Gilgamesh the King
At dawn I found that I still had vigor in me. I rose and went by foot, disdaining all bearers, to the cloister of the holy priestesses. There I asked for the priestess Abisimti, who had initiated me into manhood. It seemed to me that there was terror in her eyes, as much perhaps for my great height and strength as for the fact that I was now the king. I smiled and took her hand in mine, and said, “Think of me as that boy of twelve with whom you were so gentle.”
I was not gentle with her that morning, I suspect. Great strength had come upon me, greater even than I had already had, simply from having assumed the kingship. And there was the godhood within me as well. Three times I had her, until she lay back panting fitfully, looking a little dazed and plainly hoping I was sated. Nothing could have sated me that day; but for her sake I spared her further toil. Abisimti was as beautiful as I remembered her, with skin like cool water and breasts round as pomegranates; but her beauty was to Inanna’s as the moon is to the sun.
So passed my first day in the kingship. Hour by hour I felt the power and the greatness flowing into me. On my second day I received homage from the assembly of the city.
If a stranger were to ask how the king of Uruk is chosen, why, any citizen of the city would reply that he is chosen by the assembly. And in truth that is the case; but that is not the entire case.
The assembly elects, but the gods direct, and in particular it is Inanna, speaking through her priestess, who makes known the one who is to be king. Nor does the kingship pass automatically, as it does in Kish and as I hear it does in many other cities, to the son of the king. We understand these matters differently. We think that there is a divine inwardness that some men have, a kind of grace, which makes them fit to be king. If that grace happens to pass from father to son, as it had from Enmerkar to Lugalbanda, and from Lugalbanda to me, it is only because a father often passes his traits to his son—his stature, his breadth of shoulders, the turn of his nose, and, perhaps, his kingliness. But it does not necessarily happen that way. Not all our kings have been the sons of kings.
Once the assembly has chosen the king, the assembly may only advise, not command. If there is disagreement between the assembly and the king, the king’s wishes will prevail. This is not tyranny; this is the inherent outcome of the correct choice of king. For, mark you well, in time of crisis and doubt it is vital that a city speak with a single voice. And have the gods not indicated which voice that voice should be, by making him the king? The assembly, in its discourse with the king, tunes that voice as a harper tunes his strings; but when the voice speaks, it is the voice of the king, which is to say, it is the voice of the city, it is the voice of heaven. And if the king in his speech does not speak with heaven’s voice, everyone will know it, and heaven will cast him from his place.
These matters were much on my mind when the men of the assembly paid their ceremonial call on me in the audience-chamber of the palace. First came the free citizens, what we have always called the house of men: those who speak for the boatmen and fishermen, the farmers and cattlebreeders, the scribes and jewelers and carpenters and masons. They passed through, and put down their gifts before me, and touched their hands to my ankles in the customary way. When that was done, the elders of the assembly came, those who speak for the great estates, the princely families, the priestly clans. Their gifts were more weighty, their scrutiny of me more intense. I met their gaze evenly and with assurance. I was aware that I was the youngest man in the room, younger than any of the elders, younger than any of the house of men. But I was king.
I felt the sacred force that is a king’s glory, and I revelled in it. But even then a dark shadow lay upon my joy, for I remembered Lugalbanda lying upon his alabaster bier, and I remembered the day I had stood by the city wall and watched the corpses of the poor go floating down the river. I was mindful always of the bleak jest the gods have played upon us, even on those who are of a greatness approaching theirs: Never forget that you are mortal, never forget that you have but a brief moment of grandeur and then you are dragged off to the House of Dust and Darkness. Such matters chilled my warmest moments. Yet I was young; yet I was strong; I pushed the thought of death from me as often as it arose within me, and told myself, as I had when I was a child: Death, I will defeat you! Death, I will devour you!
“All during the time of Dumuzi,” said the great landowner Enlil-ennam, “we waited for your return. For Lugalbanda is within you.”
I looked at him, startled. Was that fact such common knowledge in Uruk? But then I realized that he meant it only as a manner of speaking. It was merely as if he said, Lugalbanda’s blood flows in your veins. And everyone knew that.
“It has been a dark time for us,” said white-haired Ali-ellati, whose standing of nobility could be traced back ninety thousand years. “Signs and omens became confused. The gods gave no clear answers. The portents were sinister. We lived in fear and foreboding. It was because of the king. Yes: because of the king.”
“And what manner of king was Dumuzi?” I asked.
“Well, he was not Lugalbanda,” Enlil-ennam said, smirking broadly. “He was not Enmerkar.”
“He was not even Dumuzi,” said Lu-Meshlam, whose estates were like a little kingdom in themselves. “Sufficient to be Dumuzi, if one cannot be Enmerkar. But he was not even Dumuzi!” And they all laughed at that.
“What are you telling me?” I asked.
Piece by piece they unfolded a tale of weak and sorry kingship, this one speaking a little while, then another taking up the story. A silly man, swollen with pride—ill-starred projects, abortive military adventures, the raising to power of upstarts and nonentities, foolish quarrels with the great men of the city, neglect of the rituals, public funds consumed on absurdities while necessities went unrepaired—the sad account went on and on. Once the dam was broken, the flow of their accusations was unending. I felt some embarrassment for their sake, listening to it all: for who had put Dumuzi forth to be king, at the time of my father’s death, if not they? The old priestess Inanna must have had a reason for proposing him, and they for accepting him, and I think that reason must have been that he was pliant and malleable, very soft metal indeed. But the nine years of his kingship had not, so it seemed, brought them the advantage they had hoped to have out of it. Which was small surprise, if they had knowingly chosen a weak man. So now they were turning, eagerly, gladly, hopefully, to a stronger one, in whose veins the blood of greatness flowed. I could not help feeling some scorn for their folly. But I was swift to pardon them. They saw their error; they were redeeming themselves now from it; and, if they had not comported themselves according to the way of the gods when they chose Dumuzi, so be it. The fault had not been theirs. The fault was the gods’.
“Tell me of the death of Dumuzi,” I said.
They became evasive. “Heaven withdrew the kingship from him,” said Lu-Meshlam, and the others nodded sagely.
“I understand that,” I said impatiently. “But how did he die?”
They looked at one another. No one would speak. I had to draw it from them. A lingering, horrible death, they said. A slow wasting-away, in great pain. The gods forsook him and many demons entered him: Ashakku, Namtaru, Utukku, Alu, the fever-maker, the sick-maker, the evil spirit, the diabolical one. No door could shut them from his body. No bolt would turn them back. Through the gateways of Dumuzi they glided like snakes. Through the hinges of his spirit they blew like the wind. The diviners had struggled mightily, but there was no healing him, not even any understanding of the malady that consumed him.
The old priest Arad-Nanna said, when the elders were done with this grim recital, “His mistake was in the choice of his name. There is a doom upon Dumuzi that was proclaimed at the first day of time. How could he have hoped to escape it, with such a name, in this city of all cities?”
I was preoccupied with other thoughts at that moment and I suppose I did not pay close attention to those words of Arad-Nanna. Only afterward, when I sat alone thinking these matters through,
did I see their likely meaning. In this city of all cities. The city of Inanna, he meant. Who is the ultimate ruler of Uruk, beyond assembly, beyond king? Why, it is the goddess, and none other! And it is in the nature of the goddess that she is destined to destroy the god Dumuzi, the holy shepherd: we have that tale taught us from childhood. Had the priestess Inanna re-enacted, with the king Dumuzi, the downfall that the goddess Inanna works each year in heaven upon the god Dumuzi? Everything cried out yes to that. She had sent me that seal-cylinder, while I was still in Kish, showing the death of Dumuzi, the triumph of Inanna, and I had taken it for word that she was casting some spell which would bring an end to him. But had she settled for mere spells, or had she made use of actual potions? I thought back through what they had told me of the king’s sufferings, his fevers, his agonies, his wasting away. And I grew uneasy. If Inanna could slay one king, she might slay another, when she saw fit. And in Uruk every king plays the role of Dumuzi to the goddess, whether his name be Dumuzi in fact, or Lugalbanda, or Enmerkar—or Gilgamesh.
This I pondered, Inanna and Dumuzi, Dumuzi and Inanna. My mind returned, as it often had since my childhood, to that tale of her descent into hell, in that time when she longed for conquest beyond her allotted realm.
Holding sway over heaven and earth was not enough for her. She must also have the nether world, the realm where her older sister, Ereshkigal, rules. So she dons her great scarlet robes of power, her crown, her double strand of lapis beads, her breastplate, her ring, the lapis measuring-rod and line of her authority; and she goes to that place in Uruk which is the gateway to hell, and makes her way downward. “If I do not return in three days,” she tells the goddess Ninshubur, her vizier, her right hand, “get you to Father Enlil, beg him to set me free.”
At the first gate of the nether world the gatekeeper blocks her way and demands to know why she has come. She offers a false answer, but the gatekeeper is not deceived; he has instructions from his queen Ereshkigal to deprive Inanna of her power and bring her to humility. And so at the first gate the gatekeeper takes her crown from the goddess; and at the second gate he demands the lapis beads; and thus it is at each of the seven gates, until the scarlet royal robe itself is taken from her, and she enters the throne-room of Ereshkigal naked, bowing down low. For anyone who comes before the queen of the nether world must do so naked, even if she be the queen of heaven. What a humbling for proud Inanna! Nor is she given the chance to assail her sister’s throne: the judges of the lower realm surround her at once, they utter their judgment, and Ereshkigal fastens the eye of death on her. Just like that, Inanna is slain. Her corpse, like a side of rotting meat, is hung from a peg on the wall. And there she remains, for a day and a second day and a third, and in the world it is wintertime, for Inanna is gone from it.
Then Ninshubur takes herself to Father Enlil and begs mercy for the dead Inanna; but Enlil will not lift a hand to save her. Nor will Nanna of the moon, to whom Ninshubur turns next. But the wise and compassionate Enki, who knows the water of life, is willing to come to her aid. Enki sends two messengers into the nether world, and they find Ereshkigal in the pangs of childbirth. “We can lift this pain from you,” they tell her, but they must have a gift in return, and the gift they ask is the corpse of Inanna. Ereshkigal yields; the envoys ease her pain; and then they take the dead Inanna from the wall and restore her to life. But she must not leave the nether world, Ereshkigal insists, unless she provides someone in her place.
Ah, and who will Inanna send? Why, who else but Dumuzi her husband? He sits upon his splendid throne beneath the great apple tree in Uruk, clad in shining garments and all unmoved by Inanna’s torments. Yes, Dumuzi will be the one. Where is Inanna’s love? Ah, there is no love! It is her life or Dumuzi’s, and she does not hesitate. Dumuzi has shown no grief over Inanna’s disappearance; perhaps he feels well rid of his troublesome consort. And so he is doomed. She looks upon him with the eyes of death, and cries out to seven demons, “Seize him! Take him away!” The demons take him by his thighs; they break the flute that he has been playing; they gash him with axes so that his blood pours forth. He flees. They follow. He appeals to the gods to spare him, and they aid him in his flight, but Inanna is implacable, and at last he is seized and slain and carried down into hell. It is the time when the great death of summer settles over the Land, that time when Dumuzi is taken away. In summer he must die, though he returns in the autumn, with the rains, with the new year, to celebrate the Sacred Marriage with Inanna and bring about the new birth of all things. Where is the mercy of Inanna, in this tale? There is no mercy. Inanna is a force that will not be gainsaid. Dumuzi must die, he who is the king, he who is the god.
To all this I gave most careful thought. Inanna had made me king, that much was certain: she and Agga both, working in some sly alliance. She had made me, but she could unmake me also. I would be on my guard, I resolved, against any further playing out in Uruk of the tale of the goddess and god.
On the third day of my kingship, Inanna summoned me. When the goddess beckons, even the king must hasten.
We met in a small room of the temple, not at all majestic, with pink-washed walls and a few lopsided rickety chairs that a poor scribe would have deemed too shabby for his house. She wore a plain robe and her face was unpainted. Two days earlier she had been goddess and priestess both, terrible in her majesty and overwhelming in her beauty. The woman I saw now had not troubled this day to assume the goddess. Her beauty was with her at any time, but the grandeur of it did not shine forth. It was just as well; I had had little sleep in my two nights of kingship, and confronting Inanna in her majesty is an exhausting business for anyone, even one who is in part a god.
I wanted to have the truth from her concerning Dumuzi’s death. But how could I ask it outright? “Did he die at your hands? Did you drop poison in his bowl, priestess?” No. No. Should I say, “I am grateful for your slaying my predecessor, so I might have his throne”? No. Or, perhaps, “I am young and new in these matters of state. Tell me, is it the custom for the goddess to murder a worthless king, when the city can no longer tolerate his worthlessness?” No. Nor did I choose to bring up the old matter of my having been forced into exile: “Did Dumuzi grow so suddenly frightened of me, perhaps, because you happened to tell him that the spirit of Lugalbanda had entered into me?”
No, I said none of these things. Nor did she, who had looked upon me with such fierce hunger in years gone by, favor me with the flashing eyes now, the savage grin of triumph, the fiery embrace toward which her scheming had been directed so long. She took care to convey to me nothing but what was fitting between priestess and king on the first ceremonial visit of his reign: cool formality, a strict observance of the rites. Inanna and the king are not meant to embrace in passion, except on the night of the Sacred Marriage, and that is but once a year.
So in the appropriate phrases she congratulated me upon my ascension, and offered me her blessing; and I, just as formally, pledged myself to serve the goddess in kingly manner. We shared sweet wine from a single bowl, and ate of the charred meat of an ox that had been sacrificed at dawn. When all that was done, we talked, like two old friends who had not seen one another for a long while, of the past, of our first meeting in the Enmerkar temple, events of my boyhood, how tall and strong I had grown in the four years of my exile, and so on and so on, but everything offhand and distant. She spoke of the death of certain princes and great men while I had been away. That led her eventually to the subject of the death of Dumuzi: she looked sad, she sighed, she cast down her eyes, as though the king’s passing had been a great sorrow to her. I searched her face but saw no clues. “With my own hands I ministered to him,” said Inanna. “I put cool cloths on his forehead. I mixed the medications myself, the quunabu and the kushumma, the duashbur seeds, the root of nigmi and arina. But nothing availed. From day to day he withered and shrank.” I felt a chill, as she talked of mixing medicines for Dumuzi, and wondered what devilish things she had mixed into those powders to haste
n him onward to the next world. But I did not ask. I think I know what truths lay beneath my unspoken questions. But I did not ask.
13
NOW THE FULL WEIGHT OF kingship fell upon me, and it was far heavier a burden than I had ever imagined. Nevertheless I think I bore it well.
There were the rituals to perform, the offerings and sacrifices. I expected that. But so many, so many! The Feast of the Eating of Barley, the Feast of the Eating of Gazelles, the Feast of the Blood of Lions, this feast and that one, a calendar of ceremonies that was unsparing of the king’s time and strength. The gods are insatiable. They must be fed constantly. I had not been king ten days when I found myself wholeheartedly sick of the reek of roasting flesh and the thick sweet smell of freshly poured blood. You must understand that I was still hardly more than a boy: I knew it was my duty, all this ritual, but I would rather by far have been cracking heads together in the wrestling-house, or hurling javelins on the field of war, than spending my days and nights at spilling the blood of beasts in these high ceremonies. Yet I moved past that early revulsion, and performed my tasks as I knew I must. The king is not only the leader in warfare and spokesman of the gods in matters of statecraft; he is the highest of the high priests, which is a formidable job.
So on the proper evening I would come forth on the roof of the temple of An in the first night watch, when the star of An had appeared, and preside at the golden table where a feast for the Sky-father had been laid out, with food also for the wife of An and for the seven wandering stars. To these great ones I offered the flesh of cattle, sheep, and birds, beer of the best quality, and the wine of dates, poured from a golden ewer. I made an offering of every kind of fruit, and spread honey and aromatic spices on the seven golden incense burners. I went around to each of the four horns of the altar and kissed it to renew its holiness.