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112 Figure 30 Sumerian, for a sage in the service of the Sumerian king Shulgi (twenty-first century B.C.) is mentioned in one of the recensions as the editor of an earlier version. The reconstruction of the tale from the various fragments has not been easy because the text seems to weave together two separate stories. One has to do with Etana, clearly a beloved king known for a major benevolent achievement (the "consolidation of all countries"), who was deprived of a son and natural successor because of his wife's malady; and the only remedy was the Plant of Birth, which could be obtained only in the Heavens. The story thus leads to Etana's dramatic attempts to reach the Gates of Heaven, borne aloft on the wings of an eagle (a part of the tale that was depicted on cylinder seals from the twenty-fourth century B.C.—Fig. 30). The other story line deals with the Eagle, its friendship at first and then quarrel with a Serpent, resulting in the Eagle's imprisonment in a pit from which it is saved by Etana in a mutually beneficial deal: Etana rescues the Eagle and repairs its wings in exchange for the Eagle's acting as a spaceship that takes Etana to distant heavens. Several Sumerian texts convey historical data in the form of an allegorical disputation (some of which we had already mentioned), and scholars are uncertain where in the Eagle- Serpent segment allegory ends and a historical record begins. The fact that in both segments it is Utu/Shamash, the com- mander of the Spaceport, who is the deity that controls the fate of the Eagle and who arranges for Etana to meet the Eagle, suggests a factual space-related event. Moreover, in what scholars call The Historical Introduction to the inter- DIVINE ENCOUNTERS