““Zeus…,” Langdon declared, his voice powerful. “The god of all gods. The most feared and revered of all the pagan deities. Zeus, more than any other god, resisted his own extinction, mounting a violent battle against the dying of his own light, precisely as had the earlier gods Zeus had replaced.” On the ceiling flashed images of Stonehenge, the Sumerian cuneiform tablets, and the Great Pyramids of Egypt. Then Zeus’s bust returned. “Zeus’s followers were so resistant to giving up on their god that the conquering faith of Christianity had no choice but to adopt the face of Zeus as the face of their new God.” On the ceiling, the bearded bust of Zeus dissolved seamlessly into a fresco of an identical bearded face—that of the Christian God as depicted in Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.””
