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276 eats no food." So, to save Inanna, Enki contrived to fashion similar androids who could go to the "Land of No Return" and perform their mission safely. In the Sumerian version of the "myth" we read that Enki fashioned two clay androids, and activated them by giving one the Food of Life and the other the Water of Life. The text calls one Kurgarru and the other Kalaturru, terms that scholars leave untranslated because of their complexity; refer- ring to the beings' "private parts," the terms suggest peculiar sexual organs: literally translated, one whose "opening" is "locked," and the other whose "penetrator" is "sick." Seeing them appear in her throne room, Ereshkigal won- dered who they were: "Are you gods? Are you mortals?" she asked. "What is it that you wish?" They asked for the lifeless body of Inanna, and getting it, "upon the corpse they directed the Pulser and the Emitter,"; then sprinkled her body with the Water of Life and gave her the Plant of Life, ' ‘and Inanna arose." Commenting on the description of the two emissaries, A. Leo Oppenheim (Mesopotamian Mythology) saw the main attributes that qualified them to penetrate the domain of Ereshkigal and save Inanna as having been (a) that they were neither male nor female, and (b) that they were not created in a womb. Moreover, he found a reference to the ability of the gods to create "robots" in the Enuma elish, the Babylo- nian version of the Creation Epic, in which the celestial battle with Tiamat and the wondrous creations that ensued were all attributed to Marduk—including the idea of creating Man. In this reading of the Babylonian text, it was Marduk, "while listening to the words of the gods, conceived the idea of creating a clever device to help them." Revealing his idea to his father Ea/Enki, Marduk said: "I shall bring into exis- tence a robot; his name shall be 'Man' ... He shall be charged with the service of the gods and thus they will be relieved." But "Ea answered him by making him another proposition, in order to change his mind regarding the |idea] of relieving the gods;" it was, as we have earlier related, to "put the mark" of the gods—their genetic imprint—on "a being that already exists" (and thus bringing about Homo sapiens). DIVINE ENCOUNTERS