#7 'Pyramids': Relics and Religion Quiz

Answer: High Priest

Dios was the high priest in Djelibeybi and had been for far beyond living memory. He loved tradition and ensured that nothing in the kingdom ever changed. Religion, politics, and culture remained as static as the dead heat of the desert. Whenever Pteppic tried to make a change, Dios would 'interpret' the king's wishes.

Answer: He was raised outside the kingdom.

Pteppic broke traditions in a number of ways, and this was one of the first in "Pyramids". As a boy, he was sent to Ankh-Morpork to train in the Assassin's Guild. He was the first ruler of Djelibeybi to be educated elsewhere. His exposure to new ideas and different ways of life caused friction between him and Dios, who wanted to keep everything the same.

Answer: They placed their bodies in pyramids.

Djelibeybi had a similar geography and culture to Ancient Egypt. When people died, they were entombed in grand pyramids - if they were rich enough. The pyramids held on to time and every now and then they had to be flared off. Despite Pteppic's (and his father's) wishes, the deceased king was going to be buried in the biggest, most elaborate pyramid ever to be built, which caused all kinds of problems.

Answer: He was a ghost.

When Death appeared after the old king's demise, he didn't take the form that Teppicymon XXVII had expected. Death wasn't a three-headed scarab beetle, and he had a scythe instead of the Flail of Mercy. The king hung around as a ghost while his body was mummified.

He soon began to worry that he would spend eternity as a ghost trapped inside a pyramid. He stopped worrying about that when he - and all of the other Djelibeybi mummies - became reanimated corpses.

Answer: The Pipe of Hot Water

Each item was very important and very symbolic. Dios loaded them onto King Pteppic, and then when they went to visit his father, servants followed behind carrying all the items of regalia. Pteppic also had to wear a heavy, gold mask (known as the Face of the Sun) at all public occasions. It had been known to make children cry.

Dios was averse to new ideas and inventions and disparaged Pteppic's suggestion of installing a plumbing system.

Answer: A dung beetle

It was the pharoah's job to ensure that the sun rose and set every day, though it was never made clear to Pteppic how he was supposed to make it happen. According to one Djelibeybi myth, a dung beetle pushed the sun across the sky, so when the gods descended on the Discworld, a dung beetle appeared in the sky to do this daily duty.

Answer: The Great Pyramid

The Great Pyramid was so huge and magical that it was causing dimensional disturbances in Djelibeybi. The city-state had been rotated ninety degrees out of alignment with the rest of the Discworld, but Pteppic had managed to find a way back in. He started to scale the smooth, marble slope of the pyramid using his assassin skills, but eventually he lost his grip.

He was rescued and supported by his reanimated ancestors, who had climbed on top of each other to make a kind of ladder to reach the tip of the pyramid.

Answer: A sphinx

Pteppic came across the sphinx on the edge of the kingdom as he re-entered Djelibeybi. It posed the following riddle: "Who goes on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening?" When the sphinx revealed the answer (a man) Pteppic argued with the creature over the misleading timescale set in the puzzle.

In the end, he managed to baffle the sphinx into letting him go free.

Answer: Fighting each other

Weird things were happening in Djelibeybi. The appearance of the gods was just one of many. A seventy-foot apparition of Vut the Dog-Headed God of the Evening was just one of a number of gods that were causing problems for the public and making the priests panic. The gods and goddesses were fighting each other and destroying the city in the process.

Answer: Ptraci

Pteppic saved a woman called Ptraci after she had been sentenced to death. After the old king died, his handmaidens were expected to be entombed with his mummy in the pyramid. Ptraci refused, so Dios ordered her to be thrown to the crocodiles. Pteppic rescued her from her cell and she hid until they were able to escape from the city.

Ptraci eventually became the ruler of Djelibeybi. It turned out that she was not only the daughter of one of the old king's handmaidens, but the daughter of the king himself. She was, in fact, Pteppic's half-sister.