The Prisoner In The Pyramid

The incident of the Tower of Babel brought to an unexpected end the longest era of Peace on Earth that Man can recall. The chain of tragic events the incident had triggered had. we believe, a direct bearing on the Great Pyramid and its mysteries. To resolve them we shall offer our own theory of how this unique structure had been planned and constructed, then plugged and broken into.

To the many enigmas pertaining to the construction and purpose of the Great Pyramid at Giza, two more were added after its completion. All theories concerning them, having been based on the assumption of a royal burial as the pyramid’s purpose, have been found flawed and wanting. We believe that the answers lie not in the tales of the Pharaohs, but in the tales of the gods. Several references to the Great Pyramid in writings of classical Greek and Roman chroniclers attest to familiarity in their times with the swivel-stone entrance into the pyramid, the Descending Passage and the Subterranean Pit. There was no knowledge of the whole upper system of passages, galleries, and chambers, because the Ascending Passage was plugged tight with three large granite blocks and further camouflaged with a triangular stone, so that no one going down the Descending Passage ever suspected that there existed a junction with an upper passage (Fig. 65).

Over the many centuries that followed, even the knowledge of the original entrance was forgotten; and when (in A.D. 820) the Caliph Al Mamoon decided to enter the pyramid, his men forced an entry by tunneling aimlessly through the masonry. Only when they heard a stone fall somewhere inside the pyramid did they tunnel in the direction of the sound, reaching the Descending Passage. The stone that had fallen was the triangular stone hiding the junction with the Ascending Passage; its fall revealed the granite plug. Unable even to dent the granite blocks, the men cut through the limestone masonry around them, discovering the Ascending Passage and the upper inner parts of the pyramid. As the Arab historians at202 test, everywhere Al Mamoon and his men found nothing but emptiness.

Clearing the Ascending Passage of debris—pieces oflimestone that had somehow slid down the passage to the granite plugs—they crawled up to the upper end of this passage. Coming out of its squarelike tunnel, they could stand up, for they had reached the junction of the Ascending Passage with a Horizontal Passage and with the Grand Gallery (Fig. 66). They followed the Horizontal Passage, reaching the vaulted chamber at its end (which later explorers named the “Queen’s Chamber”); it was bare, and so was its enigmatic niche (see Fig. 49). Returning to the junction of the passages, they clambered up the Grand Gallery (Fig. 45); its precisely cut grooves, now empty holes and nooks, helped the climb up—a task made slippery by a layer of white dust that covered the Gallery’s floor and ramps. They climbed over the Great Step, which rose from the upper end of the Gallery to become flush with the floor of the Antechamber; entering it, they found its blocking portcullises gone (Fig. 67). They crawled into the upper vaulted chamber (later named the “King’s Chamber”); it was bare, except for a hollowed-out stone block (nicknamed “The Coffer”), but it. too, was empty.

Returning to the junction of the three passages (Ascending Passage, Grand Gallery, and Horizontal Passage), Al Mamoon’s men

Fig. 66 Fig. 67

noticed a gaping hole on the western side, where the ramp stone belonging there had been smashed away (Fig. 68). It led via a short horizontal passage to a vertical shaft, which the Arabs assumed was a well. As they clambered down this “well shaft” (as it came to be called), they found that it was but the upper part of a long (about 200 feet) series of twisting and turning connected shafts that ended with a six-foot link to the Descending Passage and thus provided a connection between the pyramid’s upper chambers and passages and its lower ones (Fig. 66). The evidence indicates that the lower opening was blocked up and hidden from whoever had come down the Descending Passage, until Al Mamoon’s men lowered themselves through the length of the Well Shaft and discovered and broke open its bottom end. The Arabs’ discoveries and later investigations have raised a host of puzzles. Why. when, and by whom was the Ascending Passage plugged up? Why, when, and by whom was the twisting Well Shaft tunneled through the pyramid and its rocky base? Fig. 68

The first and most persistent theory fitted the two puzzles into one answer. Holding that the pyramid was built by the Pharaoh Khufu (Cheops) to be his tomb, the theory suggested that after his mummified body was placed in the “Coffer” in the “King’s Chamber,” workmen slid the three granite plug blocks from the Grand Gallery down the slope of the Ascending Passage, in order to seal off the tomb. This entrapped these workmen alive in the Grand Gallery. Outwitting the priests, the workmen removed the end stone in the ramp, dug out the Well Shaft, reached the Descending Passage, and saved themselves by climbing up it to the pyramid’s entrance/exit.

But this theory does not stand up to critical scrutiny. The Well Shaft is made up of seven distinct segments (Fig. 66). It begins with the upper horizontal segment (A) leading from the Grand Gallery to a vertical segment (B), which connects via a twisting segment C with a lower vertical segment D. A long, straight, but sharply inclined segment E then follows, leading into a shorter segment F inclined at a different angle. At the end of F, a segment intended to be horizontal but, in fact, slightly slanting (G) then connects the Well Shaft with the Descending Passage. Apart from the connecting, horizontal segments A and G, the Well Shaft proper (segments B, C, D, E, and F), in spite of its changing of courses when viewed on a north-south plane, lies precisely on an east-west plane parallel to the pyramid’s plane of passages and chambers: the separating distance of about six feet is bridged at the top by segment A and at the bottom by segment G.

While the three upper segments of the Well Shaft traverse some sixty feet through the pyramid’s limestone masonry, the lower segments were cut through some 150 feet of solid rock. The few workmen left behind to slide down the granite plugs (according to the above-mentioned theory) could not have been able to cut through the rock. Also, if the digging was from above, where is all the debris, which they could have only brought up as they dug down? With the Well Shaft’s twenty-eight-inch bore through most of its segments, the more than one thousand cubic feet of debris would have piled up in the upper passages and chambers.

In view of these improbabilities, new theories were advanced based on an assumption that the Well Shaft was dug from the bottom up (the debris was then removed via the Descending Passage to outside the pyramid). But why? The answer is: an accident.

As the Pharaoh was being entombed, an earthquake shook the pyramid, loosening prematurely the granite plugs. As a result, not mere laborers, but members of the royal family and high priests, were trapped alive. With the pyramid’s plans still available, rescue teams tunneled their way up, reached the Grand Gallery, and saved the dignitaries.

This theory (as well as a long-discarded one about grave robbers digging their way up) falters, among other points, on the matter of precision. With the exception of segment C, which was tunneled through the masonry in a rough and irregular manner, and section G, two of whose squarish sides were left rough and not quite horizontal, all the other segments are straight, precise, carefully finished, and uniformly angled throughout their lengths. Why would rescue workers (or grave robbers) waste time to achieve perfection and precision? Why would they bother to smooth the sides, when such smoothness made climbing the shaft much more difficult? As the evidence mounted that no Pharaoh had ever been buried or enshrined within the Great Pyramid, a new theory gained adherents: The Well Shaft was cut to enable an examination of fissures that had developed in the rock as a result of an earthquake. The most articulate proponents of such a theory were the brothers John and Morton Edgar (The Great Pyramid Passages and Chambers), who, motivated by a religious zeal which saw in the pyramid an expression in stone of biblical prophecies, visited, cleared, examined, measured, and photographed every known part of the pyramid. They showed conclusively that the upper short horizontal passage to the Well Shaft (A), as well as the uppermost vertical section (B), were part and parcel of the original construction of the pyramid (Fig. 69).

They also found that the lower vertical section (D) was carefully built with masonry blocks as it passed through a cavity (nicknamed The Grotto) in the bedrock (Fig. 70); it could have been so constructed only when the rock face was still exposed, before the Grotto was covered up with the masonry of the pyramid. In other words, this section, too, had to be part—a very early part—of the original construction of the pyramid. As the pyramid was rising above its base—so the Edgars theorized—a massive earthquake fissured the bedrock in several places. Needing to know the extent of the damage to determine whether the pyramid could still rise above the cracked bedrock, the builders cut through the rock segments E and F as Inspection Shafts. Finding the damage not too serious, the pyramid’s construction continued; but to allow periodic inspection, a short (about six-foot) passage (G) was tunneled from the Descending Passage to connect with section F, allowing entry into the Inspection Shafts from below.

Fig. 69

Fig. 70

Though the theories of the Edgars (further expounded by Adam Rutherford in Pyramidology) have been adopted by all such pyramidologists as well as by some Egyptologists, they still fall short of solving the enigmas. If the long sections E and F were emergency Inspection Shafts—why their precise and time-consuming construction? What was the purpose of the original vertical sections B and D? When and why was the irregular, twisting section C forced through the masonry?

What about the granite plugs: Why were they needed if there had been no funeral and no burial? To these questions there has been no satisfactory answer, neither by pyramidologists nor by Egyptologists. Yet the arduous and zealous measuring and remeasuring by both groups hold the key to the answers: the essential segments of the Well Shaft, we believe, were indeed executed by the original builders, but neither as an afterthought nor in response to an emergency. They were, rather, the fruit of forethought: features intended to serve as architectural guidelines in the construction of the pyramid.

Much has already been written over the centuries of the Great Pyramid’s wonderful proportions and remarkable geometric ratios. However, because all other pyramids have only lower inner passages and chambers, the tendency has persisted to view the whole upper system as a later-phase development. As a result, little attention was paid to certain alignments between upper and lower features of the pyramid, which can be accounted for only if the upper and lower parts were planned and executed at one and the same time. Thus, for example, the point at the Grand Gallery where the floor rises abruptly to form the Great Step Up (U). the central axis of the “Queen’s Chamber” (Q), and a Recess (R) at the lowest short horizontal passage—are all placed exactly on one line, the pyramid’s center line. Also, an enigmatic Down Step (5) in the upper Horizontal Passage is aligned with the point marking the end (P) of the Descending Passage. And there are more such puzzling alignments, as our next diagram will show.

Were all these alignments coincidences, architectural freaks—or the result of careful planning and layout? As we shall now show, these and other hitherto unrecognized alignments flowed from the ingenious, yet simple, planning of the pyramid. And we will also prove that the original segments of the Well Shaft were integral elements not only in the execution but also in the very planning of the pyramid.

Let us begin with segment D, because we believe that it was the very first one. It is now generally agreed that the rocky knoll on which the pyramid was erected was flattened out in a stepped manner. The lowest face of the rock (which can be seen outside) formed the Base Line; the uppermost face of the rock is at the Grotto level; there, the bottom layer (“course”) of the pyramid’s masonry can be seen. Since segment D lies below this masonry, it had to be cut and fashioned through the Grotto and the bedrock before anything above it was constructed; i.e., before the Well Shaft segments A, B, and C. Because the only way to tunnel through the rock is from its exposed face downward, segment E, which begins its downward slope precisely from the end of D, could have been cut only after segment D was completed; F had to follow E, and G came last.

In other words, D must have been constructed with great precision (see Fig. 70), through the Grotto and the rock, before all the other segments of the Well Shaft. But why was it located where it is; why is it precisely vertical; why did it not continue all the way up but was made of the length of which it is? Why, for that matter—a fact that has gone completely unnoticed—is segment E inclined to D and to the Base Line at the precise angle of 45o ? And why, if E was meant to serve as a connecting shaft, did it not simply continue until it reached the Descending Passage but instead turned at an angle to become segment F? And why is this segment, F— another unnoticed featureinclined to the Ascending Passage at the precise right angle of 90°? To answer these questions we have asked ourselves: How did the pyramid’s architects design and achieve these symmetries, perfect alignments, and remarkable geometric congruations? The solution we have come up with can best be illustrated by a drawing (Fig. 71); it is a layout plan of the pyramid’s insides, prepared by us—we believe—as it might have been drawn by the pyramid’s own builders: a simple, yet ingenious, architectural plan that achieves the impressive symmetry, alignments, and perfection with the aid of a few lines and three circles!

The construction of the pyramid began with the leveling of the rocky knoll on which it was to rise. To give the structure greater stability the rock was cut to the Base Level only near the pyramid’s circumference; at its core the face of the rock was higher, rising in stages. It was then, we believe, that the Grotto—a natural deformity in the rock or perhaps an artificial cavity—was selected as the point where the structure’s alignments were to begin. There, the first of the shafts, D, was placed vertically through the Grotto—partly cut through the rock and partly built with masonry blocks (see Fig. 70). Its height (see Fig. 71) delineates precisely the distance from the Base Level to the level where the rock ends and the masonry begins at the pyramid’s core.

Fig. 71

It has been long recognized that the value pi —the factor governing the ratios between a circle or a sphere, its linear elements and its area projections—has been employed in determining the circumference, sides, and height of the pyramid. As our drawing clearly shows, not only the pyramid’s envelope but also everything inside it was determined with the aid of three equal circles. Theodolitic equipment placed within shaft D beamed upward a key vertical line whose function we shall soon describe. But first this equipment beamed out the horizontal rock/masonry line, on which the centers of the three circles were placed. The first of these (Point 1) was at D; Points 2 and 3, where its circle intersected the line, served as centers for the other two, overlapping circles. To draw these circles the pyramid’s architects, of course, had to decide on the proper radius. Researchers of the Great Pyramid have been long frustrated by the inability to apply to its perfect proportions any of the ancient Egyptian units of measurement—neither the common cubit of 24 fingers nor the Royal cubit of 28 fingers (20.63" or 525 millimeters). Some three centuries ago Sir Isaac Newton concluded that an enigmatic “Sacred Cubit” of some 25.2" was used not only in the construction of the pyramid but also in the construction of Noah’s Ark and the temple in Jerusalem.

Both Egyptologists and pyramidologists now accept this conclusion as far as the pyramid is concerned. Our own calculations show that the radius adopted for the three circles envisioned by us was equal to 60 such Sacred Cubits; the number 60 being, not accidentally, the base number of the Sumerian sexagesimal mathematical system.

This measure of 60 Sacred Cubits is dominant in the lengths and heights of the pyramid’s inner structure as well as in the dimensions of its base.

Having selected the radius, the three circles were drawn; and now the pyramid began to take shape: where the second circle intersected the Base Level (Point 4), the pyramid’s side was to rise at the angle of 52°—a perfect angle because it is the only one which incorporates the pi ratios into the pyramid. From the bottom of shaft D, shaft E was then tunneled down, precisely inclined at 45° to D. The theodolite-beam projected from E upward, intersecting circle 2 at Point 5, provided the sloping line for the pyramid’s side and also marked off the half-area Level, on which the King’s Chamber and the Antechamber were to be placed (the 5-U-K line) and the Grand Gallery was to end. Projected downwards, the E slope determined point P at which the Descending Passage was to end. and the vertical line from P determined the Down Step S in the upper Horizontal Passage.

Turning to the third circle, we see that its center (Point 3) marked the vertical center line of the pyramid. Where it intersected the half-area Line, the Great Up Step (U) was placed, marking the end of the Grand Gallery and the beginning of the King’s Chamber floor. It also determined the position of the Queen’s Chamber (Q), which was placed exactly on the center line. By connecting Point 2 with Point U, the floor line of the Ascending Passage and the Grand Gallery was obtained.

Shaft F was then tunneled from the end of the shaft E, precisely so that its beam intersected the ascending floor line 2-U at a right angle (90°). From its intersection with the first circle (Point 6), a line was drawn through Point 2, all the way up to the side of the pyramid (Point 7). This delineated the Descending Passage, its junction with the Ascending Passage (at Point 2), and the entrance to the pyramid.

The shafts D, E, and F and the three circles have thus made possible most of the essential features of the Great Pyramid. Still undetermined, however, were the points at which the Ascending Passage would end and the Grand Gallery begin and, accordingly, where the level of the Horizontal Passage to the Queen’s Chamber would be. Here was, we believe, where shaft B came into play. No one has so far pointed out the fact that its length is precisely equal to that of D and that it marks off exactly the distance between the Entrance Level and the level of the Horizontal Passage. B was placed where the Ascending Line intersected circle 2 (Point 8). Its vertical extension marks the beginning of the rising wall of the Grand Gallery; the distance from Point 8 to Point 9, where the beam from D intersects the horizontal line from 8, is the place of the grandiose intersection depicted in Fig. 68. Segment B, connected at Point 8 to the passages through the short level segment A, thus enabled the pyramid’s builders to complete it inside. When that was done, there was no longer any architectural or functional use for these segments, and the entrance to them was covered by placing there a well-fitting, wedge-shaped ramp stone (Fig. 72).

Segments D, E, and F have also disappeared from view as the pyramid’s masonry rose over the rocky base. It was then, perhaps, the function of the less precisely built segment G to enable the withdrawal of the beaming-theodolites from the D-E-F segments, or to make last-minute checks. Finally, where the Descending Passage connected with this segment G, the opening was covered with The Prisoner in the Pyramid 215 a well-fitting stone block; and these lower segments, too, disappeared from view. The pyramid stood complete, with all the segments of the Well Shaft in their hidden places; all, that is, except one, which as we have shown had absolutely no function or purpose in the pyramid’s planning and construction.

The exception is the irregular and uncharacteristic segment C. unevenly twisting through the masonry, rudely, crudely, and forcibly cut through the limestone courses in a manner that left many stone blocks broken and protruding. When, why. and how did this enigmatic section, C, come into being? That section, we believe, was not yet in existence when the pyramid was completed by its constructors. It was, we will show, hurriedly forced through later on, when Marduk was imprisoned alive in the Great Pyramid.

That Marduk was imprisoned alive in the “Mountain Tomb,” there is no doubt; texts that have been found and authoritatively translated attest to that. Other Mesopotamian texts throw light on the nature of his offense. All together they enable us to arrive at a plausible reconstruction of the events. Evicted from Babylon and Mesopotamia, Marduk returned to Egypt. He promptly established himself in Heliopolis, enhancing its role as his “cult center” by assembling his celestial memorabilia in a special shrine, to which Egyptians made pilgrimages for a long time thereafter.

But seeking to reestablish his hegemony over Egypt, Marduk found that things had changed since he left Egypt to attempt his coup d’etat in Mesopotamia. Though Thoth, we gather, did not put up a struggle for supremacy, and Nergal and Gibil were far from the center of power, a new rival had emerged in the interim: Dumuzi. That younger son of Enki, his domain bordering Upper Egypt, was emerging as a pretender to the throne of Egypt. And behind his ambitions was none other than his bride Inanna/Ishtar—another cause for Marduk’s suspicions and dislike. The tale of Dumuzi and Inanna—he a son of Enki. she a granddaughter of Enlil—reads like an ancient tale of Romeo and Juliet. Like Shakespeare’s drama, it, too, ended in tragedy, death, and revenge. The first presence of Inanna/Ishtar in Egypt is mentioned in the Edfu text dealing with the First Pyramid War. Called there Ashtoreth (her Canaanite name), she is said to have appeared on the battlefield among the advancing forces of Horus.

The reason for this inexplicable presence in Egypt might have been to visit her bridegroom Dumuzi. through whose district the fighting force was passing. That Inanna had gone to visit Dumuzi (“The Herder”) in his faraway rural district, we know from a Sumerian text. It tells us how Dumuzi stood awaiting her arrival and echoes his reassuring words to a bride baffled by a future in a foreign land: The young lad stood waiting; Dumuzi pushed open the door. Like a moonbeam she came forth to him . . . He looked at her, rejoiced in her. Took her in his arms and kissed her. The Herder put his arm around the maiden; “I have not carried you off into slavery,” [he said]; “Your table will be a splendid table. the splendid table where I myself eat . . .”

At that time Inanna/Ishtar had the blessing of her parents, Nannar/Sin and Ningal, as well as of her brother Utu/Shamash, to the Romeo-and-JuIiet love match between a granddaughter of Enlil and a son of Enki. Some brothers of Dumuzi, and probably Enki himself, also gave their consent. They presented Inanna with a gift of lapis lazuli, the blue-hued precious stone she cherished. As a surprise they hid beads and squares of the stone under a heap of her favorite fruit: dates. In the bedroom she found “a bed of gold, adorned with lapis lazuli, which Gibil had refined for her in the abode of Nergal.”

The fighting broke out, and brother fought brother. As long as the fighting was only between the descendants of Enki, no one saw any particular problem in having a granddaughter of Enlil around. But after the victory of Horus, when Seth occupied lands not his, the situation changed completely: The Second Pyramid War pitched the sons and grandchildren of Enlil against the descendants of Enki. “Juliet” had to be separated from her “Romeo.” When the lovers were reunited after that war, and their marriage consummated, they spent many days and nights in bliss and ecstasy—the subject of numerous Sumerian love songs. But even as they were making love Inanna was whispering provoking words to Dumuzi:

As sweet as your mouth are your parts. they befit a princely status! Subdue the rebellious country, let the nation multiply: I will direct the country rightly! Another time she confessed to him her vision: I had a vision of a great nation choosing Dumuzi as God of its country . . . For I have made Dumuzi’s name exalted, I gave him status.

With all that it was not a happy union, for it did not produce an heir—an essential requirement, it appears, for carrying out the divine ambitions. Thus it came to pass that in an attempt to have a male heir, Dumuzi resorted to a tactic adopted way back by his own father: he tried to seduce and have intercourse with his own sister. But whereas in bygone days Ninharsag agreed to Enki’s advances, Dumuzi’s sister Geshtinanna refused. In his desperation Dumuzi violated a sexual taboo: he raped his own sister.

The tragic tale is recorded on a tablet catalogued by scholars as CT. 15.28-29. The text relates how Dumuzi bade Inanna good-bye as he announced his plan to go to the desert-plain where his flocks were. By prearrangement his sister, “the song-knowing sister, was sitting there.” She thought she was invited for a picnic. As they were “eating the pure food, dripping with honey and butter, as they were drinking the fragrant divine beer,” and “were spending the time in a happy mood . . . Dumuzi took the solemn decision to do it.” To prepare his sister for what he had in mind, Dumuzi took a lamb and copulated it with its mother, then had a kid copulate with its sister lamb. As the animals were committing incest, Dumuzi was touching his sister in emulation, “but his sister still did not understand.” As Dumuzi’s actions became more and more obvious, Geshtinanna “screamed and screamed in protest”; but “he mounted her … his seed was flowing into her vulva. . . .” “Halt!” she shouted, “it is a disgrace!” But he did not stop.

Having done his deed, “the Shepherd, being fearless, being shameless, spoke to his sister.” What he said is unfortunately lost to us due to breaks in the tablet. But we suspect that he had— “fearlessly, shamelessly” as the text had stated—gone on to explain to Geshtinanna the reasons for his deed. That it was premeditated is clear from the text; it is also stated that Inanna was in on the plan: Dumuzi, prior to leaving, “spoke to her of planning and advice” and Inanna “to her spouse answered about the plan, to him she gave her advice.” Rape, under the moral codes of the Anunnaki, was a serious sexual transgression. In the earliest times, when the first teams of astronauts had landed on Earth, a court-martial sentenced their supreme commander Enlil to exile for having raped a young nurse (whom he later married). Dumuzi had surely known all this; so he either expected his sister to engage in the intercourse willingly or else had compelling reasons for his deed which overrode the prohibition. Inanna’s prior consent brings to mind the biblical tale of Abraham and his sonless wife Sarah, who offered him her maidservant so that he might have a male heir. Aware that he had done a horrible deed, Dumuzi was soon thereafter seized with a premonition that he was to pay for his deed with his life, as told in the Sumerian text SHA.GA.NE. IR IM.SHI— “His Heart Was Filled With Tears.” Composed in the form of a self-fulfilling dream, the text relates how Dumuzi fell asleep and dreamed that all his attributes of status and property were being taken away from him one by one, by the “Princely Bird’* and a falcon. The nightmare ended with Dumuzi seeing himself lying dead in the midst of his sheepfolds.

Waking up, he asked his sister Geshtinanna to tell him the meaning of the dream. “My brother.” she said, “your dream is not favorable, it is very clear to me.” It foretold “bandits rising against you from ambush . . . your hands will be bound in handcuffs, your amis will be bound in fetters.” No sooner had Geshtinanna finished talking than the evil ones appeared beyond the hill and caught Dumuzi.

Bound in handcuffs and fetters. Dumuzi cried out an appeal to Utu/Shamash: “O Utu. you are my brother-in-law, I am your sister’s husband. . . . Change my hands into a gazelle’s hands, change my feet into a gazelle’s feet, let me escape the evil ones!” Hearing his appeal. Utu enabled Dumuzi to escape. Alter some adventures Dumuzi sought a hiding place in the house of Old Belili—a questionable character playing a double role. Dumuzi was captured again and again escaped. In the end he found himself hiding once again in the sheepfolds. A strong wind was blowing, the drinking cups were overturned; the evil ones closed in on him— all as he had seen in his dream. And in the end: The drinking cups lay on their side; Dumuzi was dead.

The sheepfold was thrown into the wind. The arena of these events, in this text, is a desertlike plain neara river. The geography is enlarged upon in another version of the events, a text titled “The Most Bitter Cry.” Composed as a lament by Inanna, it tells how seven deputies of Kur entered the sheepfold and aroused Dumuzi from his sleep. Unlike the previous version, which simply referred to the seizure of Dumuzi by “evil ones,” this text makes it clear that they had come on higher authority: “My master has sent us for you,” the chief deputy announced to the awakened god. They proceed to strip Dumuzi of his divine attributes: Take the divine headdress off your head, get up bareheaded; Take the royal robe off your body, get up naked;

Lay aside the divine staff which is in your hand, get up empty-handed; Take the holy sandals off your feet, get up barefooted!

The seized Dumuzi manages to escape and reaches the river “at the great dike in the desert of E.MUSH (“Home of the snakes”). There was only one such place in Egypt, where desert and river met at a great dike: at the first Nile Cataract, the place where nowadays the great dam of Aswan is located. But the swirling waters did not let Dumuzi reach the other riverbank where his mother and Inanna were standing by to offer him protection. Instead “there did the boat-wrecking waters carry the lad towards Kur; to Kur did the boat-wrecking waters carry the espoused of Inanna.”

This and other parallel texts reveal that those who had come to seize Dumuzi were in fact arresting him in accordance with the orders given by a higher god, the Master of Kur, who “a sentence did pass upon him.” But it could not have been a sentence passed by the full Assembly of the gods: Enlilite gods, such as Utu/Shamash and Inanna, were helping Dumuzi escape. The sentence, then, was one-sided, passed only by the authority of the master of the arresting deputies. He was none other than Marduk, the elder brother of both Dumuzi and Geshtinanna. His identity comes through in the text named by scholars “The Myths of Inanna and Bilulu.” In it the shady Old Belili turns out to have been a male, the Lord Bilulu (EN.BILULU) in disguise, and the very deity who directed the punitive action against Dumuzi. Akkadian texts dealing with divine epithets explained that EnBilulu was il Marduk sha hattati, “the god Marduk who had sinned,” and “The Sorrower of Inanna.”

Having disapproved of the Dumuzi-Inanna love match from the beginning, Marduk no doubt was even more opposed to the union after the Pyramid Wars. The rape of Geshtinanna by Dumuzi— politically motivated—was thus an opportunity for Marduk to block the designs Inanna had on Egypt, by seizing and punishing Dumuzi. Did Marduk intend to put Dumuzi to death? Probably not; solitary exile was the customary punishment. The death of Dumuzi, in a manner that has remained unclear, was probably accidental. But whether accidental or not was irrelevant to Inanna. As far as she was concerned, Marduk had caused her beloved’s death. And. as the texts make clear, she sought revenge:

What is in holy Inanna’s heart? To Kill! To kill the Lord Bilulu. Working with fragments found in the collections of Mesopotamian tablets dispersed in several museums, scholars have pieced together parts of a text that Samuel N. Kramer (Sumerian Mythology) named “‘Inanna and Ebih.” He considered it as belonging to the cycle of “‘slaying-of-the-dragon myths,” for it deals with Inanna’s struggle against an evil god hiding inside “The Mountain.” The available fragments relate how Inanna armed herself with an array of weapons to attack the god in his hiding place. Though the other gods tried to dissuade her. she confidently approached The Mountain, which she called E.BIH (“Abode of Sorrowful Calling”). Haughtily she proclaimed: Mountain, thou art so high, thou art elevated above all others . . . Thou touchest the sky with thy tip . . . Yet I shall destroy thee. To the ground 1 shall fell thee . . . Inside thine heart pain I will cause.

That The Mountain was the Great Pyramid, that the confrontation was at Giza in Egypt, is evident not only from the texts, but also from a depiction on a Sumerian cylinder seal (Fig. 73). Inanna—shown in her familiar enticing, half-naked pose—is seen confronting a god based upon three pyramids. The pyramids are depicted exactly as they appear to view in Giza: the Egyptian ankh sign, the priest in an Egyptian headdress, and the entwined serpents add up to one locale: Egypt. As Inanna continued to challenge Marduk, now hiding inside the mighty structure, her fury rose as he ignored her threats. “For the second time, infuriated by his pride, Inanna approached [the pyramid] again and proclaimed: ‘My grandfather Enlil has permitted me to enter inside The Mountain!’ " Flaunting her weapons, she haughtily announced: “Into the heart of The Mountain I shall penetrate. . . Inside The Mountain, my victory I shall establish!” Getting no response, she began her attack:

Fig. 73

She ceased not striking the sides of E-Bih and all its corners, even its multitude of raised stones. But inside … the Great Serpent who had gone in his poison ceased not to spit. Anu himself then intervened. The god hiding inside, he warned her. possessed awesome weapons; ‘“their outburst is terrible; they will prevent you from entering.” Instead Anu advised her to seek justice by putting the hiding god on trial. The texts amply identify this god. As in the Ninurta texts, he is called A.ZAG and nicknamed The Great Serpent—a name and a derogatory Enlilite epithet for Marduk. His hiding place is also clearly identified as “the E.KUR, whose walls awesomely reach the skies”—the Great Pyramid.

The record of the trial and sentencing of Marduk is available from a fragmentary text published by the Babylonian Section of the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania. The extant lines begin where the gods had surrounded the pyramid, and a god chosen to be a spokesman addressed Marduk “in his enclosure”; “the one who was evil he implored.” Marduk was moved by the message: “Despite the anger of his heart, clear tears came into his eyes”; and he agreed to come out and stand trial. The trial was held within sight of the pyramids, in a temple by the riverbank:

To the place of reverence, by the river, with him who was accused they stepped. In truth they made the enemies stand aside. Justice was performed. In sentencing Marduk the mystery of Dumuzi’s death posed a problem. That Marduk was responsible for his death there was no doubt. But was it premeditated or accidental? Marduk deserved a death sentence, but what if his crime was not deliberate? Standing there, in sight of the pyramids, with Marduk fresh out of his hiding place, the solution dawned on Inanna, and she proceeded to address the gods: On this day, the Lady herself, She who speaks truth.

The accuser of Azag. the great princess. An awesome judgment uttered. There was a way to sentence Marduk to death without actually executing him, she said: Let him be buried alive within the Great Pyramid! Let him be sealed there as in a gigantic envelope: In a great envelope that is sealed. With no one to offer him nourishment: Alone to suffer, The potable watersource to be cut off. The judging gods accepted her suggestions: “The mistress art thou. . . The fate thou decreest: let it be so!” Assuming that Anu would go along with the verdict, “the gods then placed the command to Heaven and Earth.” The Ekur, the Great Pyramid, had become a prison; and one of the epithets of its mistress was. thereafter, “Mistress of the Prison.” It was then, we believe, that the sealing of the Great Pyramid was completed. Leaving Marduk alone in the King’s Chamber, the arresting gods released behind them the granite plugs of the Ascending Passage, irrevocably blocking tight all access to the upper chambers and passages. Through the channels leading from the “King’s Chamber” to the north and south faces of the pyramid. Marduk had air to breathe: but he had neither food nor water. He was buried alive, doomed to die in agony.

The record of Marduk’s entombment, alive, within the Great Pyramid has been preserved on clay tablets found in the ruins of Ashur and Nineveh, the ancient Assyrian capitals. The Ashur text suggests that it had served as a script for a New Year’s mystery play in Babylon that reenacted the god’s suffering and reprieve. But neither the original Babylonian version, nor the Sumerian historical text on which the script was based, have so far been found. Heinrich Zimmem, who transcribed and translated the Ashur text from clay tablets in the Berlin Museum, created quite a stir in theological circles when he announced its interpretation at a lecture in September 1921. The reason was that he interpreted it as a preChristian Mysterium dealing with the death and resurrection of a god, and thus an earlier Christ tale. When Stephen Langdon included an English translation in his 1923 volume on the Mesopotamian New Year Mystery Texts, he titled the text The Death and Resurrection of Bel-Marduk and highlighted its parallels to the New Testament tale of the death and resurrection of Jesus. But, as the text relates, Marduk or Bel (“The Lord”) did not die; he was indeed incarcerated inside The Mountain as in a tomb; but he was entombed alive.

The ancient “script” begins with an introduction of the actors. The first one “is Bel, who was confined in The Mountain.” Then there is a messenger who brings the news of the imprisonment to Marduk’s son Nabu. Shocked by the news, Nabu hastens to The Mountain in his chariot. He arrives at a structure and the script explains: “that is the house at the edge of The Mountain wherein they question him.” In reply to the guards’ questions, they are told that the agitated god is “Nabu who from Borsippa comes; it is he who comes to seek after the welfare of his father who is imprisoned.” Actors then come out and rush about on the stage: “they are the people who in the streets hasten; they seek Bel, saying: ‘Where is he held captive?’” We learn from the text that “after Bel had gone into The Mountain, the city fell into tumult” and “because of him fighting within it broke out.” A goddess appears; she is Sarpanit. the sister-wife of Marduk. She is confronted by a messenger “who weeps before her, saying: ‘Unto The Mountain they have taken him.’ ’ He shows her the garments of Marduk (possibly bloodstained): “these are his raiment, which they took off him,” he says; instead of these, he reports, Marduk “with a Garment-ofSentence was clothed.” What the audience is shown are shrouds: “That means: in a coffin he is.” Marduk has been buried!

Sarpanit goes to a structure that symbolizes Marduk’s tomb. She sees a group of mourners. The script explains: These are those who make lament after the gods had locked him up, separating him from among the living. Into the House of Captivity, away from the sun and light, they put him in prison.

The drama has reached its ominous peak: Marduk is dead. . . . But wait—all hope is not lost! Sarpanit recites an appeal to the two gods who can approach Inanna regarding Marduk’s incarceration, her father Sin and her brother Utu/Shamash: “She prays to Sin and Shamash, saying: ‘Give life to Bel!’ "

Priests, a stargazer, and messengers now appear in procession, reciting prayers and incantations. Offerings are made to Ishtar, “that she may show her mercy.” The high priest appeals to the supreme god, to Sin and to Shamash: “Restore Bel to life!” Now the drama takes a new turn. Suddenly the actor who represents Marduk, clothed with shrouds which “with blood are dyed,” speaks out: “I am not a sinner! I shall not be smitten!” He announces that the supreme god has reviewed his case and found him not guilty. Who, then, was the murderer? The attention of the audience is diverted to a doorpost; “it is the doorpost of Sarpanit in Babylon.” The audience learns that the real guilty god has been captured. They see his head through the doorway: “That is the head of the evildoer, whom they shall smite and slay.” Nabu, who had returned to Borsippa, “comes back from Borsippa; he comes and stands over the evildoer and regards him.” We do not learn the identity of The Evildoer, except to be told that Nabu had seen him before in Marduk’s company. “This is the sinner,” he says, and thereby seals the captive’s fate. The priests grab The Evildoer; he is slain: “The one whose sin it was” is carried away in a coffin. The murderer of Dumuzi has paid with his life.

But is the sin of Marduk—as the indirect cause of Dumuzi’s death—atoned? Sarpanit reappears, wearing the Garments-ofAtonement. Symbolically she wipes away the blood that has been spilled. With pure water she washes her hands: “It is water for hand-washing which they bring after The Evildoer has been carried away.” In “‘all the sacred places of Bel” torches are lit. Again, appeals are directed to the supreme god. The supremacy of Ninurta,

which had once been proclaimed when Ninurta vanquished Zu, is reasserted, apparently to allay any fear that a released Marduk might become a challenger for supremacy among the gods. The appeals succeed, and the supreme god sends the divine messenger Nusku to “announce the [good] tidings to all the gods.” As a gesture of good will, Gula (the spouse of Ninurta) sends to Sarpanit new clothing and sandals for Marduk; Marduk’s driverless chariot also appears. But Sarpanit is dumbfounded: she cannot understand how Marduk can be free again if he had been imprisoned in a tomb that cannot be unsealed: “How can they let him free, the one who cannot come out?”

Nusku. the divine messenger, tells her that Marduk shall pass through SA.BAD, the “chiseled upper opening.” He explains that it is Dalat biri sha iqabuni ilani A doorway-shaft which the gods will bore; Shunu itasrushu ina biti etarba Its vortex they will lift off. his abode they shall reenter. Dalta ina panishu etedili The door which was barred before him Shunu hurrate ina libbi dalti uptalishu At the vortex of the hollowing, into the insides. a doorway they shall twistingly bore; Qarabu ina libbi uppushu Getting near, into its midst they will break through. This description of how Marduk shall be released has remained meaningless to scholars; but the verses are explosively meaningful to us. As we have explained, the irregular and twisting segment C of the Well Shaft had not existed when the pyramid was completed and when Marduk was imprisoned within it; it was, instead, the very “doorway-shaft which the gods will bore” to rescue Marduk. Still familiar with the pyramid’s inner layout, the Anunnaki realized that the shortest and quickest way to reach the starved Marduk was to tunnel a connecting shaft between the existing segments B and D—a tunneling of a mere thirty-two feet through the relatively soft limestone blocks; it was a task that could be achieved not in days but in hours.

Removing the stone that covered the Well Shaft’s entrance from the Descending Passage to G, the rescuers quickly climbed up inclined segments Fand E. Where E connected with vertical segment D, a granite stone covered the entrance in the Grotto: it was pushed aside—and still lies there, in the Grotto—as we have shown in Fig. 70. Now the rescuers climbed the short distance up segment D, and faced the first course of the pyramid’s masonry. Thirty-two feet above but to the side lay the bottom of vertical segment B and the way into the Grand Gallery. But who could have known how to bore a twisting connecting shaft—C—except those who had built the pyramid, knew of its inner sealed-off upper sections, and had the plans to locate them? It was the rescuers of Marduk, we suggest, who used their tools to break through the limestone blocks, the link between D and B: “a hollowing into its insides they shall twistingly bore,” in the words of the ancient text.

Achieving the linkup with B, they clambered to the short, horizontal passage, A. There, any stranger would have stopped short even if he had gone that far up, for all he would have seen would be a stone wall—solid masonry. Again we suggest that only the Anunnaki, who had the pyramid’s plan, could have known that beyond the stone facing them there lay the immense cavity of the Grand Gallery, the Queen’s Chamber, and all the other upper chambers and passages of the pyramid. To gain access to those chambers and passages it was necessary to remove the wedgelike ramp stone (Fig. 72). But it was wedged too tightly and could not be moved.

If the stone would have been moved away, it would have still been lying there, in the Grand Gallery. Instead, there is a gaping hole (Fig. 68), and those who have examined it have invariably used the words blown up and blown open to describe what it looks like; and it was done not from the Gallery but from inside the Shaft: “the hollow has the appearance of having been burst open by tremendous force from within” the Shaft (Rutherford. Pyramidology). Again the Mesopotamian record offers a solution. The stone was indeed removed from within the horizontal passageway, because it was from there that the rescuers had arrived.

It was “burst open by a tremendous force”; in the words of the ancient text, “Getting near, into its midst they will break through.” The fragments of the limestone block slid down the Ascending Passage, down all the way to the granite plugs; that is where Al Mamoon’s men found them. The explosion also covered the Grand Gallery with the fine, white dust the Arabs had found covering the floor of the Grand Gallery—mute evidence of the ancient explosion and the gaping hole it had left. Having broken through into the Grand Gallery, the rescuers led Marduk back the way they came. The entry from the Descending Passage was sealed up again, to be discovered by Al Mamoon’s men. The granite plugs remained in place with the triangular junction stone hiding the plugs and the Ascending Passage for millennia. And, inside the pyramid, the original upper and lower parts of the Well Shaft were now for all future days connected by a twisting, harshly tunneled segment.

And what of the rescued Prisoner of the pyramid? Mesopotamian texts relate that he went into exile; in Egypt Ra acquired the epithet Amen, “The Hidden One.” Circa 2000 B.C., he reappeared to claim again supremacy; for that, mankind ended up paying a most bitter price.