She looked more like hell’s queen than heaven’s. Her face was painted ghostly white, and her eyelids and even her lips were blackened with kohl. She wore a dark stark robe falling straight from her shoulders and her only ornament was a dagger of polished green stone that dangled between her breasts from a lanyard of woven straw about her neck. Her priestesses were clad in the same fashion.
The ceremony came to a halt. There was a hard crackling silence all about me.
She looked toward me in the coldest hatred and said, “A funeral, Gilgamesh, without asking the consent of the goddess?”
“I do as I please today. He was my friend.”
“Inanna still rules, nevertheless.”
My glance rested unwaveringly on her eyes. I returned hatred for hatred, frost for frost. In clear measured tones I said, “I will bury my friend without Inanna’s help. Go back to your temple.”
“I speak for the goddess in Uruk.”
“And I am king in Uruk. I speak for the gods.” I raised my arm and swept it about broadly. “See, the priests of An and Enlil are here, and the priests of Enki, and the priests of Utu. The gods have given their blessing to the laying to rest of Enkidu. If the goddess is absent today, well, it does not matter so much, I think.”
She glared at me and for a long moment did not speak, did not even vent breath. She seemed to be swelling up; I thought she would explode. The fury in her face was awesome.
Then she said, “Beware, Gilgamesh! Your defiance goes beyond the bounds. You have seen already what my curse can do: I would not want to place it on the king of Uruk. But I will if I must, Gilgamesh. I will if I must.”
In a low cold voice I replied, “You beware also, priestess! Your curse may be dangerous, but so is my sword. I tell you, take yourself away from here this moment, or I will make a libation to Enkidu’s shade with your blood. I tell you: before everyone, Inanna, I will split your belly open.”
It was a frightful moment. Had anyone ever spoken to the priestess of the goddess in such a way? I was swept by an excitement that was almost like a high drunkenness. I felt giddy. My breath came in quick hard gusts; my heart hammered at the cage of my ribs.
She stared. “Are you mad?”
I put my hand to the hilt of my sword. “I will if I must, Inanna. I will if I must. Go, now.”
I think I would have slain her in front of all Uruk, if she had defied me then. I think she knew that, too. For she gave me one final glare, like the cold fiery glare of that serpent whose eyes breathe poison. But I did not fall; I did not flinch; I returned her glare, fire for fire, chill for chill. And then at last she swung about and went sweeping back with her women toward her temple.
When she was out of sight I let my arms hang limp and my breath come soft, for I was strung tight as a bow. When I was calm again I turned to the priest who still held the beaker of water and said, “Come, let us continue.”
He handed me the water, and I poured it out into the grave, and said the words. Afterward I pulled my headband off, and tore my garments, and broke my bracelets and my necklace. My body ached in twenty places; there was a pressure against my eyes, and a heaviness in my breast, and the hand at my throat had tightened until I could scarcely breathe. This was the end of the rite: now Enkidu’s journey into darkness was complete and I had no way to hide from my bereavement. He was gone. I was alone. The pain rose up within me like a fountain and flooded me. I threw myself on the ground and wept for Enkidu for the last time. Then it was done. I grew calm; I lay still; after a while I arose, saying nothing to anyone. With my own hands I sealed the shaft with bricks, and the other priests covered it over with earth.
I returned to the palace alone. I sat in silence all that day in my innermost chamber, seeing no one. I listened to hear Enkidu’s laughter tumbling in torrents through the halls. Silence. I listened for the sound of his hands slapping against the door to summon me. Silence. I thought of going out to hunt, and imagined myself turning to him to take a javelin from him: he would not be beside me. I felt a hunger for him that I knew could never be eased. Why, I wondered, had I been singled out for such a loss? Because I was king? Because my life had gone only from triumph to triumph, and the gods themselves were jealous of me? Perhaps I had been given Enkidu only so that he might be taken away; perhaps this was all the design of the gods, to let me taste happiness so that I could learn the true taste of grief afterward.
I was alone. Well, I had been alone before. But it seemed to me, that day of the burial of my friend, that I had never been alone in the way that I was alone now.
28
THEY SAY THAT ALL WOUNDS heal in time. I suppose they do, in one way or another, though often they leave thick raised scars in their place. One day flowed into another and I waited for the scars to form over the place where Enkidu had been ripped away. I wandered the halls of my palace and did not hear his laughter, and I did not see his great burly form swaggering about the terraces, and I thought that soon I would become accustomed to his absence; but that did not seem to happen. Every day I was reminded by some little thing that he was no longer here.
I could not bear it. I had to take myself away from Uruk. Wherever I looked in Uruk I saw the shadow of Enkidu falling across the streets. I heard the echoes of Enkidu’s voice in the jabber of the crowds. There was no place to hide from memory. It was a kind of madness, I think: a pain beyond reason. It invaded every corner of my soul and rendered everything meaningless that once had mattered to me. At first what gnawed at me and ached in my gut was only the loss of Enkidu, but then I came to see that the real source of my pain lay even deeper: it was not so much the death of Enkidu that tormented me, as it was my awareness of the fact of death itself. For I knew that I would, in time, reconcile myself even to the departure of Enkidu: I was not so great a fool as to think that wound would never heal. But how could I reconcile myself to the loss of all the world? How could I reconcile myself to the loss of myself? Again and again in my life I had begun to wrestle with that question, and had stepped aside from it; but the death of Enkidu raised it once more, and this time it could not be avoided. Death will come, Gilgamesh, even for you. That is the thing I saw in the air before my face, the black mocking mask of death. And the knowledge of the inevitability of that death robbed my life of all its joy.
As on that day of the funeral of my father Lugalbanda long ago I fell into such a sharp terror of dying that I could hardly breathe. I sat upon my high throne, thinking, Enkidu has died and shuffles about now within that place of dust, cloaked like a bird in gloomy feathers, making his evening meal out of cold clay. And soon enough I must go to that dark place too. One day a king in a grand palace, the next a mournful creature flapping his wings in the dust—was that the fate that awaited me? I remembered how as a boy I had vowed to conquer death. Death, you are no match for me! So I had boasted. I was too proud to die; death was an affront I could not bear, and I would deny death his sway over me. But could that be? Death had defeated Enkidu; beyond any doubt death would come for Gilgamesh as well, in his proper time. And the certainty of that drained all strength from me. I did not want to be king any longer. I did not want to perform the sacrifices and pour out the libations and repair the canals and lead my troops in war. Why go to such trouble, when our lives are like the lives of the little green flies that buzz about for a few hours at twilight and then perish? What sense is there in striving so hard? We are given friends and then the friends soon are taken away: better not to have had the friend at all, I thought. And, thinking in that fashion, I came to see all human action as without value or purpose. Flies, flies, buzzing flies: we are nothing more than that, I told myself. Death is the gods’ great joke upon us. What sense in being a king? King of the flies? I would be king no longer. I would flee this city, and go out into the wilderness.
Thus it was the fear of death that drove me from Uruk. I could not be king any longer: I was an empty man. Under the shadow of the dread of death I went forth alone out of the city.
&n
bsp; I told no one where I was going. I did not know that myself. I did not even say that I was leaving at all. I appointed no regent; I left no instructions for what was to be done in my absence. It was a madness that was upon me. Between midnight and dawn I slipped away, taking no more with me than the little I had carried that time I had fled to Kish when I was a boy.
Despair governed me. Woe lay heavy on my every thought. Fear nestled like a venomous serpent behind my breastbone. My hair was unkempt: I had not allowed it to be cut since the first day of Enkidu’s illness. My only garments were a lion’s rough hide and a peasant’s sandals: I renounced my elegant robes and cloaks and all of that. I think no one seeing me depart would have recognized me as Gilgamesh the king, so wild and frightful did I look. I scarcely would have known me myself, I think.
So did I wander dismally off into the steppe, following no plan, seeking no path, hoping only to find some place where I might elude the hounds of death.
I could not tell you now what route I took. I think I began by going east toward Elam, into that green wilderness where Enkidu first was found, as though I believed I might discover another one just like him out there. But soon I turned north to the land they call Uri, and then I may have swung around to the west where the Martu people dwell, and after that I do not know. I paid no heed to the rising of the sun, or to its setting. I was in a madness. I walked by day or by night, and slept wherever I chose, or did not sleep at all; and I walked without knowing where I was nor where I had been. I am sure, at least, that I was at all times outside the boundaries of the Land. Several times I think I came up against the walls of the world, and looked out into the places that are beyond the compass of the earth. Maybe I went into those places; I do not know. I was in a madness.
I felt fear of things I had never feared before. One night in a mountain pass where the air was cold and thin and stung the nostrils, the smell came to me of lions: a bitter smell, sour and keen. If I had been Gilgamesh, and had had Enkidu beside me, we would have run up the rocks even though it was dark and hunted those lions for their skins, and made cloaks out of them before we slept. But Enkidu was dead and I was not Gilgamesh: I was no one, I was mad. Fear came over me and made me tremble. I raised my eyes to the moon, which hung like a great white lamp above the sharp peaks, and cried out to Nanna the god, “Protect me, I beg you, for I am afraid.” Those words, I am afraid, sounded strange to me even as I said them: there was that much of Gilgamesh still alive within me. I am afraid. Had I ever spoken those words before? I had been afraid of death, yes, I suppose. But to be afraid of lions?
Nanna took pity on me. He caused me to fall into a deep sleep despite my fear. I dreamed of gardens and orchards; and when the morning light woke me I saw the lions all around me, rejoicing in life. I felt no fear now. I took my axe in my hand; I drew my dirk from my belt; I ran among those lions like an arrow speeding from the bow, and struck at them and scattered them and killed more than one. That was better than cowering and snuffling in fear. But I was a madman still.
In another place where the trees were thick and squat and had leaves like sharp little awls I saw the Imdugud-bird perched on a branch with her heavy red talons digging deep into the wood. Or rather the Imdugud-bird saw me, and knew me, and called out, “Where are you going, son of Lugalbanda?”
“Is that you, Imdugud-bird?”
She spread her wings, which are like the wings of a great eagle, and preened her head, which is the head of a lioness. Her eyes sparkled as though they were encrusted with jewels. I knew her for what she was.
I said, “I am in terror of death, Imdugud. I am looking for a place where death cannot find me.”
She laughed. Her laughter is like the laughter of a lioness, soft and frightful. “Death found Enkidu. Death found Dumuzi. Death found the hero Lugalbanda. Why do you think death will not find Gilgamesh?”
“Two-thirds of me is god, one-third is human.”
She laughed again, more harshly, a cackling laugh. “Then two-thirds of you will live, and one-third will die!”
“You mock me, Imdugud. Why be so cruel?” I held out my hands to her. “What harm have I done to you, that you should mock me? Is it because I drove you from the huluppu-tree? That tree was Inanna’s. It was my duty then to serve Inanna. I asked you gently; I asked you well. Help me, Imdugud.”
My words seemed to reach her soul. Quietly she said, “How can I help you, son of Lugalbanda?”
“Tell me where I can go that death will not find me.”
“Death comes to all mortals, son of Lugalbanda.”
“To all, without exception?”
“Without exception,” she said. Then she was silent a time; and then she said, “Indeed there has been one exception. It is one of which you are aware.”
My heart began to race. Urgently I said, “One who is exempt from dying? I cannot think. Tell me. Tell me!”
“In your madness and your despair you have forgotten the hero of the Flood.”
“Ziusudra! Yes!”
“He dwells eternally in the land of Dilmun. Have you forgotten that, Gilgamesh?”
I quivered with excitement. It was like a sudden fever. I saw there might be a hope.
Eagerly I cried, “And if I go to him, Imdugud? What then? Will he share the secret of life with me, if I ask him?”
I heard the mocking cackle again. “If you ask him? If you ask him? If you ask him?” Her voice was less like a lioness’ now, and more like that of some huge strange crow. She fluttered her great wings. “Ask! Ask! Ask!”
“Tell me the way, Imdugud!”
“Ask! Only ask!”
Now it was becoming harder for me to see her: the air grew thick and the dark needles of the tree seemed to be closing about her. Nor could I hear her easily any longer: her words were losing themselves in the sound of the beating of her wings and the snorting of her laughter.
“Imdugud?” I cried.
“Ask! Ask! Ask!”
There was a sharp cracking sound. The branch fell suddenly from the tree, as branches will do when the season has been very dry. It landed almost at my feet; I leaped back barely in time. When I looked up again I saw no sign of the Imdugud-bird against the pale blue-white sky.
29
ZIUSUDRA. YES, I KNEW THE tale. Who has not heard it?
This is how the harper Ur-kununna sang it to me, when I was a child in the palace of Lugalbanda:
A time came long ago when the gods grew weary of mankind. The uproar, the clamor, that rose to heaven out of the Land was annoying to them. It was Enlil who was angriest, exclaiming, “How can I sleep, when they make so much noise?” And he sent a famine to destroy us. For six years there was no rain. Grains of salt rose from the earth and covered the fields, and the crops perished. People ate their own daughters; one house devoured another. But the wise and compassionate Enki took pity on us, and caused the drought to end.
A second time the anger of Enlil grew hot against mankind, and he hurled plagues upon us; and a second time the mercy of Enki brought us relief. Those who had fallen ill recovered, and new children were born to those who had lost theirs. Once more the world teemed with people, and our noise went up to heaven like the bellowing of a wild bull. Yet again did the rage of Enlil arise. “This clamor is intolerable to me,” said Enlil to the gods meeting in council; and before them all he vowed to destroy the world in a vast flood.
But the lord of floods is Enki the wise, who dwells in the great abyss. The making of the deluge therefore was given into Enki’s hands; and because Enki loves mankind, he saw to it that the destruction would not be total. There was at that time in the ancient city of Shuruppak a king named Ziusudra, a man of great virtue and piousness. By night Enki came to this king in a dream, and whispered to him, “Leave your house! Build a ship! Abandon your kingdom and save your life!” He told Ziusudra to make his ship as wide as it was long, and to make a roof over it that was as sturdy as the vault that covers the abyss of the ocean; and he was to take the seed of a
ll living things on board the ship when the great flood came.
Ziusudra said to the god, “I will do your bidding, my lord. But what am I to tell the people and the elders of the city when they see me making ready to depart?”
To which Enki made this sly response: “Go to them and say to them that you have learned that Enlil has come to hate you, and you cannot live in Shuruppak any longer, or set your foot in any territory where Enlil rules. Therefore you are taking refuge in the great deep, to dwell with your lord Enki. But when you are gone, tell them, Enlil will shower down abundance on the people of Shuruppak: the choicest birds, the finest fishes, a rain of wheat. Tell them that, Ziusudra.”
So at the coming of dawn the king gathered his household about himself and gave the order for the building of the ship. All of them took part in the toil, even the small children, who carried the baskets of pitch. On the fifth day Ziusudra laid the keel and the ribs. The walls were a hundred twenty cubits in height, and the sides of the deck were a hundred twenty cubits in length, and the floor was the size of a field. He built six decks, and divided the interior into nine sections with sturdy bulkheads between. He drove in the water-plugs where they belonged, he had a supply of punting-poles laid aside. The caulking alone required a whole measure of oil. Every day he slaughtered bullocks and sheep for the workmen, and gave them wine both red and white as though it were river water, so that they might feast as they did on the day of the new year. On the seventh day the ship was finished.