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117 "Let the word go forth from your mouth, O Lord, and give me the Plant of Birth! Show me the Plant of Birth! Remove my shame and provide me with a son!" The texts do not state where Etana had thus appealed to Utu/Shamash, the commander of the Spaceport. But appar- ently it was not a face-to-face encounter, for we read next that "Shamash made his voice heard and spoke to Etana." And this was what the divine voice said: Go along the road, cross the mountain. Find a pit and look carefully at what is inside it. An Eagle is abandoned down there. He will obtain for you the Plant of Birth. Following the god's instructions Etana found the pit and the Eagle inside it. Demanding to know why Etana had come hither, me Eagle was told of Etana's problem, and told Etana his sad story. Soon a deal was struck: Etana would help raise the Eagle out of the pit and help him fly again; in exchange the Eagle would find for Etana the Plant of Birth. With the aid of a six-runged ladder Etana brought the Eagle up; with copper he repaired his wings. Fit to fly, the Eagle began to search for the magical plant in the mountains. "But the Plant of Birth was not found there." As despair and disappointment engulfed Etana, he had an- other dream. What he told about it to the Eagle is partly illegible because of damage to the tablet; but the legible por- tions refer to the emblems of lordship and authority, coming from "the bright heights of heaven, lay across my _ path." "My friend, your dream is favorable!" The Eagle said to Etana. Etana then had one more dream in which he saw reeds from all parts of the land assemble into heaps in his house; an evil serpent tried to stop them, but the reeds, "like subject slaves, bowed down before me." Again the Eagle "persuaded Etana to accept the dream" as a favorable omen. Nothing however happened until the Eagle, too, had a dream. "My friend," he said to Etana, "that same god to me too showed a dream": The Gates of Heaven