Do the Egyptian pyramids line up with the stars?
This idea gets tossed around so often that many ancient Egypt fans simply accept it as true. And on the surface, it seems plausible. The ancient Egyptians tracked the night sky closely. They studied the constellations and used the motion of the stars to make decisions about when to plant crops and when to harvest. But there’s been a long debate over whether the pyramids themselves are actually aligned with any particular set of stars.
Over the decades, researchers have proposed a handful of possible celestial alignments for the pyramids, especially with the Giza Pyramid Complex. This famous site outside Cairo includes the Great Sphinx and three main pyramids: the Pyramid of Menkaure, the Pyramid of Khafre, and the Great Pyramid of Giza.
But the pyramids were built in the decades around 2500 B.C., during a period called the Old Kingdom of Ancient Egypt. So, any celestial alignment they have with the night sky would have to match what the heavens looked like some 4,500 years ago.
Egyptian pyramids: A gateway to the stars?
Theories about the pyramids' connection to the stars go back a long way. But in the 1980s, a researcher named Robert Bauval came up with a suggestion that has since buried itself in the minds of the public. He pointed out that there are similarities between the layout of the three pyramids of the Giza Complex and the relative separation between the three stars of Orion’s Belt in the constellation Orion.
The idea went mainstream in Bauval's 1995 New York Times bestseller, The Orion Mystery, which expanded on the notion that “the pyramids were created to serve as a gateway to the stars.” Bauval claimed that the constellation Orion governed the construction of all the pyramids. His idea came to be known as the “Orion correlation theory.”
Today, it’s considered a fringe idea in archaeology. Why? There’s no physical evidence to prove an intentional correlation. Plus, there’s nothing in Egpytian texts indicating the pyramids were intentionally designed that way.
Critics instead say that believers are succumbing to pareidolia — the human tendency to see shapes, patterns, and meaning in objects, even when no pattern exists. For example, seeing the face of the famous Man in the Moon.
The three pyramids weren’t all planned at once, either. The Pyramid of Menkaure, which is much smaller and sits a little farther away, seems to have been an afterthought, according to leading researchers. So, it’s a reasonable to think the distances between the monuments had no connection to the spacing between of the three stars of Orion's Belt. Or, at least, no intentional connection to the stars.
Besides the lack of proof, the Orion Correlation Theory typically draws rolled eyes because it’s often packaged with other unusual claims. The people who defend the idea most passionately are usually the ones also championing tales of ancient aliens and forgotten technologically advanced cultures.
Pyramid ‘star shafts’