It was whilst viewing a recent satellite picture of Giza that I received confirmation of something I had been working on for some time. On numerous visits to Giza I had noticed a strange feature on the desert floor not far from the Second Pyramid's entrance. It appeared to be a grid cut into the rock floor. According to Mark Lehner and other Egyptologists these cuttings are remnants of the work carried out to level the area surrounding the West and North sides of the Pyramid.

This had always puzzled me. Anyone visiting the Second Pyramid cannot fail to be struck by the scale of this levelling work. Because the builders chose to build the Second Pyramid on this spot, it was necessary to cut away huge amounts of rock creating cliffs of rock on both the West and North side of the pyramid. Why then, when the majority of this work had been carried out did they choose to leave one small section unlevelled? Furthermore, the grid is no more than half a metre high. Why, when they had cut away at least a height of 10 metres of rock did they leave this small amount in this one place? And why just here? It was incomprehensible to me to suggest that the builders stopped right at the end when it would have taken them no time at all to finish the job. Could there in fact be another reason for this strange grid?

Pictures taken from Sunship map of Giza

The answer that came to to my mind was that it might not be the remnants of levelling work at all but may have instead had a separate purpose. It has been overlooked for so long simply because it was labelled as levelling work and discarded right from the start. If we cast aside this preconception things start looking interesting.

I started with the idea that they were used as markers, but to mark what? What could they possibly measure or represent? Then it struck me, what if they were some form of calendar?

A lot of work has been done to show that the Great Pyramid may have been a calendar, casting it's shadow onto the limestone platform surrounding it. Could it be that the Second Pyramid also performed this function. I was working on this possibility when I found the above satellite image. Almost the first thing I noticed when viewing this image was the shadow of the second pyramid.

Take a look at this close up focusing on the Second Pyramid itself. You will see that the shadow of the Pyramid itself lands directly on the grid carved into the rock floor surrounding it. This was all the confirmation I needed. It occurred to me that if I could work out when exactly the shadow would cross the grid I would be able to determine exactly what the builders of the pyramid were trying to mark out on the desert floor. If this was designed to record a certain day of the year, or as the grid suggests, a period of days or weeks, then we could pin this down precisely.

In part two we will discuss these ideas and look further at the purpose of the grid...