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119 The land has indeed become a mere hill, the wide sea is just a tub! Higher and higher the Eagle carried Etana heavenward; smaller and smaller the Earth appeared. After they had as- cended another beru, the Eagle said to Etana: My friend, Cast a glance at how the Earth appears! The land has turned into a furrow . .. After they had journeyed another beru, the land was seen no larger than a gardener's ditch. And after that, as they continued to ascend, the Earth was totally out of sight. Re- cording the experience, Etana said thus: As I glanced around, the land had disappeared; and upon the wide sea canton ween wae ne fon They were so far out in space that Earth had disappeared from view! Seized with fright, Etana called out to the Eagle to turn back. It was a dangerous descent, for the Eagle "plunged down" to Earth. A tablet's fragment identified by scholars as "the Eagle's prayer to Ishtar as he and Etana fall from Heaven" (viz. J.V. Kinnier Wilson, The Legend of Etana: A New Edition) suggests that the Eagle had called out to Ish- tar—whose mastery of the Earth's skies was well attested in both texts and drawings, such as in Fig. 32—to come to their rescue. They were falling toward a body of water that, "though it would have saved them at the lop, would have killed them in its depths." With Ishtar's intervention, the Eagle and his passenger landed in a forest. In the second region of civilization, that of the Nile River, Kingship began circa 3100 B.C.—human Kingship, that is, for The Gates of Heaven The wide sea is just like a bread-basket . . . mine eyes could not feast.