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227 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 in- clined 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 sec- tions, 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, hori- zontal 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 Anun- naki, 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. Pyramid- ology). 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. And it was indeed The Prisoner in the Pyramid