Gilgamesh the King
I said, “Was she greatly grieved? Did she lament and tear her robes?”
They nodded most solemnly. “Her grief was great indeed, O Gilgamesh.”
“And did they beat the drums for me? The lilissu-drum, the little balag-drums?”
They did not answer.
“Did they? Did they?”
“Yes.” A hoarse whisper. “They beat the drums for you, O Gilgamesh. They mourned most grievously for you.”
My head roared. I thought my fit was coming on. I felt the buzzing within, I felt the hissing. I came close to them, so that they trembled from being so near me, and I was trembling myself as I asked the question I most feared to ask: “And tell me this, have they chosen a king in my place yet?”
Again an exchange of worried glances. Those hapless merchants quivered like leaves in an autumn gale.
“Have they?” I demanded.
“Not—yet, O Gilgamesh,” said one finally.
“Ah, not yet? Not yet? The omens have been inauspicious, I imagine.”
“They say the goddess has called for a new king, but the assembly has thus far chosen to withhold its consent. There are those who think that you still live—”
“It is very likely that I do,” I said.
“—and they fear that the gods will be displeased, if a king should too hastily be put in your place—”
“The gods will very likely be displeased,” I said. “And not only the gods.”
“—but there is need, everyone agrees, for a king in Uruk; for you know, majesty, that Meskiagnunna of Ur is swollen with pride, that he has put both Kish and Nippur into his hand, that he looks now toward our city—and in these troublesome months we have not had a king—we have not had a king, majesty—”
“You have a king,” I said. “Make no mistake on that score: you have a king. Let’s hope that you don’t have two, by this time.”
There was a certain lightness to my tone of voice, I suppose, but none in my heart. I felt a great weight within, and much bewilderment. Was I still king? Did I even deserve to be? The gods had placed me in command over Uruk and I had deserted my post: that could not be denied. For that, anyone might say, I am to blame. But can any blame attach to us ever, when the gods call all the tunes? Had the gods not also sent me Enkidu, and then taken him away? And was it not so, therefore, that it was the gods who had aroused in me the pain, the fear of dying, that had driven me forth on my quest for life? Yes. Yes. Yes. I did not think that I was at fault. I had only been following the dictates of the gods in all things. But where was the will of proud Gilgamesh, then? Was I nothing but the plaything of the remote and uncaring great ones to whom this world belongs? The servant of the gods, yes: I will not deny that. We are all servants of the gods and it is folly to think otherwise. But their plaything? Their toy?
Well, I could not linger then over such questions. I brushed them aside. If I am no longer king in Uruk, I thought, let the goddess tell me so. Not her priestess, but the goddess herself. I will go to the city; I will seek out my answers there.
Then I felt the strong presence of my father the hero Lugalbanda within me. I had not felt him in a long while. The great king filled my spirit with his strength and gave me much comfort. I knew from that that I need feel no shame for anything I had done. The things I had done were what the gods had decreed for me, and they were right and proper things. My grief had been necessary. My quest had been necessary. The gods had resolved to bring me to wisdom: I had simply obeyed their design.
No longer did I doubt that I was still king. I sent the eldest of the merchants off at once to the palace of the governor of Eridu, to tell him that his overlord Gilgamesh of Uruk had arrived in his city and was awaiting an appropriate welcome. I instructed the youngest merchant to seek passage that day aboard the next ship sailing toward Uruk, so that he could bear word that the king was returning from his journeys. And I sent the third man out to fetch me wine and roasted meat, and a high-breasted wench of sixteen or seventeen years; for suddenly the juices of life were coursing in my body again. In all this dark period of wandering since the time of Enkidu’s dying, I had become a stranger to myself. I felt as though I had split in two, and the part that was Gilgamesh had strayed off somewhere leaving only a husk behind, and I was that husk. But now the vigor and power and life that were Gilgamesh the king were coming back into me. I was myself again. I was Gilgamesh, whole and complete. For this I gave thanks to Enlil the master, and to An the great father, and to Enki the god of the place I was now in; but most warmly did I give thanks to the god Lugalbanda from whose seed I had sprung. The great gods are far away, and we are at best like specks of sand to them. Lugalbanda stood close beside me, then and ever.
39
THE GOVERNOR THEN IN ERIDU was Shulutula the son of Akurgal. He was a small round dark-skinned man with a huge blunt nose. Eridu does not have kings; kingship went from that city a long time ago, before the Flood. But though his rank was only that of governor, Shulutula lived like a king, in a grand palace of two twin buildings surrounded by an immense double wall. He received me nervously, since I was in his city out of season and he was taken by surprise; but his nature was a tranquil one and as soon as he realized that I was not here to depose him or to make great demands upon his treasury he grew notably more easy. That night he ordered up a great feast for me, and showered me with gifts, fine spears and some concubines and a beautifully made alabaster statuette the length of my arm, with eyes encrusted with lapis lazuli and shell.
We talked far into the night. He knew I had been away from Uruk some time, but he dared not ask why, nor where I had gone. I tried to get from him an account of recent events in my city, but he could not or would not tell me much, only that he had heard the harvest had been poor and there had been some flooding along the canals during the season of high water. But the center of his concern, plainly, was not Uruk but Ur. That powerful city, after all, was only a few leagues from Eridu; and already Meskiagnunna had gobbled up Kish and Nippur. What would be next, if not Eridu? “How can we doubt it?” Shulutula asked me. “He is seeking kingship over all the Land.”
“The gods have not awarded the high kingship to Ur,” I said.
He peered somberly into his wine-cup. “Can we be sure of that?”
“It is not possible.”
“Once the kingship was in Eridu, was it not?” Shulutula said. “Long ago, before the Flood. Then it passed to Badtibira, to Larak, to—”
“Yes,” I cut in impatiently. “Spare me. I know the ancient annals as well as you.”
Though my brusque tone obviously ruffled him, he would not be deterred. I liked him for that. “I beg your indulgence,” is what he said, and then with surprising boldness went right on. “—to Sippar and to Shuruppak. Then came the Flood, and everything was destroyed. After the Flood, when the kingship of the Land again descended from heaven, the place where it came to reside was in Kish, is that not so?”
“Agreed,” I said.
“Meskiagnunna has made himself the master of Kish; can it not then be said that the kingship has gone from Kish to Ur?”
Now I saw what he was driving at.
I shook my head. “Hardly,” I said. “The kingship resided in Kish, yes. But you overlook something. In the first year of my reign Agga of Kish came to Uruk to make war, and he was beaten and taken captive. Clearly the kingship passed from Kish to Uruk at that moment. When the king of Ur seized Kish, he seized only a hollow thing. The kingship had gone from it; it had gone to Uruk. Where it now resides.”
“Then you maintain that the king of Uruk is king over the Land?”
“Most certainly,” I said.
“But there has been no king in Uruk these months past!”
“There will be a king in Uruk again very shortly, Shulutula,” I told him. I leaned forward until I could almost touch his enormous gourd of a nose with the tip of my own, and said in a way that admitted of no uncertainties, “Meskiagnunna can have Kish if he wishes it. But I will
not allow him to keep Nippur, for it is a holy city and must be free; and I tell you this, he will never have Eridu either. You have nothing to fear.” Then I rose; I yawned and stretched; and I emptied the last of my wine. “This is enough feasting for tonight, I think. Sleep calls me. In the morning I will visit the temples, and then I’ll begin my homeward journey. I will require of you a chariot and a team of asses, and a charioteer who knows his way north.”
He seemed puzzled. “You mean to go by land, majesty?”
I nodded. “It will give my people more time to prepare for my homecoming.”
“Then I will provide an escort of five hundred troops for you, and whatever else you may—”
“No,” I said. “A single chariot, and beasts to draw it. A single charioteer. I need nothing more than that. The gods will protect me, Shulutula, as they always have. I will go alone.”
He had trouble understanding that. He could not see that I had no wish to come marching into Uruk at the head of an army of foreign soldiers: I meant to enter my city as I had left it, alone, unafraid. My people would accept me as their king because I was their king, not because I had reimposed myself by force. When men are subdued by strength of arms, they do not submit in their souls, but yield merely because they have no choice. But when men are subdued by the power of character they yield to the core of their hearts, and submit in full measure. Any wise king knows these things.
So I took from Shulutula of Eridu merely what I had asked of him: a chariot, a charioteer. He gave me also some provisions and a quiver of fine javelins, in case we encountered lions or wolves along the way; but although he hovered around me anxiously trying to persuade me to accept some more imposing escort from him, I would not do it.
I stayed in Eridu five more days. There were purifications that I had to perform at the shrines of Enki and An, and a private rite in honor of Lugalbanda. Those matters occupied three days; the fourth, according to Shulutula’s conjurers, was an unlucky day, so I stayed on for a fifth. Then I set out at daybreak for Uruk. It was the twelfth day of the month Du’uzu, when summer’s full heat was beginning to fall upon the Land. The charioteer he gave me was a sturdy fellow named Ninurta-mansum, who was perhaps thirty years old, with the first flecks of gray in his beard. He wore across his breast the scarlet riband that announced he had pledged his life to the service of Enki. In a curious way it called to my mind a fiery red scar that had marked the body of old Namhani, who had driven my team long ago when I was a young prince in the service of Agga of Kish. Which was oddly appropriate, for the only charioteer I had ever known who was the equal of Ninurta-mansum in skill was Namhani: they were two of a kind. When they held the reins, it was as though they held the souls of their beasts in their hands.
At the hour of my departure I embraced Shulutula and pledged him once more that I would shield his city against the ambitions of the king of Ur; he slew a goat and poured out a libation of blood and honey at the main gate to insure my safe passage home; and then I rode out into the morning. We left the city by the Gate of the Abyss and went past the high dunes and a great grove of thorny kiskanu-trees, almost a forest of them: when I looked back, I saw the towers of the palace and temples of Eridu rising like the castles of demon princes against the pale early-morning sky. Then we crossed a rough stony ridge and went down into the valley, and the city was lost behind us.
Ninurta-mansum knew very well who I was and what was likely to happen if I fell into the hands of some patrolling squadron of men from Ur. So he gave that city a wide berth and swung around instead into the forlorn and desolate land on the western side of Eridu. It was all wasteland here, and a bleak bitter wind blew: the sand swirled up and took the form of tenuous ghosts whose melancholy eyes did not leave me all the day long. But I was not afraid. They were nothing more than swirling sand.
The asses seemed tireless. They flew onward hour after hour and seemed to know neither hunger nor thirst nor weariness. They could have been enchanted, or perhaps demons placed under a spell, so tireless were they. When we halted at sundown, they looked scarcely winded. I wondered what the beasts would do for water in this wilderness; but Ninurta-mansum began at once to dig, and straightaway a cool sweet spring came bubbling up out of the sand. Beyond doubt the blessing of Enki was upon that man.
When we no longer ran much risk of meeting warriors of Ur, the charioteer began to guide us closer to the river. We were on the Buranunu’s sunset side and had to cross it somehow to reach Uruk; but that was no great task for Ninurta-mansum. He knew a place where at this time of year the river was shallow and the bottom was firm, and took us across there. We had one bad moment when the leftmost ass lost his footing and went down, which I thought would pull the whole chariot over. But Ninurta-mansum gripped the traces and leaned all his strength into holding us upright. The other three asses stayed firm. The one that had stumbled came up out of the river snorting and spewing, and got himself in balance; and we came out safely on the river’s sunrise bank. Perhaps not even Namhani could have managed that.
Now we were in lands tributary to Uruk. The city itself was still some leagues to the northeast. I did not know whose land we had entered, whether it was Inanna’s or An’s or some magnate’s of the city—it might even have been mine, for I had vast holdings in this district—but whatever it was, temple land or private land, it was land of Uruk. After my long absence I felt such joy at seeing these rich fertile fields that I came close to leaping down from the chariot and embracing the earth. Instead I contented myself with a libation and the brief rites of homecoming. The charioteer knelt beside me, stranger though he was in Uruk. He was a holy man, that charioteer: holier than some priests and priestesses I have known.
We were encountering farming folk now, and of course they knew me for their king, if only from my height and bearing. They ran alongside the chariot shouting my name: I waved, I smiled, I made the signs of the gods to them. Ninurta-mansum reined the asses in and we moved at a slow trot, so the people might keep up with me. They gathered in number, coming in from this field and that as the word spread, until there were hundreds of them. That night when we halted they brought us the best that they had, strong black beer and the red beer they like so much, and the wine of dates, and the roasted meat of calves and sheep. And they came one by one for hours, weeping with gladness, to kneel before me and express their thanks that I still lived and ruled over them. I have had richer feasts, but none, I think, that has touched me so deeply.
Of course the news that I was approaching the city preceded me to Uruk. It was what I intended. I was sure that Inanna had used my absence to take great power into her grasp; I wanted that power to begin to slip from her, hour by hour, as the citizens whispered among themselves of the coming return of their king.
Then at last on a day when heat danced in the sky like the waves of the ocean I beheld the walls of Uruk rising in the distance, copper-bright, shining in the sun. Is there a finer sight in all the world than Uruk’s walls? I think not. I think that I would have heard tell of it, if there were anything to compare. But there is not, for ours is the city of cities, the goddess among cities, the city that lies at the heart and center of the world.
When I drew nearer, though, I saw an unfamiliar thing. On the plain outside the city, in the stretch of bare sandy land that lies between the High Gate and the Nippur Gate, splashes of brilliant color sprouted like huge flowers below the walls: puffs of scarlet and black, yellow and bright blue. These were a mystery to me until I was closer still; then I realized that tents and pavilions had been erected there. In celebration of my return, so I thought. But I was mistaken.
Instead of my good lords Bir-hurturre and Zabardi-bunugga riding toward me to meet me with troops and escort me into the city, which I might have expected, three women of Inanna came from those pavilions on foot. So I understood at once that there would be trouble. I did not know them by name, but I had seen them in the rites: they were high priestesses. They wore rich scarlet robes and had the serpent-emb
lem in bronze coiled about their left arms. When I was in hailing distance the one in the center, who was tall and stately with tightly woven black hair, made signs of the goddess at me and called out, “In Inanna’s name we bid you go no further!”
This was too brazen even for Inanna. I went rigid and caught my breath as rage began to rise in me; but then I forced myself to ease. Calmly I said, “Do you know me, priestess?”
She met my eyes coolly. I sensed great strength in her, and formidable power.
“You are Gilgamesh son of Lugalbanda,” she said.
“Indeed. I am Gilgamesh king of Uruk, back from my pilgrimage. Or will you dispute that?”
In the same measured way she said, as though conceding nothing, “It is the truth. You are the king.”
“Then why do the women of the goddess bid me halt in this place outside the walls? I would enter my city. I have been gone a long while; I am eager to see it again.”
We were like two swordsmen, testing each other with wary thrusts. “The goddess asks me to tell you of the joy she feels at your safe return,” she replied with no trace whatever of joy in her tone, “and requires of me that I convey you now to the place of purification which we have erected outside the walls.”
My eyes went wide. “Purification? Have I become unclean, then?”
Blandly she said, “In dreams the goddess has followed your wanderings, O king. She knows that dark spirits have impinged on your soul; and she would cleanse you of their malign force before you come into the city. It is her way to serve, and this is her service: surely you know that.”