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0 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 Aaee bad sn ae 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 com- pletion. All theories concerning them, having been based on the as- sumption 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 Ca- liph 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. Un- able even to dent the granite blocks, the men cut through the lime- stone masonry around them, discovering the Ascending Passage and the upper inner parts of the pyramid. As the Arab historians at- 202 THE PRISONER IN THE PYRAMID