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327 port. "To his father Enki's house he fMardukj entered." Enki was lying on the couch in the chamber to which he retired for the night. "My father," Marduk said, "Gibil this word hath spoken to me: of the coming of the seven [weapons] he has found out." Telling his father the bad news, he urged his all-knowing father: "Their place to search out, do hasten thou!" Soon the gods were back in council, for even Enki knew not the exact hiding place of the Ultimate Weapons. To his surprise, not all the other gods were as shocked as he was. Enki spoke out strongly against the idea, urging steps to stop Nergal, for the use of the weapons, he pointed out, "the lands would make desolate, the people will make perish." Nannar and Utu wavered as_ Enki spoke; but Enlil and Ninurta were for decisive action. And so, with the Council of the Gods in disarray, the decision was left to Anu. When Ninurta finally arrived in the Lower World with word of Anu's decision, he found out that Nergal had already ordered the priming of "the seven awesome weapons" with their "poisons"— their nuclear warheads. Though the Erra Epic keeps referring to Ninurta by the epithet Ishum ("The Scorcher"), it relates in great detail how Ninurta had made clear to Nergal/Erra that the weapons could be used only against specifically approved targets; that be- fore they could be used, the Anunnaki gods at the selected sites and the Igigi gods manning the space platform and the shuttlecraft had to be forewarned; and, last but not least, mankind had to be spared, for "Anu, lord of the gods, on the land had pity." At first Nergal balked at the very idea of forewarning anyone, and the ancient text goes to some length to relate the tough words exchanged between the two gods. Nergal then agreed to giving ad- vance warning to the Anunnaki and Igigi who manned the space fa- cilities, but not to Marduk and his son Nabu, nor to the human followers of Marduk. It was then that Ninurta, attempting to dis- suade Nergal from indiscriminate annihilation, used words iden- tical to those attributed in the Bible to Abraham when he tried to have Sodom spared: Valiant Erra, Will you the righteous destroy with the unrighteous? Will you destroy those who have against you sinned together with those who against you have not sinned? Employing flattery, threats, and logic, the two gods argued back and forth on the extent of the destruction. More than Ninurta, The Nuclear Holocaust