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206 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 De- scending 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 seg- ments were cut through some 150 feet of solid rock. The few work- men 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 bot- tom 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 pyra- mid, loosening prematurely the granite plugs. As a result, not mere THE WARS OF GODS AND MEN