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169 Returning to the junction of the passages, Ninurta looked around him in the Grand Gallery (Fig. 45). As ingenious and complex as the whole pyramid was. this gallery was breathtaking and a most unusual sight. Compared to the low and narrow passages, it rose high (some twenty-eight feet) in seven overlapping stages, its walls closing in ever more at each stage. The ceiling was also built in slanting sections, each one angled into the massive walls so as not to exert any pressure on the segment below it. Whereas in the nar- row passages only "a dim green light glowed." the Gallery glit- tered in multicolored lights—"its vault is like a rainbow, the darkness ends there." The many-hued glows were emitted by twenty-seven pairs of diverse crystal stones that were evenly spaced along the whole length of each side of the Gallery (Fig. 50a). These glowing stones were placed in cavities that were pre- cisely cut into the ramps that ran the length of the Gallery on both sides of its floor. Firmly held in place by an elaborate niche in the wall (Fig. 50b), each crystal stone emitted a different radiance, giving the place its rainbow effect. For the moment Ninurta passed by them on his way up; his priority was the uppermost Grand Chamber and its pulsating stone. Atop the Grand Gallery, Ninurta reached a great step which led through a low passage to an Antechamber of unique design (Fig. 46). There three portcullises—"the bolt, the bar and the lock" of the Sumerian poem—elaborately fitted into grooves in the walls and floor, hermetically sealed off the uppermost Great Chamber: "to foe it is not opened; only to Them Who Live, for them it is opened." But now, by pulling some cords, the portcullises were raised, and Ninurta passed through. He was now in the pyramid's most restricted ("sacred") cham- ber, from which the guiding "Net" (radar?) was "spread out" to "survey Heaven and Earth." The delicate mechanism was housed in a hollowed-out stone chest; placed precisely on the north-south axis of the pyramid, it responded to vibrations with bell-like reso- nance. The heart of the guidance unit was the GUG ("Direction Determining") Stone; its emissions, amplified by five hollow compartments constructed above the chamber, were beamed out and up through two sloping channels leading to the north and south faces of the pyramid. Ninurta ordered this stone destroyed: "Then, by the fate-determining Ninurta, on that day was the Gug stone from its hollow taken out and smashed." To make sure no one would ever attempt to restore the "Direc- tion Determining" functions of the pyramid. Ninurta also ordered The Pyramid Wars