The Orion-Theory

In 1994 the book The Orion Mystery by Robert Bauval and Adrian Gilbert caused an uproar in the Egyptological world like no single book before. No wonder, it states on its cover "After more than 4000 years the secrets of the pyramids had been solved" (German paperback edition). The thesis, which purports to have done this, is now called the Orion Correlation Theory or, in short, the OCT.
Although published by two authors the thesis is essentially the work of Robert Bauval. He claims to have found the answer to a questions which has been hotly debated for decades:
Is pyramid placement coincidental? Or is there a wider plan? For many decades this has been discussed. Most of it centres around - oh wonder - the Giza-pyramids (in short Gizamids ;-) ). Some scientists say the distribution is pure coincidence, others say that it is because of the available terrain, others think they have discovered an underlying geometrical pattern to explain the locations. Some examples are listed in the pyramid section of this site. Nearly all "pattern"-theories have one major fault: to explain them the Egyptians needed a knowledge of mathematics and geometry which they never had. Those ideas are therefore pure speculation.
Bauval and Gilbert argue using a mythology-derived distribution. As a result of their investigations they concluded that the Egyptian World of the Dead was located in the sky and that the placement of the pyramids represented the most important stars for them.

The dead kings, and ordinary people later, became the god Osiris after their death. This god had a stellar representation, the constellation Sah which is, according to Bauval, identical to our modern Orion. Since each person had one star soul, each dead king could become one star of Orion, thus the pyramids were placed in a way to represent the specific star the king became.
In later times a new solar cult replaced the older stellar religion, the pyramids of the late 5th and 6th dynasty do not therefore match any stars in the sky.
The best evidence for the Orion cult is the comparison between the 3 largest pyramids at Giza with the so called belt-stars of Orion.

Star brightness and pyramid size: Giza consists of two almost equally tall pyramids and a smaller one which is only 53% of the height of the other two. The belt of Orion consists of two almost similarly bright stars, and one with only 50% of the brightness of the other two. The smallest pyramid is the one which deviates from the diagonal, as does the dimmest star!

Ohter pyramids: More pyramids in Egypt fit the picture of the sky: the two large pyramids at Dahshur are a match for the brightest two stars in the open cluster "Hyades", two more pyramids near Giza are bright stars of Orion, and the pyramids of Abusir are exactly where the head of Orion should be.

Therefore the following analysis of the OCT will consist of two parts. I will start with a discussion of the cultural link addressing the following points:

Osiris in the history of Ancient Egypt
Underworld beliefs and funerary ceremonies
Contents of the Pyramid Texts
The second part deals with the "normal" OCT critique including:

Direction and location problems of the pyramids
Targets and dates of the star shafts
Problems with the look and feel
The second part is an expanded version of my old home page with some new points (eg. Milky Way).
But I will give an advanced warning: the first part is very difficult material!!!