ENCOUNTERS IN THE GIGUNU More than 2,500 years after the epic
search for Immortality by Gilgamesh, another legendary king -
Alexander of Macedonia - emulated the Sumerian king and Egyptian
Pharaohs in the very same arena. In his case, too, the claim to
Immortality was based on being partly The evidence suggests that
Alexander, through his teacher Aristotle, was aware of the
earlier searches; but what he probably did not know was that the
root of his specific claim to divine parentage lay in Uruk’s
GIPAR ("Nighttime House") and its inner sanctum, the GIGUNU.
Soon after Alexander was crowned king of Macedonia in lieu of
the assassinated Philip II, he went to Delphi in Greece to
consult its famed Oracle. Only twenty years old at the time, he
was shocked to hear the first of several prophecies predicting
for him fame, but a very short life. The prophecies served to
increase his belief in rumors that had been circulating in the
Macedonian court, according to which Philip II was not really
his father; but that he w