Alexander Badawy
Egyptian-born architect and Egyptologist, UCLA
- Born
- 1913, Egypt
- Died
- 1986
- Position
- Professor of art history, UCLA
- Books
- A History of Egyptian Architecture; Coptic Art and Archaeology
- Pyramid work
- 1964 star-shaft study with Virginia Trimble
An Egyptologist and architectural historian who argued in 1964 that the Great Pyramid's shafts were aimed at the stars.
What is Alexander Badawy known for?
Alexander Badawy was an Egyptian Egyptologist and architect who spent much of his career in the United States as a professor of art history at UCLA. He wrote A History of Egyptian Architecture, Architecture in Ancient Egypt and the Near East (1966) and Coptic Art and Archaeology (1978), and endowed a chair in Egyptian art at Johns Hopkins.
In 1964 he published, with the astronomer Virginia Trimble, the argument that the narrow shafts from the King's Chamber of the Great Pyramid were not air vents but were aimed at the sky: the northern shaft at the circumpolar stars and the southern at Orion's belt, as they stood around 2600–2500 BCE. He tied this to Pyramid Texts in which the dead king joins the 'imperishable stars' and Orion.
Co-author of the 1964 study linking the Great Pyramid's shafts to the circumpolar stars and Orion.
Mentioned on these pages
- Rabbit holeThe Imperishable Stars
- PersonVirginia Trimble
Sources
- Wikipedia, 'Alexander Badawy'Reference
- Badawy, 'The Stellar Destiny of Pharaoh and the So-called Air-shafts of Cheops' Pyramid', MIO 10 (1964), Giza Archives (Harvard)Primary text
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