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97 brought his family into the boat. According to Berossus, those coming on board included also some close friends of Ziusu- dra/Noah. In the Akkadian version, Utnapishtim "made all the craftsmen go on board" to be saved by the boat they helped build. In another detail from the Mesopotamian texts we also learn that the group also included an expert navigator, Puzur-Amurri by name, whom Enki provided and who was instructed where to veer the boat once the tidal wave subsided. Even though the loading and boarding were completed, Atra-hasis/Utnapishtim himself could not sit still inside and he was entering and leaving the boat constantly, nervously waiting for the signal that Enki had told him to watch for: to When Shamash, ordering a trembling at dusk, will shower a rain of eruptions— board thou the ship, batten up the entrance! The signal was to be the launching of spacecraft at Sippar, the site of the Spaceport of the Anunnaki some one hundred miles north of Shuruppak. For it was the plan of the Anun- naki to gather in Sippar and from there ascend into Earth orbit. Atra-hasis/Utnapishtim was told to watch the skies for such a "shower of eruptions," the thunder and flames of the launched spacecraft that made the ground tremble. "Sha- mash"—then the "Eagleman" in charge of the Spaceport— "had set a stated time," Enki told his faithful Earthling. And when the signs to watch for had appeared, Utnapishtim "boarded the ship, battened up the hatch, and handed over the structure together with its contents to Puzur-Amurri the boatman." The boatman's instructions were to navigate the ship to Mount Nitzir ("Mount of Salvation")—the twin- peaked Mount Ararat. A few important facts emerge from these details. They indicate that the master of the Salvation Plan was aware not only of the very existence of the Mount so far away from southern Mesopotamia, but also that these twin peaks would be the first to emerge from the tidal wave, being the highest The Deluge