The texts of the pyramids then, though they fail to give us any information with regard to the life or history of the kings whose chambers they adorned have still much significance for the universal history of civilization.
THE MARRIAGE OF AMENOPHIS IV.--The Amarna tablets show that Amenophis married other Babylonian princesses besides Thi his first wife who bore the title of "Royal mother, Royal wife, and Queen of Egypt." A large tablet on exhibition at the British Museum with two others in the museum at Berlin and one at Gizeh gives a very entertaining correspondence between Amenophis and Kallima-Sin, king of Chaldea and brother of one of Amenophis' wives and father of two others. The tablet in the British Museum is relative to the alliance with Lukhaite the youngest daughter of the Chaldean king.
Kallima-Sin is reluctant to give his daughter to the Pharaoh and advances various reasons for his indisposition while Amenophis smoothly explains away the various impediments.
Matters take a new turn in the Berlin letter where we find the Babylonian requesting a wife of the Egyptian monarch, the request is curtly refused, whereupon Kallima-Sin replies, "Inasmuch as thou hast not sent me a wife, I will do in like manner unto thee and hinder any lady from going from Babylon to Egypt." Another letter however shows that Kallima-Sin finally consented on condition of large emolument to send Lukhaite to Egypt, and this very mercenary and diplomatic alliance was finally made.--Biblia, V, pp. 108, 109.
THE DATE OF THE FOURTH EGYPTIAN DYNASTY.--Mr. Petrie's statement in Medum as to the passage-angle of Senefru's pyramid completes a chain of astronomical evidence proving the commencement of the IV Dynasty to have been very approximately 3700 B.C.
The entrance passage of the Medum pyramid has a polar distance (allowing for the azimuth error of the passage) of about 45, and, if intended for observation of a circumpolar star, fixes the date of the structure within not very wide limits. Between 4900 and 2900 B.C. no naked eye star was within this distance of the pole, except the sixth magnitude star 126 Piazzi (XIII) which was so situate about 3820 to 3620 B.C., its minimum distance being about 36'. Allowing an uncertainty of a few minutes of arc, a date fifty years on either side of these extremes would satisfy the requirements of the case.
The passage-angle of the Great Pyramid is 3° 30' below the pole (3° 34' in the built portion, the latest). The Second Pyramid passage has also an angle of about 3° 31' polar distance (Smyth's measures--Perring and Vyse, whose angle measures are not accurate, give 4° 5'). Finally the northern "trial-passage" east of the Great Pyramid has the polar distance 3° 22' + or - 8'. Now at the date 3650 B.C. the star 217 Piazzi (somewhat brighter than that last named) was at a distance of 3° 29' from the pole, increasing to 3° 34' by 3630 B.C.
East of the Great Pyramid there are certain straight trenches (one at the Ν.Ε. corner) running respectively 13° 6', 24° 22', and 75° 58' east of North and west of South. At about the date named these trenches pointed very nearly to Canopus at setting and to Arcturus and Altair at rising, the average error of azimuth being less than a degree.
But even these differences of half a degree or so are accounted for. Refraction at the horizon amounts to about 35' of arc; if we assume that the Egyptian (?) astronomers took it roundly at 30', and that they intended to observe the stars on the true and not the apparent horizon, we find the azimuths would have been (3645 B.C.):--
Canopus 13° 3' (W. of S.), Trench 13° 6'
Arcturus 24° 23' (E. of N.), " 24° 22'
Altair 76° 0' ( " ), " 75° 58'