Gilgamesh the King

  Then the overseer of canals murmured, not looking directly at me, “It lies in the province of the king to do such tasks, my lord, when they are asked of him.” Sudden perspiration put a sheen on his face.

  I spread my hands wide before him. “We have important work—”

  “The summons of Inanna may not be ignored, O majesty,” said my viceroy softly, touching his forehead with the greatest tact.

  “The canals—” I said.

  “The goddess,” said the water-chamberlain.

  “Do all of you feel this way?” I asked, glancing about me at them all.

  This time no one spoke. But there was no mistaking their insistence. I yielded, and I yielded smiling. I know no other way to yield, but with a smile. What could I do? There was no help for it: busy as I was, I must go at once to the temple, and rid Inanna’s tree of its demon.

  This huluppu-tree was, and for that matter still is, a great towering thing of graceful weeping boughs, which was planted by the goddess in the garden of her temple five thousand years ago. The ground where it grows is so holy that a pinch of the black soil from its roots is enough to cure many ailments of the spirit; in springtime barren women come to it and embrace its trunk, and many are made fertile by the dripping of its sap; and a green tea is brewed from its leaves that is sometimes used in divining the future. It is a noble and sacred tree, and I would not have had it come to any harm. But it seemed to me that Inanna might well have looked after her own tree just then, and left me free to look after the canals.

  In the second watch of the morning—the rain had stopped for a time; the sky was bright and clear, the air had the newly washed scent of early winter—I went to the temple garden in the company of a band of the younger men of the palace. The huluppu-tree, vast and spreading, stood in the northeast corner of the enclosure, looming above everything else. Half a dozen wailing priestesses stood close beside it, and a dozen old women of the city shuffled slowly in a wide circle about it, chanting a tuneless dirge.

  One did not need to be an expert gardener to know that something was amiss with the tree. The rain had swept nearly all of its long narrow leaves from it, and they lay piled in huge mounds. Those that had not yet fallen were withered and yellowing, and the branches themselves looked limp and lax. I went to it and put my hands against its thick wrinkled bark, as though trying to feel the demon that had taken up residence within it. But all I felt was thick wrinkled bark.

  I had brought with me a certain Lugal-amarku, a little hunchbacked man with black eyebrows that met above his nose, who knew spells and exorcisms. He put his hands to the tree too, and pulled them back as though they had been burned.

  “Well?” I said. “What do you discover?”

  “Not one demon, my lord. Three!”

  “Ah,” I said. “Three, is it?” That was tiresome. I thought of the silt clogging the canals, and the rain that surely would return in a few days. Three demons, then? Three?

  From behind me came a whispering of the priestesses and the old women. I looked about, and saw Inanna striding toward me, heedless of the muddy ground that flecked her white robe at every step. It was only the second time I had seen her since the dawn following the Sacred Marriage. Instantly there flashed into my mind the vision of that night, Inanna before me, her face hot and flushed, her breasts heaving. But the vision passed. Brusquely she made toward me the sign that the high priestess makes when she greets the king, and I made the goddess-sign to her.

  “You must save the tree,” she said immediately.

  “It houses three demons, I am told.”

  “Ah, you see that also?”

  I nodded toward Lugal-amarku. “Not I. He sees it.”

  The hunchback said, turning his palms outward modestly, “It is apparent, my lady.”

  “So it is,” she said, and went to the tree. She glanced toward me. “Here: look. The snake who knows no charm has made his dwelling here. And in the crown of the tree the Imdugud-bird has built her nest, and rears her young. And here, in the trunk: the vampire Lilitu now resides, the maid of desolation, the eater of souls.”

  I stared. Inanna’s words fell upon me like the tolling of leaden bells. Was this what it was, to be king in Uruk? Must I carry out some impossible task every morning, and three to do on special days? The snake who knows no charm? The Imdugud-bird? The vampire Lilitu? There was indeed a hole in the ground at the base of the tree, opening between two of the huge tangled roots. I peered in, but I saw nothing. Nor could I see a nest in the crown, nor any demon-house in the middle of the trunk. I glanced from Inanna to Lugal-amarku, and back toward Inanna again. Three demons, and my task to drive them out! If only I could shrug, and walk away, and return to my palace to grapple with problems that could be seen and felt! But I could not. I must do Inanna’s bidding in this thing, or all Uruk would know within the hour that Gilgamesh had shirked his tasks and that he feared the invisible world. I felt such despair as I cannot tell you, as I stood there thinking, ah, my canals, my canals, my canals!

  Then İ said, “We will deal with these things, and quickly.”

  I gave orders to Lugal-amarku to concoct a potion so foul, so stinking, that no creature could resist it, not even the snake who knows no charm. Bring it here within the hour, I told him. I sent one of the men of my band—he was the warrior Bir-hurturre, my old schoolmate and boyhood tormentor, now taken into my closest counsel—back to the palace to fetch my great axe. And I bade the priestesses to get me a length of thick and sturdy rope from the Enmerkar temple. We would deal with these demons then and there. Even so early in my reign I had come to my basic idea of governing, which is that everything may be achieved through decisiveness and the show of clear determination.

  The hunchback returned, not in an hour but in half that time, carrying a deep brazen beaker filled with some bubbling yellow stuff, flecked with bits of green and red, a substance so noxious and pestilent that I was surprised it did not eat holes in the bronze. He looked proud of himself. I clapped him lustily on his hump, rubbing it hard for luck, and cried, “This will do it, by Enlil! There’s nothing better for the job!”

  Gagging and half puking from the stench, I took the beaker from him and emptied it into the hole at the base of the tree. The earth hissed as that stuff touched it. I will offer an oath that the edges of the hole drew back as if in loathing. We waited. The snake who knows no charm obeys neither An nor Enlil nor even Inanna, the mistress of all serpents. But in moments there was a stirring in the earth, and angry yellow eyes flared within the hole, and a forked black tongue came flickering forth.

  “Give me my axe,” I said quietly to Bir-hurturre.

  Slowly, slowly, the snake glided from its hole. Its skin was dark as night, with bands of yellow upon it, and its supple body was nearly of the thickness of my arm. Behind me, the priestesses chanted holy names over and over and over, and even my own men were whispering incantations of defense. Yet I felt no fear of it, perhaps because it looked so forlorn, so sickened and bemired by Lugal-amarku’s dreadful fluid. Ordinarily I am not one to slay an enemy whom I have at such a disadvantage; but there was no time for such tender niceties now. I raised my axe and in a single swift blow split that serpent in two. The sundered halves coiled and uncoiled and leaped wildly, and from the mouth of the snake came a wild roaring, and I think it meant to spit its venom upon me, but I was not harmed. I heard sobbing and prayer behind me.

  After a few moments the snake lay still.

  “One,” I said.

  Now I took the thick rope from the temple, and wound it about the trunk of the tree, and tied it behind my back in such a way that when I put my feet against the tree and held the rope I could pull myself upward, and walk, more or less, up the side of the tree. This I did, higher and higher, climbing with ease. The bark was rough and ridged, and from it, as I bruised it with my feet, came the fragrance of almond blossoms, or of heavy wine.

  Soon I reached the middle of the trunk, where they had told me the demoness Lilitu
was making her home, that dark maid who dwells in ruined places and brings sorrow on wayfarers. I suppose that if I had allowed myself pause to think, I would have felt sore afraid. But there are times when it is perilous to pause to think. I held both ends of the rope in one hand and slapped the other lustily against the trunk. “Lilitu? Lilitu? Do you hear me? I am Gilgamesh king of Uruk.” I laughed, to show I had no dread of her. “Hear me, Lilitu! I forbid you this tree, which is Inanna’s! I forbid you! I forbid you! Begone, begone, begone!” Would she obey? I believed she would. Inanna’s name has great power among such creatures. I slapped the trunk twice more, but did not wait for an answer, and went climbing higher.

  “Two,” I said.

  In the crown of the tree, so Inanna had said, the Imdugud-bird nested her young. I peered through the close-packed branches and did not see her, but it seemed to me that I felt her presence. I pulled myself upward, no longer clambering up the trunk now but going hand over hand from branch to branch.

  “Imdugud?” I said softly. “Imdugud, it is I, Gilgamesh son of Lugalbanda.”

  She is the most fearsome of birds, the storm bird, bearer of thunder and rain, whose body is that of an eagle and whose head is that of a lioness. She is the bird of destiny, who decrees the fates and utters the word which none may transgress; and she is bound to no city, to no god, but goes wherever she will, alone, independent. Yet I had no reason to fear her. My father had spoken of her often, and warmly. When he was young, in Enmerkar’s time, he had gone at Enmerkar’s behest as emissary to many distant realms, and his wanderings brought him at last to the land of Zabu at the end of the world. When he sought to go home to Uruk, he found that he could not, for that is a journey from which none return. Yet he was undaunted. He discovered in that land the nest of the Imdugud-bird, and when the Imdugud was away, Lugalbanda entered her nest, and offered honey and bread and sheep-fat to her young, and painted their faces with the colors of honor, and put crowns upon their heads. The Imdugud, when she returned, took great pleasure in what Lugalbanda had done, and bestowed her favor and friendship upon him, offering him whatever reward he would have of her. “Decree a safe journey homeward for me, then,” he said, and so she did, and in time he made his way unharmed to his native city.

  Gently I said, peering into the branches of the crown, “I am the son of Lugalbanda, O Imdugud. But this tree is Inanna’s; and I ask you in Lugalbanda’s name to make your home elsewhere. Will you do that, Imdugud? For Lugalbanda’s sake, who loved you well, will you do that?”

  I heard no reply; and there was no movement in the almost leafless branches. I clung in silence, scarcely breathing. I did not feel the presence of the storm bird any longer. It seemed to me then that the Imdugud, if she truly nested there, had listened to me, and had obeyed, and had risen from the tree with her nestlings and now was soaring high above the Land. At any rate I gave her my thanks.

  “Three!” I called to those who waited below.

  Before I left the tree I climbed about in the crown, putting my feet in turn on each of the great branches. The sixth or seventh one that I came to had, I thought, something of death about it. It was stiff and unyielding, and felt dry and strange to the touch. Such a branch must be removed, or it would spread its deadly magic to the rest of the tree. So I called out to the onlookers to stand back, and raised my axe and hacked at the branch until I had severed it entirely. It was of immense size, as big in girth as some trees are altogether, and it was no small labor to cut it loose, but finally it fell. I hurled it outward so it would clear the branches below it and land in an open place of the garden. Then I swung myself downward, leaping the last of the way and landing on my feet with a joyous shout. Inanna, pale and silent, looked at me in a way I had never seen from her before: there was awe in her eyes.

  “The demons are gone from your tree, lady,” I said.

  I felt the warmth of work well done. Whether I had driven off Lilitu and the Imdugud, or even if they had truly been there, who can say? But about the snake there could be no doubt; and a little later in the winter the huluppu-tree of Inanna began to sprout new leaves, so that by spring it looked as healthy as it had before. Perhaps the fiery breath of the snake at its roots had been doing it injury, or perhaps the other two demons had indeed been haunting it as well. I could not say. I say only that the tree recovered, after I had done my work in it.

  From the dead limb that I had cut off, Inanna had a throne and a couch made for herself. Out of the remaining wood she caused a gift to be fashioned for me, a drum and a drumstick, most elegantly carved by the craftsman Ur-nangar, whose hand must be guided by Enki himself. The drumstick was so perfectly balanced that it seemed almost to fly into my hand when I but reached for it, and it needed only the smallest movement of the wrist to make the most intricate of drummings. The drum itself was polished smooth until its surface felt like the skin of a maiden’s buttocks; and for the drumhead Ur-nangar used the hide of an unborn gazelle, stretched taut and held in place by sinews made of its mother’s gut. There has never been such a drum, nor such a drumstick, in all the world, to equal the one that Ur-nangar made for me at Inanna’s behest. It is lost to me now, and I think not a day goes by but that I wished I had it again.

  During the years that it was with me, I used the drum of Ur-nangar in two particular ways. One, that was best known to the citizens of Uruk, was as a summons of war: when it was time for the troops to gather, I went forth into the plaza outside the palace and beat a brisk tattoo, and everyone knew what I meant by it. “Listen,” they would cry, “Gilgamesh drums us to war!” And at its sound all the city began to stir, knowing that soon there would be new heroes made, and also new widows.

  The other use I had for the drum was far more private. It was the doorway into the world of the gods, for me. Maybe there was goddess-power in the drum, coming as it had out of Inanna’s holy huluppu-tree, or maybe some remnant of the Imdugud-bird’s magic clung to it. I do not know.

  This was its gift: when I retired to my innermost room and began quietly to beat on it in a certain way, it carried me up and out of myself and into that realm where Lugalbanda dwells. With it I could bring on at will all those things that arose in me when the god-aura was upon me. I would feel the droning and the buzzing, I would see a luminous glow in tones of gold or vermilion or deepest blue, I would find an entrance into another place, whether it was a ladder going up into the sky or a column of black water into which I sank or a tunnel, curving downward and away from me, inviting me to run along its shining cylindrical walls. And that place was the god-place. When I was there, I changed my shape, I soared, I flew. I shrieked like an eagle, I roared like a lion. I journeyed into the underworld and into the lands of monsters. I supped with gods and demigods. I danced with spirits. I spoke the languages of dreams. I became the mate of the Thunderbird; I saw all things, all wisdom was open to me. I think Etana of Kish must have had such a drum, and made use of it in order to leap into the sky, instead of going aloft on the wings of an eagle as the old tale would have us believe. I did not use the drum often that way. It was too strange and frightening, and too deep a drain on my energies, which I needed for the daily tasks of kingship. When I came back from such a flight, my jaws ached and sometimes my tongue was swollen as if I had bitten it in my ecstasies, and I felt dazed and weary for hours or even days afterward. So it was a secret thing, which I did only when the need was great upon me, whether for reasons of my own soul’s hunger or because the city was faced with a peril that I alone could master. When I sat alone tapping on that drum I was close to being a god.

  15

  THE RAINS RETURNED, MORE INTENSE than ever, and the problem of the canals became urgent.

  In the days before my nation came into the Land, when the people of the Old Way were here, those who used sickles made of clay and lived in mud huts, there were no canals. Each spring, when the snows melted on the mountains of the north, the Two Rivers would rise and burst from their banks and the waters would pour out over the fi
elds, drowning the crops and the villages. Some years the flooding was great, and the work of years was destroyed. In other years the waters retreated quickly under the hot sun of the dry season, and there was no moisture left to keep the crops alive. Even in the flood years, when water covered the valleys all summer long, much of the Land remained desert, too dry for any use, and there was no way of conveying the water from the drowned places to the parched places. It was a dreadful way to live.

  When we conquered the goddess-people and took the Land from them, we found another way. It was Enlil’s son who showed us, Ninurta, the warrior god, god of the stormy south wind.

  It happened that Ninurta fell into a quarrel with the demon Asag, who dwelled in the nether world; and Ninurta went down into the nether world and slew this demon after a terrible battle. But the slaying of Asag loosed a great calamity upon the Land: for it was Asag who held in check the dragon Kur, which is the river that flows through the nether world. When Asag died, the Kur broke free and rose up out of the earth to the surface, and the vile waters of the subterranean river poured forth into the lands of daylight and everything was flooded.

  Great were the lamentations of the gods who had charge of the fields and gardens, and those who carried the pickaxe and basket. The Kur covered the Land and famine was severe. Nothing grew except the weeds that will grow in all circumstances. But at this dark time Ninurta found a way. He gathered a heap of stones in the mountains and sent them floating like drifting rain clouds to the Land. These he piled up, then, over the place where the Kur had burst out of the nether world, and dammed it so that its waters could no longer escape. Once this was achieved he built dikes to contain the flood-water, and canals to guide it into the beds of the Two Rivers and from the rivers to the fields. So the dragon was contained and its depredations halted. And now the fields brought forth abundant grain, the vineyards and orchards yielded their fruit, and the harvest was heaped up in great hills in the granaries.