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103 taken away by the rolling sea." Enlil and Ninurta, accompa- nied no doubt by the others from Mission Control Center in Nippur, were in another spacecraft. So were Enki, Marduk, and the others of Enki's clan. Their destination, too, was the peaks of Ararat that—as they all well knew—would emerge from under the waters before all else. But all, except Enki, were not aware that a family of humans, saved from the calamity, was also headed that way .. . The unexpected encounter was full of surprising aspects; their bearing on the human search for Immortality lingered for ten thousand years, and beyond. They also left a perma- nent human yearning to see the Face of God. According to the biblical tale, after the ark had come to rest on the peaks of Ararat and the waters receded from the drenched earth, "Noah and his sons and his wife and the wives of his sons who were with him," plus the animals that were in the ark, left the boat. "And Noah built an altar unto Yahweh, and he took of every clean cattle and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And Yahweh smelled the pleasant savor, and said in his heart: 'I will no longer accurse the Earth because of Man.’ " And Elohim blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them: "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the Earth." The rapprochement between the angry god and the remnant of Humankind is again described in greater detail and some variation in the Mesopotamian sources. The sequence of events is retained—the cessation of the tidal wave, the falling level of water, the sending out of birds to scout the terrain, the arrival at Ararat, the stepping out of the ark, the building of an altar, and the offering of burnt sacrifices; followed by the recanting triggered by the sweet savory smell of the roasted meat, and the blessing of Noah and his sons. As Utnapishtim recalled it when he told "the secret of the gods" to Gilgamesh, after he had come out of the boat, he "offered a sacrifice and poured out a libation on the moun- taintop, set up seven and seven cult vessels, heaped upon their pot-stands cane, cedarwood and myrtle." The gods, emerging from their spacecraft as they too landed on the mountain, "smelled the sweet savor, crowded like flies about the sacrificer." The Deluge