Four Ways to Pharaoh Khufu

by Alexander Marmer

  The light movements of the woman joining him on the balcony brought the man back to reality. She had donned his buttoned shirt and now casually leaned against him. As they wrapped their arms around each other, she planted a long, luxurious kiss on his lips. The man looked at her closely; the woman’s eyes trusted him, despite the fact that her recent boyfriend had betrayed her, kidnapped her, stalked her and attempted to kill her in the span of the past ten days.

  After a few moments, the man went inside to get dressed. While he rummaged through the closet to find a clean polo shirt and khakis, she sauntered back inside and sat in a chair, posing seductively. He smiled, purposely attempting to ignore her. She watched him with a straight face, dressed only in his shirt. Soon the man had buckled his watch on his wrist and shoved his wallet in his back pocket. He walked over to her, bent down and kissed her tenderly.

  She looked up at him. “Where do you think you going?”

  The man looked at her compassionately, melting away her worries. He quickly kissed her and ran out the door. The pillow that was meant to strike him only bumped against the door and fell to the floor. The woman frowned.

  A few seconds later, the door opened up slightly to the man’s face. “Dear, sweet Anna, the Medjay Chief Jibade called. He’s sending one of his tribesmen to meet me in the lobby. He wishes to bestow a token of his appreciation to us for safely returning their stele.”

  “I thought that you were leaving Egypt without saying goodbye.”

  “Really? Come on!” he laughed. “I’ll be right back, OK?”

  Anna smiled. “Hurry back!” she shouted as Michael shut the door.

  Whistling, Michael skipped the elevator and hurried down the stairs. When he reached the lobby he looked around and found the familiar face of the Medjay warrior he had met two days earlier. The warrior ceremoniously held out an object wrapped with thick green paper. Michael held out his hands and accepted it. Without saying a word, the Medjay warrior bowed, slowly turned and walked away.

  Curious, he walked over to a corner and glanced around, making sure nobody was watching him. He carefully unwrapped the gift and was awed by the metal object lying in his hands. It was a crusader-type sword; just like those he had seen slung behind every Medjay’s back. Quickly he wrapped it back up.

  He casually wandered over to the elevator. Two men wearing suits and carrying computer bags joined him. As they waited, the men discussed the progress of the computer technologies they were developing. As someone with a career in the computer industry, Michael’s interest was peaked.

  “I definitely need to test that software program again,” said the guy wearing the dark blue suit.

  “Don’t forget to check all the bugs before presenting the final version at Monday’s presentation,” his colleague reminded him.

  “Don’t worry, I will debug everything out.”

  The elevator finally arrived and the little group stepped inside. The two businessmen were deep in conversation as the elevator started its struggle upward. Michael was lost in thought, envisioning himself back in his cubicle working to debug a program’s coding.

  When the elevator finally stopped on his floor, Michael was so deep inside his head that he almost missed it. Startled, he jumped and stuck his arm out to stop the doors from gliding together. As he stepped out the two men with him never stopped their conversation.

  He walked down the hallway, stopping short a few feet away from his room.

  Computer program, software bug, debugging … can this be it? How could have I missed that in the first place?

  When Michael opened the door, Anna was standing next to the open window blow-drying her glossy, long hair. She smiled as he absent-mindedly sat down on the couch. He sat still, concentrating on something that fully consumed his mind. Anna turned off the hair dryer and picked up her brush.

  Michael emerged from his thoughts, “Anna, do you know what a computer software bug is?”

  “Not exactly,” Anna hesitated, as she made her living working with legal documents in the German court system.

  “Have I mentioned to you that I work in the software testing industry?”

  “Oh yeah, sure,” answered Anna as she walked over to Michael and took a seat next to him.

  “OK, by definition, a software bug is an error in a computer program that prevents it from behaving as intended. In other words, when you use a computer program, a bug produces an incorrect result. Most bugs arise from people who make errors when writing a program’s source code or its design. Some bugs have only a subtle effect on the program’s functionality and might lay undetected for a long time. Usually bugs are a consequence of the nature of the programming task. Some bugs arise from simple oversights made when computer programmers write source code carelessly or transcribe data incorrectly. Having an undetected bug in the system can lead to disasters.” Michael paused. He tried to be aware that English was her second language. She nodded at him, indicating that she understood his explanation.

  He continued, “For example, in the 1960s the NASA Mariner 1 went off course during its launch due to a missing ‘bar’ in its software. The famous 2003 North American blackout was triggered by a local outage that went undetected due to a bug in the monitoring software.”

  “That’s really fascinating, but why are you telling me all this?” asked Anna.

  “Because that’s what I do in my everyday job.” Michael paused. “And it made me realize that the Chief Architect of the Great Pyramid, HemIwno was just like a computer programmer. In fact, we could call him the first computer programmer in history.”

  “What?” Anna was chuckling at the thought.

  “Well, he designed the program that everyone believed was Pharaoh Khufu’s final resting place. All the chambers, passageways and the Grand Gallery are parts of his cunning program. The King’s Chamber had a false purpose: a lure, simply speaking. The more obvious the obstacles, the greater were the wishes to overcome them. The place where the Ascending and Descending Passages intersect was blocked by the heavy, granite plug, remember?” Michael looked at Anna.

  She nodded.

  “That plug was so obvious that it tempted its visitors to get behind it. And as you recall, Caliph Al-Mamun, who broke into the Great Pyramid in the ninth century, got so excited and intrigued when he saw the first plug that he ordered his men to cut around it until they broke into the Ascending Passage, an agonizing and painstakingly difficult task. Ahead of them, at the end of the Grand Gallery, they found the doorway, the so-called ‘antechamber,’ leading to the King’s Chamber. Then these unwelcomed but expected guests were led to the disappointing grand finale. As they reached the threshold of the King’s Chamber, they encountered a sliding door that was strangely left half-shut, thus allowing them to get inside. That opening drove them to search further. The fact that it was not left completely shut was not a sign of the builders’ forgetfulness but a lure! In fact, it was so well thought out that a corpse was found inside, as if shouting to every new visitor, ‘You are not the first one here!’ And what did they find inside the King’s Chamber? A single, empty sarcophagus! It was the obvious, logical proof of that statement.” He looked at Anna who was listening with eager fascination.

  He continued, “The cherry on top was the broken corner on the empty sarcophagus. It seemed obvious that someone else had been in there and had broken it in their haste to rob the pyramid. Don’t you see? The Chief Architect HemIwno implemented a bug in the design of the program called ‘The Great Pyramid.’ Basically, it behaved in such a way that it provided false pathways for its user. The false pathways led them to discover Khufu’s phony burial site and thus prevented them from using one of the four true ways leading to the Khufu’s real and final resting place. Caliph Al-Mamun unwittingly was the first user of that program.”

  “Looks like somebody did his homework,” Anna said, smiling broadly. Michael slightly smirked. �
��So Al-Mamun’s doubtful fame as a burglar provided the greatest gift to Khufu’s tranquility in future centuries. It guaranteed that those following would use the same bogus pathways leading to nowhere.”

  “Sure,” Michael replied. “Al-Mamun unwittingly convinced all future visitors that searching inside the Great Pyramid would lead to fruitless results. As you well know, pyramids were robbed in ancient times! Every single author of every single book written about the pyramids makes this conclusion.”

  “Michael Doyle, a simple computer software engineer, understood the great architect HemIwno, the first computer programmer, who designed a program known as ‘The Great Pyramid.’ This program had a bug designed to lead its users, those who penetrated and explored the pyramid, to the incorrect finale,” Anna concluded.

  Michael remained silent.