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Divine Encounters, as even Humankind's earliest experiences have shown, can take many forms. Whether in the form of direct contact, through emissaries, by only hearing the god's voice, in dreams or visions, there is one aspect common to all the experiences thus far described: they all take place on Earth. Yet mere was one more form of Divine Encounter, the utmost, and thus reserved for only a handful of chosen mor- tals: To be taken aloft to join the gods in Heaven. In much later times, Egyptian Pharaohs were subjected to elaborate mortuary rituals so that they might enjoy an After- life journey to the Divine Abode. But in the days before the Deluge, selected individuals ascended to Heaven and lived to tell about it. One ascent is recorded in Genesis; two are re- lated in Sumerian texts. All three require accepting as truthful the Sumerian asser- tion that there had been a developed civilization before the Deluge, one that was wiped out and buried under millions of tons of mud by the avalanche of water that engulfed Mesopo- tamia. This Sumerian assertion was not doubted by later gen- erations. An Assyrian king (Ashurbanipal) boasted that he could "understand the enigmatic words in the stone carvings from the days before the Flood," and Assyrian and Babylo- nian texts often spoke of other knowledge and knowing indi- viduals, of events and urban settlements, long ago before the Deluge. The Bible, too, describes an advanced civilization An 49 THE THREE WHO TO HEAVEN ASCENDED