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155 Brooding over his misfortune, Gilgamesh recalled an inci- dent during his dive for the plant "Which must have been an omen." "While I was opening the pipe, arranging the gear," he told Urshanabi, "I found a door seal; it must have been placed as an omen for me—a sign to withdraw, to give up." Now Gilgamesh realized that he was not fated to obtain the Plant of Rejuvenation; and having plucked it out of its waters, he was fated to lose it. When he finally returned to ramparted Uruk, Gilgamesh sat down and had the scribes write down his odyssey. "Let me make known to the country him who the Tunnel had seen; of him who knows the waters let me the full story tell." And it was with those introductory words that the Epic of Gilgamesh was recorded, to be read, translated, rewritten, illustrated, and read again for generations thereafter—for all to know that Man, even if two-thirds divine, cannot change his fate. The Epic of Gilgamesh is replete with geographical mark- ers that enhance its authenticity and identify the targets of that ancient search for Immortality. The first destination was the Landing Place in the Cedar Forest, in the Cedar Mountains. There was only one such place in the whole of the ancient Near East, renowned for its unique cedars: Lebanon (whose national emblem, to this very day, is the cedar tree). Lebanon is specifically mentioned by name as the land the two comrades reached after the journey of seventeen days from Uruk. In another verse, describing how the earth shook as the skyrocket was launched, the fac- ing peaks "Sirara and Lebanon" are described as "splitting apart." In the Bible (Psalms 27) the majestic Voice of the Lord is described as "breaking the cedars of Lebanon" and making "Lebanon and Sirion skip like a calf." There is no doubt that Sirion is Hebrew for Sirara in the Mesopota- mian text. There is also no doubt that a Landing Place had existed mere, for the simple reason that that vast platform is still there to this very day. Located at a place nowadays called Baalbek, the immense stone platform, some five million square feet in area, rests upon massive stone blocks that In Search of Immortality