Gilgamesh the King

  I thanked her. I held her a long while in my arms.

  For three days more I sojourned in the tavern of Siduri by the shore of the warm green sea. She fed me well and bathed me and slept with me. I found myself thinking at times that this life was in truth not so bad, that it might not be impossible for me simply to go on and on like this, giving no thought to tomorrow, living only for the easy pleasures of the moment. Why not? What did tomorrow offer, except death and darkness? But I did not really believe that I could live that way for long. And neither did Siduri. On the fourth day, as I lay sleeping after a long night of lovemaking, she came to me and shook me by the shoulder and whispered, “Awaken, Gilgamesh! The boatman Sursunabu has come from Dilmun. Up, dress yourself, come with me to the harbor, if you would seek passage with him.”

  33

  DILMUN! HOLY ISLE! PARADISE OF the gods!

  They tell such fabulous tales of Dilmun, all those whose business it is to be tellers of tales—the harpers, the priests, the story-spinners in the marketplaces. It lies in the south, where the Two Rivers run into the Sea of the Rising Sun. They say that it is a place where there is neither sickness nor death, where all is pure and clean and bright, where the raven does not croak and the wolf snatches not the lamb. It has been a habitation for gods: Enki dwelled there; Ninhursag dwelled there; and together they gave birth to gods and goddesses. Utu smiles constantly on Dilmun; flowers bloom without end; its water is the sweetest in the world.

  But I have been there. I will tell you of the true Dilmun.

  It may be a paradise indeed. Yet it is an earthly paradise at best, a gentle place but not without flaws. It has its share of the common hardships of the world. There are days when the sun does not shine; there are days when stormy winds blow. One can grow ill in Dilmun, and one can die; one may find mice gnawing in one’s barley-sacks, or the grubs of insects; there are beggars there, and people born without legs or eyes, and other unfortunates. Still, it is a gentle place: I have known worse. The air is hot and wet, which is strange to us, for in the Land the hot season is the dry season, and the air is not moist; but in Dilmun the air is moist all the time, though there is little rain. In the winters the breeze is from the north and the heat is more easily endured. It is a small island, but very fertile, well watered, with rich groves of date-trees. The houses are white, with flat roofs. There is great prosperity.

  The good fortune of Dilmun is its location in the Sea of the Rising Sun. It lives by trade, and lives well. Its ships go out not only to the cities of the Land lying along the Two Rivers, but far off to Meluhha and Makan and other kingdoms even more remote, of which little is known in Uruk. Through the marketplace of Dilmun pass copper from the mines of Makan and gold from Meluhha, rare timber from the countries of the distant east, ivory and lapis lazuli and carnelian out of Elam and the nations beyond, and also all the manufactured goods of the Land, our textiles and our utensils of copper and bronze and our fine jewelry. I have seen in the shops of Dilmun the fine smooth green stone that comes from some land beyond the edge of the world; no one knows its name, but they know that the stone comes from there, dug from the earth by demons with yellow skins. Everything of this world and of the worlds beyond passes through Dilmun on its way to be sold somewhere else, and whatever passes through Dilmun creates more wealth for the merchants of Dilmun as it passes. If wealth is a hallmark of paradise, then Dilmun is paradise. I can understand why Enlil sent Ziusudra there for his everlasting reward. Its merchants are plump and sleek. They drive hard bargains and live in fine palaces. Someday, I think, a king who does not understand the value of having such a port as Dilmun for the sake of the world’s commerce will descend on it like a lion, and slaughter those sleek merchants so he may loot the riches of their bulging warehouses. That will be too bad for Dilmun; but until that day comes it will be a place where life is kind and common folk can live like kings.

  In truth I was not in Dilmun long. What I found is that Dilmun is not the home of Ziusudra, although Ziusudra does indeed exist, even if he is not precisely the Ziusudra that the fables had led me to expect. He dwells not on Dilmun but on a smaller island without a name that lies perhaps half a league off its western shore. I learned that from the boatman Sursunabu. It was the first of many things I would learn about Ziusudra before I left those blessed isles.

  This boatman was a gaunt old fellow with gray hair tied in a knot behind his head. He wore only a strip of ragged brown cloth about his hips, and his skin was tanned dark as leather. I found him in the harbor of the fishing village, loading things into a long, narrow vessel built of reeds covered with a thick coating of pitch. When we approached, he greeted Siduri amiably but without warmth, and took almost no notice of me.

  The tavern-woman said, “I bring you a passenger, Sursunabu. This is Gilgamesh of Uruk, who would speak with Ziusudra.”

  “Let him speak with Ziusudra, then. What is that to me?”

  “He needs passage to the island.”

  With a shrug Sursunabu said, “Let him find passage to the island if that is what he wants. And then let him see if Ziusudra will admit him.”

  “Show him your silver,” Siduri whispered.

  I stepped forward and said, “I can pay well for my passage.”

  The boatman gave me a blank stare. “What need do I have of your metal?”

  A bold fellow! But there was no haughtiness about him. He was merely indifferent. I had not encountered that before and it was a mystery to me.

  In rising anger I said, “Will you refuse me? I am king in Uruk!”

  “Be wary, Sursunabu,” Siduri said. “He takes refusals badly. His temper is fierce, and his love for himself is immense.”

  I turned and gaped at her. “What did you say?”

  She smiled. It seemed a tender smile, not at all mocking. She replied, “You alone of all mankind fly into a rage when you consider your death. What is that, if not love of self, Gilgamesh? You mourn your own passing. You weep harder for yourself than ever you did for your friend who died.”

  I was amazed—both by the brutal bluntness of her words, and by the thought that there might be truth in them. I blinked at her; I struggled to reply. But I could find no answer.

  She went on, “You said it yourself. You grieved mightily for your Enkidu, but it was the fear of death, your own death, that drove you from your city into the wilderness. Is that not so? And now you run to Ziusudra, thinking he will teach you how to escape from dying. Has any man ever loved himself more?” The tavern-keeper laughed and looked toward the boatman. “Come, Sursunabu, put a better face on things! This man is king in Uruk, and he dreams of living forever. Take him to Ziusudra, I beg you. Let him learn what he must learn.”

  The boatman spat and went on loading his boat.

  It was too much, the boatman’s disdain and the sharp edge of Siduri’s words. My wrath overflowed. There was sudden fire in my spirit. I felt a drumming in my head and my hands shook. Angrily I strode toward Sursunabu. There was a row of small columns of polished stone resting on the ground between me and the boat; these I kicked furiously aside, knocking some into the water, smashing others, so that I could get to Sursunabu. I caught him by the shoulder. He looked up at me, entirely unafraid, though I was twice his size and could break him as easily as I had broken those things of stone. At that fearless look my rage subsided a little, and I let go of him, catching in my breath, trying to cool the white-hot blaze within my soul.

  As humbly as I knew how I said, “I pray you, boatman, take me to your master. I will pay the price, whatever it is.”

  “I told you, I have no need of your metal.”

  “Take me anyway. For love of the gods, whose child I am.”

  “Are you? Then what fear do you have of death?”

  I felt my anger returning at these bland uncaring rejoinders of his, but I fought it down. “Must I kneel? Must I beg? Is it so great a thing, to take me to that island of yours?”

  He laughed a strange thin laugh. “It is a great
thing now, O foolish Gilgamesh. In your rage you have smashed the sacred stones that insure a safe passage: do you know that? They would have protected us. But you have broken them.”

  I was greatly abashed. I have rarely felt so sheepish. My cheeks flamed; I dropped to my knees and searched for the little stone columns. But I had fallen upon them too vigorously; they lay scattered in many pieces, and I cannot say how many I had kicked into the sea, but it was more than a few. Numbly I gathered up those that remained. Sursunabu told me with a gesture that it was futile. “We will manage without them,” he said. “The risks will be greater. But if you are the child of the gods, perhaps you will ask them to look after us during our crossing.”

  “So you will take me!”

  “What is it to me?” he said, shrugging once more.

  Siduri came to me. She caught my hands in hers, she pressed her soft breasts against my chest. Gently she said, “I did not mean to speak scornfully of you, Gilgamesh. But I think there was some truth in my words, harsh though they were.”

  “It may be so.”

  “Despite the things I said, I do hope you find what you seek.”

  “I thank you, Siduri. For that wish and for all the rest.”

  “But if you should fail to find it, perhaps you will come back here. There will always be a place for you with me, Gilgamesh.”

  “There are many worse places to be,” I told her. “But I think that I will not be coming back.”

  “Then fare you well, Gilgamesh.”

  “Fare you well, Siduri.”

  She held me, and she offered a prayer, speaking to some goddess that was not any goddess I knew. She prayed that I would find peace, that I would come soon to the end of my wanderings. The only peace I could see for myself just then was the peace of the grave, and I hoped Siduri did not mean that; but I chose to take her prayer at its best meaning, and thanked her for it. Then the boatman beckoned me in his brusque sour way. I climbed in and took a seat at the prow, against mats of straw. He pushed us off from shore, running a short way out into the water before he leaped in beside me.

  Silently we set forth for Dilmun. The gods protected us, even though I had smashed the things of stone, and our crossing was an easy one under bright skies. For a time we bobbed in open water—no longer green here, but blue with the deep blue of the wide sea—and there was no land in view anywhere, neither behind us nor before us. That made me uneasy. I had never been out of sight of land before. I felt the presence of the great abyss all about me. I thought I could look down into the water and see the mighty lord of the depths, giant Enki, in his lair. I imagined I beheld the shadow of the horns of his crown. And in the heat of day I felt a chill, a chill that comes from going too close to great gods. But I prayed to him, saying, I am Gilgamesh Lugalbanda’s son, the king in Uruk, and I seek what I must seek: spare me until I find it, great and wise Enki. My prayer sank into the abyss and I suppose it must have been heeded, for late in the day I saw a dark line of palm-trees across the horizon, and the white limestone walls of a large city shimmering in the last of the sunlight, with many ships drawn up on the beach before it.

  “Dilmun,” Sursunabu grunted. It was the only word he had spoken during the entire crossing.

  34

  I STAYED THERE FIVE DAYS, or perhaps six, while I waited to be allowed into the presence of Ziusudra. It was a restless time. From Sursunabu I had learned that the patriarch did not live on Dilmun itself, but had his retreat on one of the adjacent smaller islands, surrounded by a company of holy men and women. Few were admitted as pilgrims to that island; whether I would be one of them he could not say. In his curt and surly way he promised only to carry my request. Then he departed, leaving me behind on Dilmun. I wondered if I would ever see him again.

  I tell you, I was unaccustomed to begging favors of boatmen, or to ask humbly for permission to journey here and there. But it was an art I had to learn, for there was no other way. I told myself that the gods had decreed these things upon me as one more stage in my initiation into true wisdom.

  At a hostelry near the waterfront I found pleasant lodging: a large, airy room, open on its seaward side to sunlight and breezes. That is not the way we build in the Land, where it is folly to make openings in walls; but our winters are more harsh than those of Dilmun. It did not seem wise to advertise my true rank in this place, so I gave my name to the innkeeper as Lugal-amarku, which is the name of the little hunchbacked wizard whose services I had used from time to time. Now he served me without knowing it.

  There was no way I could disguise my height or the breadth of my shoulders, but I tried at least to hold myself in an unkingly way, with my chest made hollow and my chin pulled back. I met no man’s eye unless he met mine first, and I said little to anyone except when it was unavoidable. Whether anyone recognized me I cannot say; but no one, at any rate, hailed me to my face as the king of Uruk.

  The city swarmed with merchants and seamen of every nation. Some spoke tongues familiar to me—I heard the language of the Land a good deal, and also the desert-dwellers’ language, which is native to Dilmun and all the regions nearby—but others came forth with amazing incomprehensible babble, like the stuff one might hear people speaking in one’s dreams. How they understood it themselves I cannot say: one of the languages was all clicks and sneezes and snorts, and another flowed like a swift river, one word joining into the next without break, and a third was more sung than spoken, in a high chanting way.

  Not only their languages were strange, but their faces too. One vessel that arrived on my first day had a crew with skins black as the middle watch of a moonless night, and hair like tight wool. Their noses were broad and flat, their lips were thick. Surely they must be demons or men of some other world, I thought. But they laughed and sported like ordinary seamen, and no one in the harbor seemed to make a great deal of them. Just then a merchant passed by whose hair was shaven after the manner of the Land, and I halted him: sure enough, he was from the city of Eridu. I nodded to the black ones and he said, “They are men of the kingdom of Punt.” That is a place where the air is like fire, which blackens its people’s skins. He could not tell me where Punt is; he pointed vaguely toward the horizon. Later in the day I saw other black-skinned men who looked altogether different, for these had thin noses and lips, and long straight hair so dark it was almost blue. From their language and manner of dress I thought they might be men of Meluhha, which is far away to the east beyond Elam; and that proved to be the case. I hoped also to see the yellow-skinned demons who mine the green stone, but there were none of those in Dilmun. Perhaps they do not even exist, though the green stone certainly does, and very beautiful it is, too.

  I said little and listened much. And learned some news of the Land that troubled me deeply.

  This I heard one night at my tavern as I sat by myself sipping ale. Two men came in who were speaking in the language of the Land. I feared at first they might be of Uruk; but they wore scarlet robes trimmed with yellow, a style that is common in the city or Ur. Nevertheless I hunched myself down to look as inconspicuous as is possible for me, and turned my back to them. From their accents I knew after a moment that they were indeed men of Ur: the younger one had newly arrived in Dilmun, and the other was asking him for news of home.

  “Tell me again,” said the older man. “Is it really so that Nippur is ours?”

  “It is.”

  I sat bolt upright at that, and caught my breath sharply. Nippur is a sacred city: it should not be ruled by Ur.

  “How did it come to pass?” the older man asked.

  The newcomer said, “Good fortune, and good timing. It was the season when Mesannepadda the king goes to Nippur to worship at the Dur-anki shrine and perform the rite of the pickaxe. This year he had a thousand men with him; and while he was there the governor of the city fell ill. It looked as though he would die; and the priest of Enlil came to our king and said, ‘Our governor is dying, will you name another for us?’ Whereupon Mesannepadda prayed lon
g at the temple and came out to say that Enlil had visited him and had commanded him to take upon himself the governorship of Nippur.”

  “It was that simple?”

  “That simple,” said the younger man, and they both laughed. “The word of Enlil—who will go against it?”

  “Especially if it is backed by a thousand men!”

  “Especially so,” said the other.

  I clenched my hand tight around my beaker of ale. This was grim news. I had not taken action when Mesannepadda had overthrown the sons of Agga and made himself king in Kish as well as in Ur; it had not seemed a threat to Uruk, and I had had other matters to occupy my mind, as I have related. But Nippur, which in the time of Enmebaraggesi and Agga had owed allegiance to Kish, had been independent since Agga’s death. If Mesannepadda, having taken Kish, had seized possession of Nippur as well, we were on our way toward being encircled by an empire in the process of formation. Surely I could not allow that. I wondered if they knew of it in Uruk. Were the people of Uruk waiting for Gilgamesh their king to return and lead them in war against Ur? What limit would there be to Mesannepadda’s ambitions, if Gilgamesh did not set one?

  And Gilgamesh—where was he? Sitting in a tavern in Dilmun, waiting to be summoned to the isle of Ziusudra so that he might somehow wheedle eternal life for himself! Was that how a king was meant to conduct himself?

  I did not know what to do. I sat like stone.

  But the newcomer from Ur was not done with his news. Old Mesannepadda was dead; his son Meskiagnunna had come to the throne. And he was losing no time showing that he meant to continue his father’s policies. Mesannepadda had begun the construction in Nippur of a temple to Enlil. The new king not only was overseeing the completion of that temple but, by way of further demonstrating his deep concern for the welfare of Nippur, had given orders for the immediate restoration of the great ceremonial center known as the Tummal that had fallen into ruin after Agga’s time. Worse and worse! These kings of Ur were treating Nippur as though it were their colony! It must not be, I thought. Let them build temples in Ur if they wished to build temples! Let them look after their own city and keep their hands away from Nippur. It was all I could do to prevent myself from rising up and seizing those two men of Ur and slamming their heads together, and commanding them to go back to their city at once to tell their king that Gilgamesh of Uruk was their enemy and was coming to make war on him.