharaoh died, he was regarded as the emissary of the
gods, going to the sky, being transformed into a celestial
being to participate in the same activities of the cosmic order
that the sky was already carrying forward.
Narrator: But how do the pyramids enable the pharaohs and
their entombed treasures to ascend deep into the universe?
- [Indistinct chatter] - When archeologists begin
excavating on the Giza plateau they make a startling discovery.
The sides of all three pyramids face the four cardinal
directions, north-south and east-west, with extreme
accuracy. What's more, the entrance of
each pyramid faces due north with masterful precision, within
1/10 of a degree. Are these near-perfect
proportions a coincidence, or calculated?
- And for what purpose? - Here we are at the Giza
plateau, at least a model of it, and you see the three Giza
pyramids. Khufu's pyramid, the largest
one, Khafre's pyramid, slightly smaller, and then Menkaure's
pyramid's the smallest one of all.
The one thing they all have in common is that they have their
- entrance on the north side. Narrator: - The north-facing
door of each pyramid opens to a long passageway that descends
down to a burial chamber where the pharaoh was once entombed.
Each one resembles a giant telescope pointed towards the
northern sky. Are the northern doors and
passageways designed to be cosmic portals to the stars?
It's often called the descending passage, but from the
spirit's point of view, it's the ascending passage.
Because it's pointing north, it points to the circumpolar stars.
One of the analogies for the afterlife is that the spirit
joins with the imperishable stars.
What that means, of course, is that the spirit, because it's no
longer physical, will not die again.
It's imperishable, and we can only speculate that this was
perhaps the original idea behind the pyramids of the third and
- the fourth dynasty. Narrator: - The Ancient
Egyptians don't have GPS or even a compass.
So how do they astronomically align the massive passageways
- due north with such precision? - There are a couple of ways to
find true north. One is to watch the stars at night and look at particular
those stars that never set but just seem to circle one point in
the sky. That point is directly over the
North Pole. That's because the Earth spins
in its orbit and the North Pole always points to a single spot.
The North Celestial Pole is the point in the sky that all
the stars rotate around, so even the ancient peoples, they had an
idea that there was a point in the sky that was fixed, that
- everything moved around it. - Ancient Egyptians could've
looked generally toward the north and watched as stars
circle around, and by estimating the center of the circular
motions they could've determined where north is.
Narrator: Once pinpointing the North Celestial Pole, the
Ancient Egyptians could have constructed a descending
passageway towards that northern direction in the sky and then
built the rest of the pyramid on top of it.
The pole star method is a good candidate for how the
Ancient Egyptians would have aligned the descending
- passageway. Narrator: - The passageways of
the pyramids were orientated with sheer precision to the
north in the direction of the imperishable, circumpolar stars.
But did these astronomical alignments imbue them with the
power to propel the pharaohs' soul to live among their stellar
gods of the universe?
Narrator: The pyramids of Giza hold the secrets of an
ancient culture that thrived over 4,500 years ago.
Are these colossal tombs designed to transport the
pharaohs and all their worldly riches to a new home deep in the
universe? And if so, what powers these cosmic machines?
For the Egyptians, life after death was crucial, and the
motion of the pharaoh into the sky to take his rightful place
among the stars in the northern part of the sky was part of
their religion and one of the main functions of the pyramid.
Narrator: To understand how the Ancient Egyptians could
conceive of such a journey we look to the internal design of
the Great Pyramid.
It contains a system of hidden corridors and rooms.
At the heart of the structure is the king's chamber.
It contains an empty sarcophagus, which once held the
- remains of the pharaoh Khufu. - In this sarcophagus, the
pharaoh's body was put to rest, right on the center axis of the
- pyramid that protected it. Narrator: - The pharaoh's body
is also protected through mummification, a process that
involves removing the internal organs and then drying out the
corpse. Once all the moisture is gone,
the body is wrapped in linens. After the deceased decomposes,
the mummified skeleton acts as a substitute corpse, symbolically
preserving the pharaoh's life force, or Ka, so it can join
with the pharaoh's soul, or Ba.
This is important because if the pyramid is a cosmic engine,
the mummy is kind of the core of the battery.
By mummification you brought back together, at the anchor of
- the mummy, the Ba and the Ka. Narrator: - The unification of
the Ba and Ka in the mummified corpse may be what the Ancient
Egyptians believed ignited the cosmic fuel needed to beam a
pharaoh's soul to the afterlife amongst the stars.
That makes sense of why it's important to get the king not
only mummified but also ensuring the deceased relative is set up
- in the afterlife. Narrator: - But is the
descending passageway the mystical vault to the stars?
Or does the Great Pyramid possess other celestial portals?
And just where in the universe might they transport the
pharaoh? On the north and south walls of
the king's chamber are two peculiar shafts.
They penetrate all the way through the pyramid to the
outside. At first, they are thought to be
some sort of ancient ventilation system, or even an illumination
- feature. - There were already
suggestions that they were meant to light the burial chamber when
a certain star passed overhead at a certain time of year.
Narrator: Astronomers begin to study the direction of these
shafts more closely to see if they're aimed at specific points
in the sky. If the pyramids were
intentionally aligned with the heavens, the north star would be
a likely target for the shafts. But it turns out they don't line
up with the north star at all, except that what we call the
North Star today, Polaris, wasn't the North Star for the
Egyptians. This is because stars move about
through time due to a phenomenon called precession.
I can explain precession on Earth with this toy top.
As we spin the top it's like the Earth spinning on its axis.
You can see there is a slight wobble, which is the same thing
as the precession that we see of Earth's spin axis.
Earth's axis of rotation slowly rotates.
It precesses with a period of 26,000 years.
So it points to different locations in the sky at
different times over this 26,000-year cycle.
And we can essentially go back in time and determine where in
the sky it was pointing at a given time.
Narrator: 4,500 years ago, when the pyramids were built,
the North Star was not Polaris but Thuban, and the northern
shaft would have pointed right at it.
The southern shaft pointed near the brightest stars in the
constellation of Orion. Could this mean that rather than
the pharaoh's pathway to the stars these shafts were merely
designed to make the pyramid a gigantic observatory?
There have been very romantic notions about the Great Pyramid
being used as an observatory to observe those stars from deep
inside the pyramid. This is really kind of silly
when you think about it. You can just as easily observe those stars outside.
You don't need to go into a pyramid just to look at them.
Narrator: Upon closer inspection, it's discovered that
the shafts slightly bend at either end so no stars can be
seen directly through them. Egyptologists then begin to
wonder whether the shafts were built for a ritualistic rather
- than practical purpose. - The shafts, as far as we can
tell, are conduits for the king's vital force, for his
soul, his Ba, to go to those places for resurrection.
They are magical shafts. That's why it's so important to
connect them cosmically to the circumpolar stars, to Orion, to
connect the pyramid to the cardinal directions, because
they did think they are indeed connecting to the cosmos.
Those kinds of shafts, with specific stellar destinies, do
not exist anywhere else except in the Great Pyramid.
That suggests, of course, that somebody in designing and
building the Great Pyramid got an idea that this would be a new
and perhaps particularly effective embellishment for the
- pharaoh. Narrator: - And the shafts
would transport more than just the pharaoh's spirit to the
stars. They'd also carry along all the
mortal comforts of Egyptian royalty.
Within tombs have been found the entire household possessions
of the pharaoh, not only personal items, such as the
pharaoh's organs and grooming necessities, but any number of
treasures that would help add comfort and elegance to the
- pharaoh's afterlife. Narrator: - An even bigger
mystery surrounds the shafts. Why are they pointed to the
northern and southern skies? The northern shaft was directed
towards the star Thuban, an imperishable star, representing
eternal life, but the southern shaft is equally significant.
It once pointed to three stars in the Belt of Orion, a
constellation associated with the god Osiris.
Osiris was the god of the afterlife.
He presided over the seasons, the cycle of life and death.
So he was one of the most important figures in all of the
Egyptian pantheon. The pyramid points toward the
culmination of that constellation in the sky and
this connects the pyramid with the sky in a very important way.
Narrator: Reliefs in later Egyptian burial tombs depict a
pharaoh's soul being released to Orion, where it becomes a living
star. There, the pharaoh's spirit
joins Osiris, who symbolizes the cycle of birth, life, death, and resurrection.
Osiris is the principle that brings a plant to life from a
seed and, once the plant dies, allows its seeds to produce new
life and so forth. Does the same thing with
deceased people, whose spirits enter the tomb at night, go into
the mummy, join with the power of Osiris, and receive from that
power the ability to come to life again in the morning.
Narrator: Another startling discovery is made in the queen's
chamber. The queen wasn't entombed there,
but it contains two unfinished shafts.
Its southern shaft once pointed towards the star Sirius, who
represents the goddess Isis, and consort of Osiris.
Could there be a deeper connection to Orion?
What secrets could this constellation reveal about the
Great Pyramid and its connection to the universe?
Narrator: The ancient pyramids of Giza, mesmerizing
monuments built for ancient kings.
Yet their true function is lost to time.
Are they magical stairways to a celestial hereafter, or is there
an even deeper meaning behind their cosmically inspired
design? Perhaps more proof can be found
by looking at the pyramids from above.
Aerial images reveal that the two larger pyramids form a
45-degree angle. However, the smallest pyramid is
slightly offset from the other two.
You see, the three Giza pyramids seemed to be aligned.
But if you follow the line you see that you sort of bump into
Menkaure's pyramid. It's quite off the main line of
- the other two pyramids. Narrator: - Why would the
ancient architects build the pyramids in such a way when each
structure is accurately aligned with only a tiny margin of
error? Some believe the answers can be
found in the southern shaft of the king's chamber, located in
the Great Pyramid. It once pointed to the three
belt stars in the constellation Orion.
The stars form a diagonal line, with the smallest star slightly
offset. They bear a striking resemblance
to the layout of the pyramids. So were the pyramids of Giza
built to honor the three belt stars of Orion?
The basic idea's that the three pyramids are mapped on the
ground to represent the three stars in the belt of Orion.
You can imagine yourself as up above the sky looking down on
the Earth, as if you could get outside the stars, as the
ancients imagined it, and project those stars right down
- to the ground. Narrator: - But there's a
serious problem with this theory.
In the Belt of Orion, the northernmost star is the
smallest one, whereas on the Giza plateau, the northernmost
- pyramid is the largest one. - Here's the problem.
To make it match the pyramids you have to map the
constellation upside down, and we have no reason to think that
the Egyptians, or anyone else for that matter, would do such a
thing. So we know that directions
mattered to the Egyptians, and therefore making a
contradiction with the mapping just doesn't make sense.
That's an interesting hypothesis.
It sort of depends on how you look at Orion.
The belt stars align if you look at it one way and don't align if
you look at it another way, so we don't really know whether
- it's correct. Narrator: - And the
less-than-perfect diagonal lineup of the pyramids may have
more to do with geography and geology than cosmic inspiration.
You should keep in mind that the Giza plateau doesn't really
look like this nice sandy surface.
It actually had a lot of quarries.
Those giant pyramids were basically built from the
limestone of the plateau on which they are standing, so it
might well be that there's also very practical purposes why
Menkaure's pyramid is a little bit off line.
Narrator: Still, the stars in the night sky would certainly
have been important markers to the Ancient Egyptians.
But the most important star is the one they could only see
during the day-- the Sun.
Throughout Egyptian mythology beliefs change over time and
gods fall in and out of favor. By the fourth dynasty, the
Egyptians begin to exhibit a strong religious devotion to the
Sun. At the time, the Sun is viewed
as a powerful, mysterious ball of light that arches across the
sky each day and disappears each night.
They of course did not know what the Sun was.
You can see it going across the sky and setting in the west.
Where does it go? They had no idea where it went
at night. They could only speculate that
somehow it traveled beneath the Earth, and when it set it died.
Narrator: The Ancient Egyptians think their pharaohs
also experience death and rebirth like the rising and
- setting Sun. - The idea is that the spirit,
when the person has died, has somehow gone to sleep and needs
to wake up again every morning. And after this happens the
spirit makes its way through the tomb, just as the Sun finally
- emerges at dawn. Narrator: - Could the Ancient
Egyptians' belief in resurrection explain why all
three pyramids are built on the west bank of the Nile river?
These pyramids have a whole system linked to that east-west
orientation. The Sun comes up in the east.
That's the new life. It then goes over and sets in
the west, and that's where the pyramids are.
So the setting Sun represents death.
Narrator: Perhaps the pyramids transport the pharaohs
to the Sun rather than the nighttime stars.
The geometric shape of a pyramid is often viewed as a solar
symbol. Its steeped-sloped sides are
compared to the Sun's rays, which act as ramps to the
heavens. Even its former white veneer is
interpreted as a mirror reflecting sunlight.
One thing that is clear, they chose white tura limestone to
clad these pyramids for a reason.
This bright, white, gleaming pyramid right up above you is
meant to be the Sun reflecting down on you, like the king being
projected up by this machine. So the symbolism was there.
Narrator: So is the Sun the key to solving the ancient
mystery of the pyramids? New evidence suggests they're
more than cosmically energized tombs in a desert graveyard.
They might be part of a mysterious solar cult.
Narrator: After 4,500 years, the ancient pyramids of Giza
remain shrouded in mystery and intrigue.
Were these massive mounds of stone built to transport the
pharaohs to live among the northern, circumpolar stars deep
in space, or was the real destination closer to home...
The Sun? The passageways leading from the
burial chambers of the pyramids appear to have been deliberately
oriented in the direction of the northern stars.
Yet the geometric shape and geographic location
of these tombs suggest a solar influence.
The Giza pyramids not only have this northern direction,
which is really important because that is where the soul
of the king leaves the pyramids to join the circumpolar stars,
but they also have an east-west orientation and that is related
to the solar circle. So the Sun comes up in the
east, goes overhead, goes under in the west, and in the west is
- where the pharaoh is buried. Narrator: - Do the pyramids
possess a spiritual connection to the nighttime stars or the
Sun? The Giza plateau reveals some of
its coveted secrets when observing it from above.
The southeast corners of the three pyramids form a diagonal
line in the direction of the sacred site of Heliopolis.
Today it's buried beneath the bustling city of Cairo, but it
was once home to a solar cult that worships the Sun god, Ra.
I think it would be a bit radical to suggest that three
generations of pyramid builders at Giza were following a master
plan. But certainly Khafre could have
adjusted his pyramid to Khufu's, and so Menkaure his
pyramid with respect to Khafre's.
Narrator: The diagonal direction of the pyramids
toward Heliopolis raises new questions.
Were these sacred tombs devoted to a cult of the Sun?
I think that the alignment on the Giza plateau is related to
the Sun god Ra because there seems to be a clear link to
Heliopolis. So that really suggests a solar
link, rather than a celestial or stellar link.
Narrator: Perhaps a more convincing discovery is found at
the base of the pyramids. The east-west sides of each
burial tomb are more precisely aligned with the cardinal
directions than the north-south sides.
This suggests that the Ancient Egyptians might have used the
rising and setting positions of the Sun, rather than the North
- Star, to align the pyramids. - Ancient Egyptians could have
used the Sun to determine the direction of north by looking at
a shadow, similar to the idea of a sundial.
As the Sun is rising in the east, a sundial casts a long
shadow pointing generally to the west.
As the Sun rises and traverses its journey across the sky, the
position of that shadow changes and the shadow actually shortens
with time. When the shadow is the shortest,
- it's pointing north. Narrator: - Engineer Glen Fash
has built a solar "gnomon," a vertical rod that acts like a
giant shaft on a sundial. He wants to test how the Ancient
Egyptians might have used the Sun's shadow to accurately align
the bases, or casings, of the pyramids.
The solar gnomon method is basically the same method that
we teach the Boys and Girl Scouts.
It's as simple as could be. You take a rod and you stick it
into the ground, and you watch the shadow produced by the Sun
- over the course of the day. Narrator: - The Sun's shadow is
projected from the gnomon, or vertical rod onto a small wooden
block resting on a platform. The experiment is performed near
the summer solstice when the Sun achieves its maximum elevation
angle, and therefore casts a sharp shadow.
We watch the shadow every minute or so.
We center the shadow in the crosshairs, it's on the angled
block, and we mark it on the paper.
Once it's projected from the block, at that particular moment
we get a line across the paper that's called a "declination
line," and that's the pattern that the Sun makes as it moves
across the sky over the course of the day.
Here we go. Let's see how we did.
At the end of the day you take a piece of string, you draw a
circle around the rod, and that circle is gonna intercept the
declination line at two points. Those two points lie exactly
east-west, so you can draw an east-west line.
Perpendicular to that is north-south.
Narrator: The experiment works.
Dash is able to find true north within 1/20 of a degree using
- this primitive solar method. - I think other people will
come to the conclusion fairly quickly that the Sun played a
major role in pyramid alignments and may have been
the method of choice for aligning the casings of the
- pyramids. Narrator: - But could there be
a deeper relationship between these remarkably accurate solar
alignments and the fate of the pharaohs buried in the pyramids?
Two ancient ships are excavated from elongated pits discovered
around the Great Pyramid. One is a 142-foot-long cedar
vessel with 12 oars. The exact function of these
royal boats is unknown. Are they funeral barges to
carry the mummified king along the Nile river to the pyramids,
or might these boats serve a symbolic purpose, a
transportation system to carry the pharaoh to an afterlife in
- the distant universe? - In Egypt, if you wanted to
get from one side of the river to the other you needed a
ferryman, and they imagined the same thing in the afterlife for
the spirit, to persuade the ferrymen in the next world to
ferry the spirit to the other side.
Narrator: The Ancient Egyptians believe the dead
traverse through dangerous waters to reach their eternal
destination in the sky. At night, the deceased pharaoh
accompanies the Sun god Ra in his boat through the perilous
underworld, between sunset and sunrise.
Night in Ancient Egypt is a very dangerous time, and they
can imagine the same thing for the spirit proceeding through
the night of its death into the morning of its afterlife.
Narrator: The royal boats as well as the shape, location, and
alignment of the pyramids all point to the influence of a Sun
cult on the Giza plateau. But the pyramids' true
connection to the universe might be found elsewhere on the Giza
plateau, behind the mysterious face of the Great Sphinx.
Narrator: The ancient pyramids of Giza.
Are they merely physical tombs, or spiritual vehicles that
propel the pharaohs to an afterlife in the distant sky?
The alignments of passageways and shafts indicate a connection
to the nighttime stars, while the shape and diagonal placement
of the pyramids, as well as the excavation of solar boats, show
a devotion to the Sun. Yet recent archeological
evidence indicates another imposing feature of the Giza
plateau might hold the ultimate secrets of these mysterious
monuments. In front of the pyramids is the
Sphinx, a gigantic lion sculpture bearing a human head.
Taller than a six-story building, the half-human,
half-beast is one of the largest and most famous statues in the world.
The Ancient Egyptians made the Sphinx right out of the
natural rock by quarrying around it and leaving a core from which
they carved the lion body and the pharaoh's head.
Narrator: For thousands of years, the crouching lion
baffles egyptologists. No inscriptions are found on the
sculpture that reveal when it was built or for what purpose.
But within ancient cultures, the lion is a Sun symbol and a human
head on an animal often signifies royal intelligence and power.
There is this idea of the king on a lion's body
representing the power of kingship in relation to both the
celestial and solar theology. The Sphinx protects the cosmos.
The Sphinx protects the order of the entire world.
Narrator: Unraveling the meaning behind the Sphinx
requires examining its eroded face.
Who is this human-headed lion? The statue lies at the base of a
long causeway leading to the second largest pyramid that
entombed the pharaoh Khafre. But does the monumental
sculpture bear the likeness of Khafre or his father Khufu?
I see some possibility that the Sphinx actually could be a
kind of monumental gatepost at the major entrance up to the
Giza plateau over three generations.
Maybe it was begun in Khufu's reign.
Narrator: During the spring and fall equinox, a remarkable
solar phenomenon occurs on the Giza plateau.
As the Sun passes over the top of the Sphinx, it rests directly
between the pyramids of Khufu and Khafre, creating an Akhet,
the Sun symbol of Ancient Egypt. Perhaps the Sphinx is the
guardian of the horizon, protecting the pharaohs as they
follow the path of the Sun over the horizon and into the
afterlife amongst the northern stars.
It seems more than coincidence that they took the
Sphinx and its temple and they moved them like that so you'd
get that alignment, that the Sun sets midway between the Khufu
and the Khafre pyramids. There's very good evidence that
the Sun cult, as we call it, was becoming very important during
- this time. Narrator: - So what can we
conclude about the real purpose for the building of the ancient
pyramids? With the information collected
to date, it is well within reason to consider that the
iconic monuments are designed to launch the pharaohs to the sky,
where they dwell among both the Sun and northern stars.
The Egyptian idea of the afterlife is really cool.
They imagined traveling in the daylight with the Sun on his
boat across the sky, and at night joining with the
- imperishable stars. Narrator: - For the Ancient
Egyptians, the practice of astronomy went beyond myth.
Both the stars and the Sun may have even guided them in their
masterful creation of the pyramids themselves.
They may have aligned the pyramid itself and the tomb
chamber, using the Sun, for the east-west orientation, where
the descending passageway was specifically designed to get
the spirit of the king to the imperishable ones, and that
would have required a celestial alignment.
So it makes sense from a spiritual point of view that
they would have aligned the casings of the pyramid with the
Sun but the descending passageway with the stars.
Narrator: By looking at how astronomy is used to help build
these monuments, we are given a rare glimpse into an ancient
culture that is highly civilized, where astronomy,
architecture, and religion are woven together a one,
a society that is keenly aware of the universe
and its importance to life on Earth,
and their belief in the hereafter.
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