30
drag them behind boats for their executions, the Swiss lacked the devotion of fire. [Accounts of the fiery furnace in midrash Canticles Rabbah say Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah (Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego) asked the prophet Ezekiel (Hazqiyal) whether they should resist Nebuchadnezzar's command and choose death by fire instead of worshiping his idol. When they had left, determined to sacrifice their lives, Ezekiel was told: "You believe I will abandon them, but that shall not happen; let them carry out their intention and see. Ezekiel's famous resuscitation of the dead is said to have occurred the same day the three were cast in the furnace.] Ishtar Gate The Golden Age and Pergamos got much from The Ishtar Gate stolen by the Germans in the 19th century and sent to Berlin. In ancient times those gates strictly represented political and religious authority joined in one. Masked as archeological sites, the true purpose of the Berlin acquisition remains speculative. That Gate would have seen condemned captives from all over the world taken to captivity, from Old Jerusalem to the Shiites of the Iraq War. Cakes were baked with Ishtar's face (Jeremiah 44), before being led out. But if “Babylon Gilgamesh is Iraq and Iraq is Uruk, and Mr. Obama stands a counterpart to the ancient ruler of Uruk, epic hero Gilgamesh, with one exception. Gilgamesh rejected Ishtar. Ishtar the beautiful, the irresistible, Ishtar whose lovers turned up dead, Ishtar who had wanted to seduce him too. Gilgamesh would not. The President, is a Gilgamesh who did not know what Ishtar meant when she