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278 iffs"—the Gallu—to seize him. In a tale dealing with how a son of Enki, Nergal, had come to espouse Ereshkigal, it is related that to safeguard his son on his visit to the dangerous domain, Enki created fourteen Gallu to accompany and_ pro- tect Nergal. In the tale of Inanna/Ishtar's descent to that do- main, it is told that Namtar tried to prevent the escape of the revived goddess by sending Gallu to block her ascent. All these texts point out that although the Gallu had neither the face nor the body of the divine Sukkals that served as emissaries between the gods themselves, they did "hold a staff in their hands, carried a weapon on their loins." Not flesh and blood, they were described as beings “who have no mother, who have no father, neither sister or brother, nor wife or child; they know not food, know not water. They flutter in the skies over Earth like wardens." Have these Androids of ancient lore come back in recent times'/ The question is pertinent because of the way in which the occupants of UFOs have been described by people who claim to have encountered them (or even abducted by them): of undetermined sex, a plastic skin, conical heads, oval eyes— humanlike in shape but definitely nonhuman, behaving like androids. That their depictions (Fig. 96b) by those who claim to have seen them seem so similar to the ancient depictions of the Gallu is probably no accident. There was yet another class of Divine Emissaries—de- monic beings. Some were in the service of Enki, some in the service of Enlil. Some were considered the descendants of the evildoer Zu, "evil spirits" that bode no good, bearers of disease and pestilences; demons who as often as not had birdlike features. In the "myth" of Inanna and Enki it is told that when Enki ordered Isimud to retrieve the ME's taken by Inanna, he sent along with him a succession of freakish emissaries capable of seizing the Boat of Heaven: Uru giants, Lahama monsters, "sound-piercing Kugalgal, and the Enunun_ "sky giants." They were all, apparently, the class of creatures called Enkum—"part human, part animal" according to an interpretation by Margaret Whitney Green (Eridu in Sumerian DIVINE ENCOUNTERS