Mysteries and Discoveries of Archaeoastronomy: From Giza to Easter Island

by Giulio Magli

The book is divided into two parts. In the first, the reader is taken on an ideal ‘world tour’ of many wonderful and enigmatic places in almost every continent, in search of traces of astronomical knowledge and lore of the sky. In the second part, Giulio Magli uses the elements presented in the tour to show that the fundamental idea which led to the construction of the astronomically-related giant monuments was the foundation of power, a foundation which was exploited by ‘replicating’ the sky. A possible interpretive model then emerges that is founded on the relationship the ancients had with “nature”, in the sense of everything that surrounded them, the cosmos. The numerous monumental astronomically aligned structures of the past then become interpretable as acts of will, expressions of power on the part of those who held it; the will to replicate the heavenly plane here on earth and to build sacred landscapes. Finally, having formulated his hypothesis, Professor Magli returns to visit one specific place in detail, searching for proof. This in-depth examination studies the most compelling, the most intensively studied, the most famous and, until recently, the most misunderstood sacred landscape on the planet - Giza, in Egypt. The archaeoastronomical analysis of the orientation of the Giza pyramids leads to the hypothesis that the pyramids of Cheops and Chephren belong to the same construction project.

Genres: History, Astronomy, Anthropology, Religion

456 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Giulio Magli is a Physicist (PhD 1992), currently Full Professor at the Politecnico di Milano, where he teaches the unique official course on Archaeoastronomy ever established in an Italian University. His research activity first developed in Relativistic Astrophysics, but gradually moved to the study of the relationship between architecture, landscape and mathematical - astronomical lore of ancient cultures, especially among the ancient Egyptians but also among the Incas and in the Mediterranean area. In this field he authored several papers and the books “Mysteries and Discoveries of Archaeoastronomy” (Springer Verlag 2009), “Architecture, astronomy and sacred landscape in ancient Egypt” (Cambridge University Press 2013) and “Archaeoastronomy-Introduction to the science of stars and stones” (Springer Verlag 2016). He is one of the authors of the UNESCO-IAU document on astronomical heritage and has been conducting archaeological survey missions on pre-nuragic Sardinia and in Central Italy, as well as spending several periods in Egypt investigating the ancient topography of the pyramid’s fields and other ancient landscapes; since 2015 he is responsible of the scientific cooperation project between the Politecnico di Milano and the Archaeological Park of the UNESCO site “Valley of the Temples” in Agrigento, Sicily. Along with scientific activity, he developed a wide activity in the field of scientific communication and since 2013 he serves as appointed director of the FDS laboratory for Formation and Scientific Communication of the Department of Mathematics. Recently he has been involved, together with METID - Politecnico di Milano, in research and development of MOOCs and other e-learning tecniques and, together with Domenico Brunetto, he authored the first Pre-Calculus MOOC course ever published in Italian. His researches in Archaeoastronomy have been reported several times in national and international TV broadcasts, including CNN, Discovery News, History Channel and National Geographic.

Reviews

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Human society has long existed for the most part in two dimensions. For most of history, the sky and its celestial bodies have been thought of as impossibly beyond the human realm, and thus related to a higher, spiritual plane, variously defined across cultures. The concept of the "shaman" as intermediary between human and spirit worlds was often linked to the knowledge of the movements of these celestial bodies – knowledge that often found its use in prediction of, and even control over, calamity, death, and the afterlife. One would well expect this near-universal anxiety, in the form of some connection with the movements of the stars, to be represented among the great technical triumphs of civilization.

The first section of Mysteries and Discoveries hops around the world, from Europe to the Mediterranean to Asia to the Americas to the South Pacific, relating chapter by chapter the likely astronomical inspirations behind aspects of, mostly, the architectural artefacts of assorted cultures of antiquity. This part makes up the majority of the book (~250 pages). The second and third (~150 pages combined) turn their focus to linking themes, and the Egyptian pyramids, and to debunking many of what the author sees as pervasive Egyptological misconceptions.

If you're worried about nebulous New-Agey ideas here, as I admittedly was on the lookout for – don't be. The author qualifies all his claims and beliefs with an appropriate level of research and theory.

There were some glitches at times that made it obvious I was reading a translation (the original was in Italian), but it was otherwise well written and engaging enough to keep my interest, for a relatively academic text.

I don't know how current or accepted the ideas Magli puts forth are (the original text is 10 years old now), not being much acquainted with the state of the field; but as a layman to archaeoastronomy looking for my first "serious" read on the subject, this was a satisfying choice.