The Staff of Ra

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Easter Bank Holiday is traditionally a time of sitting back and catching up with Indiana Jones films. They’re more accurate than some archaeologists would like to admit. There are a few people who still think that you can get instructions on where to dig from a book. One puzzle though is the Staff of Ra. If you’ve not seen Raiders of the Lost Ark recently, the Staff of Ra is the thing that Prof Henry Jones Jr plants in the model of Tanis. A beam of light hits the headpiece and directs a beam to reveal the last resting place of the Ark. Nonsense? Not entirely. The Neolithic tomb of Newgrange is an oddity. The tomb is a long corridor, with side chambers built into a mound. It has a doorway, and above it is another opening. So far this opening appears to have no practical function. The current favoured theory is that it exists solely to let light into the tomb. Around the winter solstice the rising Sun passes in front of this opening and allows a shaft of light to penetrate to the end of the tomb.

From the ancient world there’s also the Temple of Serapis. Here’s a description from Rufinus:

Some parts of the temple were even designed by art and deception to evoke the astonishment and admiration of visitors. A very narrow window had been laid out on the side towards the rising sun in such a way that at dawn the Sun was brought in to salute Serapis — for the moment had been rigorously calculated — a captive sun’s ray lights up through this opening, as though approaching the statue, the mouth and the lips of Serapis, so that to the eyes of the crowd, Serapis appears to be saluted by a kiss from the Sun.

It’s fun to read the whole thing. If you’re looking for a temple with levitating colossal statues and deceptive priests, then the Temple of Serapis would have been a good place to start. Rufinus was a Christian and so eager to portray the worship of Serapis as something twisted.

But one of the key features of the Staff of Ra is that it deflects the Sun’s rays to a different place. It’s not enough to simply turn up at the right time. I didn’t know of anywhere where sunlight was deflected for an astronomical alignment recently. It turns out there is a place.

The Shrine of Remembrance. Photo (cc) Azlan Nache.

The Shrine of Remembrance is in Melbourne, Australia, the backyard of fellow RADical Brett Holman. It was built to honour the soldiers who fell in the Great War. The architect Philip B. Hudson visited cathedrals in Italy and saw the astronomical effects built into them. He decided that something similar would be perfect for the Great War Memorial, so he created Stone of Remembrance.

The Stone of Remembrance. Photo GNU Fir002.

There was a hole drilled in the ceiling based on the calculations of an astronomer. He calculated the word LOVE would be illuminated by the Sun at some time between 10:52 and 11:13 on November 11. From The Sun in the Church by J.L. Heilbron:

The day of dedication, November 11 1934, was overcast. Nonetheless the party proceeded to the exercise. The clouds parted as the wreath was laid. “The ray of light flashed through the sheltering dimness of the Inner Shrine and shone on the Stone of Remembrance, leaving the startled group within awe-struck.”

An impressive sight, and certainly one I’d like to see. Unfortunately from 1971 the state of Victoria adopted daylight saving time for the summer on a permanent basis. Being in the Southern Hemisphere summertime includes November. Eleven o’clock solar time is Noon in legal time so the connection was broken and the ray arrived an hour late.

The solution was elegant. Rather than drill a new hole and block the old one, instead they’ve installed a mirror to deflect the sunlight. This might make the site unique. I can’t recall any other site where an astronomical alignment uses deflected light.

I’m wary of drawing a sharp division between science and society. The Shrine of Remembrance is an excellent example. There was science used, but understanding why the alignment is important is impossible if you don’t think about the social meaning. There’s no functional use to the alignment. People don’t even need it to be told when it’s the 11th of November, or 11:00. It’s important because it’s a powerful symbol of hope after a horrific sacrifice. It ‘s also a symbol which seems to have deep prehistoric roots.

I don’t think the Staff of Ra is real, and I’m not about to go searching for secret chambers in Tanis, but I think the representation of revelation is interesting. Archaeology is at its most interesting when you get a sense of sharing something new with the past.