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168 After the Lord had assigned a great destiny to the daughter of Sin, the temple Eanna he bestowed on her as a gift of betrothal. With this gift of the Eanna temple came the Gipar house, "a place of fragrant woods," and its inner Chamber of Night- time Pleasures, the Gigunu; and in time Inanna put the place an nnn Alene to good use. But a sacred precinct was not a city, and the Sumerian King Lists record that it was only the son of the first priest- king, Enmerkar, "who built Uruk." It was then that Inanna decided that if Uruk was her cult center, it ought to be a full-fledged center of urban civilization. To achieve that she needed the ME's. The ME's were portable objects which held all the knowl- edge and other aspects of a high civilization. In the current state of modern technology, one can envision them as some Wied .f 222 ALA. os a nn af kind of computer disks or memory chips which, in spite of their minute size, hold vast amounts of information. In a few decades, with more advanced technology, one might compare them to some other marvelous store of information (yet to be invented). When Nippur was to become (after the Deluge) a City of Men, Enlil complained to Anu that Enki was keep- ing all the ME's to himself, using them solely to enhance Eridu and Enki's hideaway in the Abzu; and Enki was forced to share those essential ME's with Enlil. Now that Inanna wished to make Uruk a great urban center, she set out to Enki's abode to pry some essential ME's out of her great- oe uncle. A text known as "Inanna and Enki" and subtitled by mod- ern scholars "The Transfer of the Arts of Civilization from Eridu describes Eridu to Erech" describes how Inanna journeyed in_ her "Boat of Heaven" to the Abzu in southeastern Africa, where Enki had secreted away the ME's. Realizing that Inanna was coming to call on him unchaperoned—"the maiden, all alone, has directed her step to the Abzu"—Enki ordered his cham- berlain to prepare a banquet meal, with plenty of wine made of sweet dates. After Inanna and Enki had feasted and Enki's DIVINE ENCOUNTERS to Erech"