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157 Figure 49 "someone"—local lore says "the giants"—dquarried, _ lifted, and emplaced these stone blocks with great precision. Greeks and Romans followed Canaanites and others before them in deeming the platform a sacred site, on which to build and rebuild temples to the great gods. We have no picture of what had stood there in the days of Gilgamesh; but we do know what had been there afterward, in Phoenician times. We know, because the platform, with an enclosure, held a skyrocket poised upon a crossbeamed pedestal—as depicted on a coin from Byblos (Fig. 49). The most telling geographical detail in the second journey of Gilgamesh is the body of water he had reached after cross- ing the wilderness. It is described as a "low-lying sea," a sea that looked like "a vast lake." It was called the sea of the "Waters of Death." These are all identifying features of the landlocked sea that is still called the Dead Sea, which is indeed the lowest-lying sea in the world. In the distance Gilgamesh could see a city that was "closed-up about," a city surrounded by a wall, whose tem- ple was dedicated to Sin. Such a city—one of the oldest in the world—is still there; it is known as Jericho, which in Hebrew (Yeriho) means "City of me Moon God," who in- deed was Sin; the city was famous for its walls, whose mirac- ulous toppling is recounted in the Bible. (One must also wonder to what extent the biblical tale of the spies of Joshua lifted, In Search of Immortality