Gilgamesh the King

  Following this, a certain great lord of the city who had been among those carrying the bier of my father from the temple went to his side. He picked up the horned crown that lay beside him, and held it high and showed it to all, as it glinted in the sun. I am forbidden to write the name by which that lord then was known, for afterward he became king of Uruk, and one may not write or utter the birth-name of one who becomes king; but the king-name he took was Dumuzi. And he who was to become Dumuzi held the horned crown out to the south and the east and the north and the west, and then he put it on my father’s head, and a great outcry went up from the people of Uruk.

  Only a god wears a horned crown. I turned to Ur-kununna and said, “Is my father now a god?”

  “Yes,” the old harper said softly. “Lugalbanda has become a god.”

  Then I am a god also, I thought. A giddy sensation of high excitement ran through me. Or at least—so I told myself—I am in some part a god. Part of me must be mortal still, I supposed, since I was born of mortal flesh. Nevertheless the child of a god must be a god to some degree, is that not so? It was a bold thing for me to think. But indeed I have come to know that it is the case, that I am in part a god, though not entirely.

  “And if he is a god, then will he come back from death as other gods who have died came back?” I asked.

  Ur-kununna smiled and said, “These things are never certain, boy. He is a god, but I think he will not come back. Look you now, bid him farewell.”

  I saw three husky grooms of the bedchamber and three charioteers lift the alabaster bier and begin the descent into the pit with it. Before they lifted it they had sipped of the bitter wine. They did not come forth from the pit; no one who had gone down into it had come forth. To Ur-kununna I said, “What is that wine they all drink?”

  “It gives a peaceful sleep,” he replied.

  “And they are all sleeping there in the ground?”

  “In the ground, yes. Alongside your father.”

  “Will I drink it? Will you?”

  “You will drink it, yes, but not for many years, I think. But I will drink of it in a few minutes.”

  “So you will sleep in the ground near my father?”

  He nodded.

  “Until tomorrow morning?”

  “Forever,” he said.

  I considered that. “Ah. It will be much like dying, then.”

  “Very like dying, boy.”

  “And all the others who have gone underground, they are dying too?”

  “Yes,” said Ur-kununna.

  I considered that also. “But it is a terrible thing to die! And they drink without a murmur, and they walk into the darkness with a steady stride!”

  “It is terrible to go to the House of Dust and Darkness,” he said, “and live scuttling in the shadows and feed on dry clay. But those of us who go with your father go to the home of the gods, where we will serve him forever.” And he went on to tell me what a privilege it was to die in company with a king. I saw the white light of wisdom shining from his eyes again, and a look of sublime joy. But then I asked him if he could be sure that he would go to the home of the gods with Lugalbanda, rather than to the House of Dust and Darkness, and the light of his eyes went out, and he smiled sadly and replied that nothing is ever sure, and most particularly that. And touched my hand, and turned away, and played a little melody on his harp, and walked forward and drank from the wine and went down into the pit, singing as he went.

  Others went into the pit too, sixty or seventy people all told. The last two to go were the woman Alitum wearing my mother’s coat and jewelry, and the boy Enkihegal wearing mine; and I understood that they were dying in our place. That put a fear in me, to think that if the custom were only a little different, I might have been drinking the wine and going down into the pit. But the fear was only a small one then, because at that time I did not yet have a true understanding of death, but thought of it only as a kind of sleep.

  Then the drums were stilled, and laborers began to shovel earth down the ramp and into the pit, where it must have covered everything over, the chariots and the asses and the treasure and the grooms and the ladies-in-waiting and the palace servants and the body of my father, and the harper Ur-kununna. After that, craftsmen fell to work sealing the ramp with bricks of unbaked mud, so that within a few hours there would be no trace of what lay beneath.

  Those of us who remained, of the ones who had marched in the original procession, returned to the temple of Inanna.

  We were a much smaller group now: my mother and I and the great lords of the city and other important people, but none of the palace servants or warriors, for they were in the pit with my father. We gathered ourselves before the altar and I sensed the goddess-presence again, close by and almost choking me. A welter of complexities pressed in on my spirit. I had never felt so alone, so forlorn. The world held only mysteries for me. It seemed that I was in a waking dream. I looked about, seeking Ur-kununna. But of course he was not there, and the questions I meant to ask him would not be answered. Which gave me one understanding of the meaning of death, which was, that those who are dead are beyond our speech, and will not answer when we address them. And I felt as if I had been handed a skewer of grilled meat, and then the meat had been snatched away as I was about to eat, leaving me to bite only air.

  There was more drumming and chanting and I thought a thousand different things about death. I thought that my father was gone forever; but that was not really so bad, since he had become a god and thus had made me in part a god, and anyway he had never had much time for me because of his absences at the wars, though he had promised to teach me the things of manhood some day. I would learn those from someone else. But Ur-kununna was gone too. I would never hear his singing again. And the boy Enkihegal my playmate, and his father Girnishag the gardener, and all those others who had been part of my everyday life—gone, gone, gone. Leaving me to bite on air.

  And I? Would I die too?

  I will not let that thing happen to me, I vowed. Not to me. I am in part a god. And although gods sometimes die, as Inanna once had died when she went to the nether world, they do not die for long. Nor would I. I swore never to let death have me.

  For there is too much in the world for me to see, I told myself, and there are a multitude of great deeds that must be done. I will challenge death: so I resolved. I will defeat death. I have only scorn for death, and I will not yield to it. Death, you are no match for me! Death, I will conquer you!

  And then I thought that if I do somehow die, well, I am in part a god and I am destined to be a king, and at my death I will be translated up into the heavens like Lugalbanda. I will not have to go down into the vile House of Dust and Darkness as ordinary mortals must.

  And then I thought, no, there is no certainty of that. Even Inanna went down into that place, though she was brought forth; but if I go there, will I be brought forth? And I felt great dread. No matter who you are, I thought, no matter how many servants and warriors are put to sleep in the funeral-pit to serve you in the afterlife, you may still be sent into that dark loathsome place. The disdain for death that I had felt a moment before gave way to fear, an all-possessing fear that swept across my soul like the great chill of winter. A strangeness entered my mind, the kind of strangeness that comes when one dreams, and I did not know whether at that moment I dreamed or was awake. There was a pressure in my head, almost to bursting. It was a sensation I had never felt before, though I was to feel it many times later in life, and with far more power than in this first light touch. A god was attempting to enter me. Of that I was certain, though I did not know which god.

  But I knew even then it was a god and not a demon, and that he bore a message for me, which was, You will be king, and a great king, and then you will die, and you may not avoid that destiny, try as you may.

  I would not accept the god and his message. There was no room in my soul to admit such things yet. I was only a child.

  In my chaos I saw the figure of
death before me, all slashing talons and beating wings, and I cried out defiantly, “I will escape you!” And felt a great bravery in me for an instant, which gave up its place an instant later to dread, and dread, and dread. They are all sleeping now in the pit beside Lugalbanda, I thought. And where will I sleep? Where will I sleep?

  Dizziness overwhelmed me. The god battered at my mind, demanding admission. But I could neither yield nor resist, for I was paralyzed by the dread of death, a thing that had never afflicted me before. I swayed and reached out for Ur-Kununna, but he was not there, and I fell to the floor of the temple and lay there I know not how long.

  Hands lifted me. Arms enveloped me.

  “It is his grief that has overcome him,” someone said.

  No, I thought. I feel no grief. Lugalbanda’s journey is Lugalbanda’s task. It is my own task that concerns me, not his, for his task is dying and mine is to live. So it was not grief that cast me to the ground, but the god, trying to enter my soul as I stood there wrapped in dread. But I did not tell them that.

  2

  IN THE MONTH OF KISILIMU, when the heavy rains of winter sweep like scythes over the Land, the gods bestowed a new king upon Uruk. This occurred at the first hour of the month, that is, at the moment when the moon’s new crescent appeared for the first time. There came the beating of drums and the cry of trumpets, and by torchlight we made our way to the precinct of Eanna, to the White Platform, to the temple built by my grandfather Enmerkar.

  “A king is come!” shouted the people in the streets. “A king! A king!”

  A city cannot go without a king very long. The gods must be served, which is to say, the proper offerings to heaven must be made at the proper time, for we are their creatures and their servants: so there must be grain, there must be meat. And thus the wells must be freshened and the canals dredged and extended, the fields must be kept green in the dry times, the beasts must be fattened. To achieve those things order must be maintained, and it is the king who bears that burden. He is the shepherd of the people. Without a king all things would fall to ruin, and the needs of the gods, for which they created us, would go unmet.

  Three thrones had been erected in the great hall of the temple. The left-hand one bore the sign of Enlil, and the right-hand one had the sign of An. But the throne in the center was flanked on each side by the towering bundle of reeds, looped at the upper end, which is the sign of the goddess; for Inanna holds the power in Uruk.

  On the throne of Enlil rested the scepter of the city, and on the throne of An was the golden crown that my father had worn when he was king. But on the throne in the center sat the priestess Inanna so resplendent that it pained my eyes to look upon her.

  She wore no clothing that night. Yet she was far from bare, for her body was covered in every place by ornaments, beads of lapis cascading down over her breasts, a plate of gold in a triangle over her loins, golden braid in her hair, a circlet of gold about her hips, a jewel in her navel, jewels at her hips and nose and eyes, two sets of earrings in the shape of the new moon, one of gold and one of bronze. Beneath this her skin was oiled; by the light of the torches she gleamed like a being lit with an inner radiance.

  Behind and to the sides of the thrones stood those officials of the court who had not gone down into the pit with Lugalbanda: the high constable, the throne-bearer, the war-chamberlain and the water-chamberlain, the secretary of state, the supervisor of fisheries, the gatherer of taxes, the overseer of stewards, the master of the boundaries, and many more. The only one I did not see among them was the great lord who had placed the horned crown of divinity on my dead father’s brow. He was missing for good reason, for he was the man upon whom Inanna had chosen to bestow the kingship this day, and the king at that time was not permitted to enter the temple of the goddess until he was summoned by her to do so. In later years I saw to it that the custom was altered.

  The summoning of the new king into the temple was many hours in coming, or so it seems to me in recollection. First came prayer and libations, the invocation of each god in turn, commencing with the lesser ones, Igalimma who is the doorkeeper of the gods and Dunshagana their steward, and Enlulim the divine goatherd and Ensignun the god of charioteers, and so many others that I could hardly keep a tally of them, until Enki and Enlil and An finally were reached. The hour was late and my eyelids were heavy, and to remain awake was a struggle.

  And I grew terribly restless. No one seemed to remember that I was there, or to care. The chanting droned and droned and at one point I wandered away into the darkness beyond the torchlight, finding an entrance somehow into a passageway that led to a maze of lesser chapels. It seemed to me that I heard the fluttering of invisible wings there, and scratchy laughter far away. I grew fearful and wished I were back in the great hall. But I was unable to find the way. Desperately I called upon Lugalbanda to guide me.

  But instead of Lugalbanda, one of Inanna’s handmaidens came for me, a tall sparkling-eyed girl of ten or eleven years. All she wore were seven strings of blue beads about her waist and five amulets of pink shell tied to the ends of her hair, and her body was painted down front and sides with serpent motifs. She laughed and said, “Where are you going, son of Lugalbanda? Are you trying to find the gate of the nether world?”

  I despised the mockery in her voice. I drew myself tall, though she remained taller still, and said, “Let me be, girl. I am a man.”

  “Ah, a man! A man, are you! Yes, so you are, son of Lugalbanda! You are a very great man!”

  Now I could not tell whether I was being mocked or not. I began to shake from anger at her, and from an inner rage at myself, for not understanding the game she was playing with me. I was too young then. Taking me by the hand, she drew me against her, as though I were a doll, and she put my cheek against the buds of her breasts. I smelled the sharp perfume of her. “Little godling,” she murmured, and again her tone was somewhere on the borderland between irony and true deference. She stroked me and called me by my name, very familiarly, and told me hers. When I struggled and tried to pull away, she took both my hands in hers and tugged me about so that my eyes looked into her eyes. She held me and whispered fiercely, “When you are king, I will lie in your arms!”

  In that moment her tone held no mockery at all.

  I stared at her in amazement. Once again I felt that strange pressure in my brow that was the god brushing against the edges of my soul, merely for a moment. My lip trembled, and I thought I would cry, but I did not permit it of myself.

  “Come,” she said. “You must not miss the coronation ceremony, little godling. One day you will need to know how these things are done.”

  She took me back to the great hall just as a great flourish of music was sounded, flutes and double flutes, the long trumpets, the cymbals and tambourines. The new king had made his entrance at last. He was bare to the waist, wearing a flounced skirt below. His long hair was plaited and wound round his head and gathered behind. He lit a globe of incense and set down gifts before each of the thrones, a golden bowl filled with some fragrant oil, and a mana of silver, and a richly embroidered robe. Then he touched his forehead to the ground before Inanna, and kissed the ground also, and gave her a woven basket filled to overflowing with grain and fruits. Now the goddess rose from the throne and stood glittering like a beacon in the torchlight. “I am Ninpa the Lady of the Scepter,” she said in a voice so deep I could not believe it was a woman’s; and she took the royal scepter from the throne of Enlil and gave it to the king. “I am Ninmenna the Lady of the Crown,” she said, and took the golden crown from the throne of An and placed it upon the head of the king. Then she called him by his birth-name, which from that moment onward could never be uttered again; and then she called him by his king-name, saying, “You are Dumuzi, the great man of Uruk. So the gods decree.”

  There was no mistaking the sounds of surprise in the hall: gasps, murmurs, coughs. What I did not learn until long afterward was the reason for the surprise, which was that the new king had chose
n to call himself by the name of a god, and not a minor god at that. No one in memory had done that before.

  I knew of Dumuzi the god, of course. Any child would know his tale—the divine shepherd who wooed the goddess Inanna and won her for his wife, and reigned as king in Uruk for thirty-six thousand years, until Inanna, so that she might rescue herself from the demons of the nether world who held her captive, sold him to them to take her place below the ground. To pick that name by which to reign was strange indeed. For the tale of Dumuzi is the tale of the defeat of the king by the goddess. Was that the destiny that Uruk’s new ruler sought for himself? Perhaps he had considered only the grandeur of the first Dumuzi, and not his betrayal and downfall at the hand of Inanna; or perhaps he had not considered anything at all. Dumuzi he was, and king he was.

  When the rite was done the new king led the traditional procession to the palace for the final phase of his ceremony of investiture, followed by all the high dignitaries of the city. I also returned to the palace, but only to go to my own bedchamber. While I slept, the lords of the realm presented gifts to Dumuzi and laid down their badges and other insignia of office before him, so that he would have the right to select his own officials. But the custom long has been that such changes are never made on the day of the coronation, and so Dumuzi declared, as kings had always declared before him, “Let everyone resume his office.”