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224 hk ok 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 his- torical 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 pre- Christian Mysterium dealing with the death and resurrection of a god, and thus an earlier Christ tale. When Stephen Langdon in- cluded an English translation in his 1923 volume on the Mesopota- mian 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 ex- plains: "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 blood- stained): "these are his raiment, which they took off him," he says; instead of these, he reports, Marduk "with a Garment-of- Sentence was clothed." What the audience is shown are shrouds: "That means: in a coffin he is." Marduk has been buried! THE WARS OF GODS AND MEN