GILGAMESH THE KING

ROBERT SILVERBERG

Copyright c 1984 by Agberg, Ltd.


THERE IS in Uruk the city a great platform of kiln-baked brick 
that was the playing field of the gods, long before the Flood, in that time when mankind had not yet been created and they alone 
inhabited the Earth. Every seventh year for the past ten thousand years we have painted the bricks of that platform white 
with a plaster of fine gypsum, so that it flashes like a vast mirror under the eye of the sun.
The White Platform is the domain of the goddess Inanna, to whom 
our city is consecrated. Many of the kings of Uruk have erected temples upon the platform for her use; and of all these 
shrines of the goddess none was more grand than the one that was built by my royal grandfather the hero Enmerkar. A thousand 
artisans labored for twenty years to construct it, and the ceremony of its dedication lasted eleven days and eleven nights 
without cease, and during that time the moon was wrapped each evening in a deep mantle of blue light as a token of Inanna's 
pleasure. "We are Inanna's children," the people sang, "and Enmerkar is her brother, and he shall reign forever and ever."
Nothing remains of that temple now, for I tore it down after I 
came to the throne, and put up a far more splendid one on its site. But in its time it was a wonder of the world. It is a place 
that will always hold special meaning for me: within its precincts, one day in my childhood, the beginnings of wisdom 
descended on me, and the shape of my life was shaped, and I was set upon a course from which there has been no turning.
That was the day on which the palace servants fetched me from my 
games to watch my father the king, divine Lugalbanda, embark
upon the last of his journeys. "Lugalbanda goes forth now to the 
bosom of the gods," they told me, "and he shall live for all time among them in joy, and drink their wine and eat their bread." 
I think and hope that they were right; but it may very well be the case that my father's final journey has brought him 
instead to the Land of No Returning, to the House of Dust and Darkness, where his ghost shuffles about sadly like a bird with 
crippled wings, feeding on dry clay. I do not know.
    I am he whom you call Gilgamesh. I am the pilgrim who has seen
everything within the confines of the Land, and far beyond it; I am
the man to whom all things were made known, the secret things,
the truths of life and death, most especially those of death. I have
coupled with Inanna in the bed of the Sacred Marriage; I have slain
demons and spoken with gods; I am two parts god myself, and only
one part mortal. Here in Uruk I am king, and when I walk through
the streets I walk alone, for there is no one who dares approach me
too closely. I would not have it that way, but it is too late to alter
matters now: I am a man apart, a man alone, and so will I be to the
end of my days. Once I had a friend who was the heart of my heart,
the self of my self, but the gods took him from me and he will not
come again.
    My father Lugalbanda must have known a loneliness much like
mine, for he was a king and a god also, and a great hero in his day.
Surely those things set him apart from ordinary men, as I have been
set apart.
    The imprint of my father is still clear in my mind after all these
years: a great-shouldered deep-chested man, who went bare above
the waist in all seasons, wearing only his long flounced woolen robe
from hips to ankles. His skin was smooth and dark from the sun,
like polished leather, and he had a thick curling black beard, in the
manner of the desert people, though unlike them he shaved his scalp.
I remember his eyes best of all, dark and bright and enormous,
seeming to fill his whole forehead: when he scooped me up and held
me before his face, I sometimes thought I would float forward into
the vast pool of those eyes and be lost within my father's soul forever.
    I saw him rarely. There were too many wars to fight. Year after
year he led the chariots forth to quell some fiprising in our unruly
vassal state of Aratta, far to the east, or to drive away the wild
marauding tribes of the wastelands that crept up on Uruk to steal
our grain and cattle, or to display our might before one of our great
rival cities, Kish or Ur. When he was not away at the wars, there
were the pilgrimages he must make to the holy shrines, in spring to
Nippur, in the autumn to Eridu. Even when he was home he had
little time for me, preoccupied as he was by the necessary festivals
and rituals of the year, or the meetings of the city assembly, or the
proceedings of the court ofjustice, or the supervision of the unending
work that must be done to maintain our canals and dikes. But he
promised me that a time would come when he would teach me the
things of manhood and we would hunt lions together in the marshlands.
    That time never arrived. The malevolent demons that hover al-
ways above our lives, awaiting some moment of weakness in us, are
unwearying; and when I was six years old one of those creatures
succeeded in penetrating the high walls of the palace, and seized upon
the soul of Lugalbanda the king, and swept him from the world.
    I had no idea that any of that was happening. In those days life
was only play for me. The palace, that formidable place of fortified
towered entrances and intricately niched facades and lofty columns,
was my gaming-house. All day long I ran about with an energy that
never failed, shouting and laughing and tumbling on my hands. Even
then I was half again as tall as any boy of my own age, and strong
accordingly; and so I chose older boys as my playfellows, always
the rough ones, the sons of grooms and cupbearers, for of brothers
I had none.
    So I played at chariots and warriors, or wrestled, or fought with
cudgels. And meanwhile one day a sudden horde of priests and
exorcists and sorcerers began to come and go within the palace, and
a clay image of the demon Namtaru was fashioned and placed close
by the stricken king's head, and a brazier was filled with ashes and
a dagger put within it, and on the third day at nightfall the dagger
was brought forth and thrust into the image of Namtaru and the
image was buried in the corner of the wall, and libations of beer
were poured and a young pig was slaughtered and its heart was set
forth to appease the demon, and water was sprinkled, and constant
prayers were chanted; and each day Lugalbanda struggled for his life
and lost some further small part of the struggle. Not a word of this
was said to me. My playfellows grew somber and seemed abashed
 to be running about and shouting and whacking at cudgels with me.
 I did not know why. They did not tell me that my father was dying,
 though I think they certainly knew it and knew also what the con-
 sequences of his death would be.
     Then one morning a steward of the palace came to me and called
 out, "Put up your cudgel, boy! No more games! There is man's
 business to do today!" He bade me bathe and dress myself in my
 finest brocaded robe, and place about my forehead my headband of
 golden foil and lapis lazuli, and go to the apartment of my mother
 the queen Ninsun. For I must accompany her shortly to the temple
 of Enmerkar, he said.
     I went to her, not understanding why, since it was no holy day
 known to me. I found my mother clad most magnificently in a coat
 of bright crimson wool, a headdress gleaming with carnelian and
 topaz and chalcedony, and golden breastplates from which hung
 ivory amulets in the form offish and gazelles. Her eyes were darkened
 with kohl and her cheeks were painted deep green, so that she looked
 like a creature that had risen from the sea. She said nothing to me,
 but fastened about my neck a figurine in red stone of the wind-
 demon Pazuzu, as if she feared for me. She touched her hand lightly
 to my cheek. Her touch was cool.
     Then we went out into the long hall of the fountains, where many
 people were waiting for us. And from there we went in procession,
 the grandest procession I had ever seen, to the Enmerkar temple.
     'A dozen priests led the way, naked as priests must be when they
 come before a god, and a dozen priestesses as well, naked also. After
 them strode two dozen tall warriors who had fought in the campaigns
 of Lugalbanda. These were encumbered by their full armor, copper
 helmets and all, and carried their axes and shields. I was sorry for
 them, inasmuch as this was in the month Abu, when the scourge of
 summer lies heaviest on the Land, and no rain falls and the heat is a
 burden beyond bearing.
    Following the warriors came the people of the household of Lu-
galbanda: butlers, maids, cupbearers, jesters and acrobats, grooms,
charioteers, gardeners, musicians, dancing-girls, barbers, drawers of
the bath, and all the rest. Every one of them was dressed in a fine
robe, finer than anything I had ever seen them wear before, and they
carried the implements of their professions as though they were on
 their way to wait on Lugalbanda. I knew most of these people. They
 had served in the palace since before I was born. Their sons were
 my playmates and sometimes I had taken meals in their dwellings.
 But when I smiled and waved to them they looked away, keeping
 their faces solemn.
    The last person in this group was one who was particularly dear
to me. I went skipping up from my place in the rear of the procession
to walk beside him. This was old Ur-kununna, the court harper: a
long-shanked white-bearded man, very grave of bearing but with
gentle twinkling eyes, who had lived in every city of the Land and
knew every hymn and every legend. Each afternoon he sang in the
Ninhursag courtyard of the palace, and I would sit at his feet for
hour upon hour while he touched his harp and chanted the tale of
the marriage of Inanna and Dumuzi, or the descent of Inanna to the
nether world, or the tale of Enlil and Ninlil, or of the journey of the
moon-god Nanna to the city of Nippur, or of the hero Ziusudra,
who built the great vessel by which mankind survived the Flood,
and who was rewarded by the gods with eternal life in the paradise
on Earth that is known as Dilmun. He sang us also ballads of my
grandfather Enmerkar's wars with Aratta, and the famous one of the
adveritures of Lugalbanda before he was king, when in his wander-
ings he entered a place where the air was poisonous, and nearly lost
his life, but was saved by the goddess. Ur-kununna had taught some
of these songs to me, and he had showed me how to play his harp.
His manner was always warm and tender toward me, with never
any show of impatience. But now, when I ran up alongside him, he
was strangely remote and aloof: like everyone else, he said nothing,
and when I indicated that I would like to carry his harp he shook
his head almost b~usquely. Then my mother hissed at me and called
me back to the place that she and five of her serving-maids occupied
at the end of the procession.
    Down the endless rows of palace steps we marched, and into the
Street of the Gods, and along it to the Path of the Gods that leads
to the Eanna precinct where the temples are, and up the multitude
0fsteps to the White Platform, and across it, dazzled by the reflection
of the brilliant sunlight, to the Enmerkar temple. All along the path
the streets were lined with silent citizens, thousands of them: the
whole population of Uruk must have been there.
    On the steps of the temple Inanna waited to receive us. I trembled
when I saw her. The goddess has since earliest time owned Uru~
and all that is within it, and I dreaded her power over me. She 
stood there was of course the priestess Inanna of human flesh, and
not the goddess. But at that time I did not know the differene
between them, and thought I was in the presence of the Queen of
Heaven herself, the Daughter of the Moon. Which in a way was 
since the goddess is incarnate in the woman, though I could not have
grasped such subtleties so young.
    The Inanna who admitted us to the temple that day was the of
Inanna, with a face like a hawk's and terrifying eyes, rather than the
more beautiful but no less ferocious one in whom the goddess came
to dwell afterward. She was clad in a bright cape of scarlet leather
arranged on a wooden framework so that it flared out mightily
beyond her shoulders and rose high above her. Her breasts were bare
and painted at the tips. On her arms were copper ornaments in the
form of serpents, for the serpent is the sacred creature of Inanna; and
about her throat was coiled not a copper serpent but a living one
of a thickness of two or three fingers, but sluggish in the terrible
heat, barely troubling to let its forked black tongue flicker forth. As
we went past her, Inanna sprinkled us with perfumed water from
gilded ewer, and spoke to us in low chanted murmurs. She did not
use the language of the Land, but the secret mystery-language of the
goddess-worshippers, those who follow the Old Way that was it
the Land before my people came down into it from the mountain,
All this was frightening to me, only because it was so solemn and
out of the ordinary.
  Within the great hall of the temple was Lugalbanda.
    He lay upon a broad slab of polished alabaster, and he seemed to
be asleep. Never had he looked so kingly to me: instead of his usual
half-length flounced skirt he wore a mantle of white wool and a dark
blue robe richly woven with threads of silver and gold, and gold
dust was sprinkled into his beard so that it sparkled like the sun
fire. Beside his head rested, in place of the crown he had worn during
his life, the horned crown of a king who is also a god. By his left
hand lay his scepter, decorated with rings of lapis lazuli and mosaic
of brightly colored seashells, and by his right was a wondrous dagger.
14


with a blade of gold, a hilt oflapis lazuli and gold studs, and a sheath
fashioned of gold strands woven in openwork like plaited leaves of
grass. Heaped up before him on the floor was an immense mound
of treasure: earrings and finger-rings in gold and silver, drinking-
cups of beaten silver, dice-boards, cosmetics-boxes, alabaster jars of
rare scent, golden harps and bull-headed lyres, a model in silver of
his chariot and one of his six-oared skiff, chalices of obsidian, cyl-
inder-seals, vases of onyx and chalcedony, golden bowls, and so
much more that I could not believe the profusion of it. Standing
arrayed about my father's bier on all four sides were the great lords
of the city, perhaps twenty of them.
    We took up our places before the king, my mother and I in the
center of the group. The palace servants clustered about us, and the
warriors in armor flanked us on both sides. From the temple court-
yard came the great hollow booming of the lilissu, which is the
kettledrum that otherwise is beaten only at the time of an eclipse of
the moon. Then I heard the lighter sound of the little balag-drums
and the shrill skirling of clay whistles as Inanna entered the temple
preceded by her naked priests and priestesses. She went to the high
place at the rear of the hall, where in a temple of An or Enlil there
would be an effigy of the god; but in the temple of Inanna at Uruk
there is no need for effigies, because the goddess herself dwells amongst us.

    Now began a ceremony of singing and chanting, much of it in
the language of the Old Way, which I did not then know and scarcely
comprehend today, since the Old Way is woman-religion, goddess-
religion, and they keep it to themselves. There were libations of wine
and oil, and a bull and a ram were brought forth and sacrificed and
their blood sprinkled over my father, and seven golden trays of water
were emptied as ~ifts to the seven planets, and there were more such
sacred acts. The snake of Inanna awoke and moved between her
breasts, and flicked its tongue, and fixed its eyes upon me, and I was
afraid. I felt goddess-presence all about me, intense, stifling.
    I edged close to the kindly Ur-kununna and whispered, "Is my
father dead?"
 "We must not speak, boy."
 "Please. Is he dead? Tell me."
 Ur-kununna looked down at me from his great height and I saw
the white light of his wisdom glowing in his eyes, and his tenderness,
and his love for me, and I thought, how like his eyes are to Lugal-
banda's, how large and dark, how they fill his forehead! He said
gently, "Yes, your father is dead."
  "And what does that mean, being dead?"
  "We must not speak during the ceremony."
  "Was Inanna dead when she descended into the nether world?"
  "For three days, yes."
  "And it was like being asleep?"
  He smiled and said nothing.
    "But then she awoke and came back, and now she stands before
us. Will my father awaken? Will he come back to govern Uruk again,
Ur-kununna?"
    Ur-kununna shook his head. "He will awaken, but he will not
come back to govern Uruk." Then he put his finger to his lips, and
would not speak again, leaving me to consider the meaning of my
father's death as the ceremony went on and on about me. Lugalbanda
did not move; he did not breathe; his eyes were closed. It was like
sleep. But it must have been more than sleep. It was death. When
Inanna went to the nether world and was slain, it was the occasion
of great dismay in heaven and Father Enki caused her to be brought
forth into life. Would Father Enki cause Lugalbanda to be brought
forth into life? No, I did not think so. Where then was Lugalbanda
now, where would he journey next?
    I listened to the chanting, and heard the answer: Lugalbanda was
on his way to the palace of the gods, where he would dwell forever
in the company of Sky-father An and Father Enlil and Father Enki
the wise and compassionate, and all the rest. He would feast in the
feasting-hall of the gods, and drink sweet wine and black beer with
them. And I thought that that would not be so harsh a fate, if indeed
that was where he was going. But how could we be sure that that
was where he was going? How could we be sure? I turned again to
Ur-kununna, but he stood with eyes closed, chanting and swaying.
So I was left alone with my thoughts of death and my struggle to
understand what was happening to my father.
    Then the chanting ended, and Inanna made a gesture, and a dozen
of the lords of the city knelt and lifted to their shoulders the massive
alabaster slab on which my father lay, and carried it from the temple
through the side entrance. The rest of us followed, my mother and
I leading the procession, and the priestess Inanna in the rear. Across
the White Platform we went, down its far side, and toward the west
a few hundred paces, until we stood in the sharp-edged shadow of
the temple of An. I saw that a great pit had been excavated in the
dry sandy earth between the White Platform and the temple of An,
with a sloping ramp leading down into it. We arranged ourselves
into a group at the ramp's mouth, and all the townsfolk by their
thousands formed a great ring around the whole precinct.
    Then an unexpected thing: the serving-maids of my mothel: the
ú queen surrounded her and began to take her rich and costly garments
from her, one by one until she stood naked in the bright sunlight in
the full view of all the city. I thought of the tale of Inanna's descent,
how as she went deeper and deeper into the nether world she gave
up her garments and at last was naked, and I wondered whether my
mother too was making ready for a descent into the pit. But that
was not the case. The lady-in-waiting Alitum, who looked so much
like my mother Ninsun that they seemed to be sisters, stepped for-
ward now and put offher own robes, so that she also was altogether
bare; and the serving-maids began to put the crimson coat of my
mother on Alitum and her headdress and breastplates, and
Alitum's simpler robes on my mother. When they were done, it was
hard to tell which was Ninsun and which Alitum, for Alitum's face
had been daubed with green paint just as had my mother's.
    Then I saw a playmate of mine, Enkihegal the son of the gardener
Gimishag, walking slowly toward me between two priests. I called
out as he approached. But he made no answer. His eyes were glassy
and strange. He seemed not to know me at all, though only yesterday
I had raced with him from one side of the grand Ninhursag courtyard
to the other, eight times without stopping.
    The priests now began to pluck at my brocaded robe and stripped
it from me and put my robe on Enkihegal, and gave me his ordinary
one. They took my golden headband away, and put that on his head.
I was as tall as he was, though he was three years older, and my
shoulders were of the same breadth as his. When we were done
exchanging clothes they left Enkihegal standing by my side, as Al-
itum stood by my mother's side.
  Now a sledge-chariot came forth, drawn by two asses. It was
decorated with blue, red, and white mosaic along the edges of the
 framework, and had golden heads of lions on its side panels with
 manes of lapis lazuli and shell; and great mounds of treasure were
 heaped upon it. Then the charioteer Ludingirra, who had ridden
 many times to the wars with my father, stepped forward. He took
 a deep drink from a huge wine-bowl that the priests had fetched,
 and made a sharp sound and shook his head as though the wine were
 bitter, and mounted the chariot and drove it slowly downward into
 the deep pit. Two grooms walked alongside to steady and calm the
 asses. Afterward a second and a third chariot followed, and each of
 the drivers and each of the grooms drank of the wine. Into the pit
 went vessels of copper and silver and obsidian and alabaster and
 marble, gaming-boards and tumblers, chalices, a set of chisels and
 saw made of gold, and a great deal more, all of it magnificent. Ther
 the warriors in armor went down into the pit; and then some of the
 palace servants, the barbers and gardeners and a few of the fine ladies-
 in-waiting, with their hair done up in golden braid, and headdresses
 of carnelian and lapis lazuli and shell. Each of them drank of the
 wine. All this in silence, except for the steady beat of the lilissu  drum.
     Following this, a certain great lord of the city who had been amon!
 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 hell
 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 the
 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 ex-
citement 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
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 rhurmur, 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
0fus 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 every-
thing 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 com-
plexities 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
waking dream. I looked about, seeking Ur-kununna. But of course
he was not there, and the questions I meant to ask him would no,
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 strange-
ness 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, de-
manding 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.

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 bound-
 aries, 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 wasmany 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
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 mass
of lesser chapels. It seemed to me that I heard the fluttering ofinvisible
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 whis-
pered 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,
litfie 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 mo-
ment 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 chosen 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 gran-
deur 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, fol-
lowed 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."
    All the same, changes soon were forthcoming. The one most
important to me was that my mother and I left the royal palace that
had been my home all my life, and took up residence in a splendid
but far less imposing dwelling in the Kullab district, westward of
the temple of An. It was to An's service that my mother dedicated
the rest of her life, as his chief priestess. She is now a goddess in her
own right, by my decree, so that she might be reunited with Lu-
galbanda. For if he is in heaven, then it is fitting that she be at his
side. And though I have said that I do not believe he is in heaven,
nevertheless it may be that he is, and in that case it would have been
remiss of me not to have sent Ninsun to join him there.
    It was hard for me to understand why I had been forced to leave
the palace. "Dumuzi is king now," my mother explained. "The
assembly has chosen him, the goddess has recognized him. The palace
belongs to him." But her words were like the blowing of the dry
wind over the plain. Dumuzi could be king, for all I cared; but the
palace was my home. "Will we return to it after Inanna sends Dumuzi
to the nether world?" I asked, and she looked stern and told me never
to speak such words again. But then in a softer voice she said, "Yes,
I think you will live in the palace again one day."
    This Dumuzi was young and strong and vigorous, and came of
one of the greatest families of Uruk, a clan that long had held the
sheshgal-priesthood in the temple of Inanna, and the supervisorship
of the fisheries, and many another high office. He was handsome
and of kingly bearing, with thick hair and a heavy beard.
    Yet there seemed something soft and disagreeable about him within,
and I did not understand why he had been chosen to be king. His
eyes were small and had no shine, and his lips were fleshy, and the
skin of him was like a woman's. I imagined he had it rubbed with
0ils every morning. I despised him from the first moment of his
reign. Perhaps I hated him simply because he had become king in
my father's place; but I think it was not only for that. At any rate,
I harbor no hatred for him now. For foolish Dumuzi I have only
pity: even more than the rest of us, he was the toy of the gods.

 NOW MY life became very different. My days of play were over,
 my days of schooling began.
     Because I was a prince of the line of Enmerkar and
 Lugalbanda, I did not have to attend the common tablet-house, where
 the sons of merchants and foremen and temple administrators are
 taught to become scribes. Instead I went each day to a small low-
 roofed room in an ancient little temple at the eastern side of the White
 Platform, where a priest with shaven scalp and face conducted a
 private class for eight or nine high-born boys. My classmates were
 the sons of governors, ambassadors, generals, and high priests, and
 they had great regard for themselves. But I was the son of a king.
     That created difficulties for me. I was accustomed to privilege and
 precedence, and I demanded my usual rights. But in the classroom
 I had no rights. I was big and I was strong, but I was neither the
 biggest nor the strongest, for some of the boys were four or five
 years older. The first lessons I learned were painful ones.
    I had two chief tormentors. One was Bir-hurturre, the son of
Ludingirra, who had been my father's master of the chariots and
who had gone down into the death-pit to sleep beside him. The other
was Zabardi-bunugga, the son of Gungunum the high priest of An.
I think Bir-hurturre bore a grudge against me because his father had
had to die when mine had died. What quarrel Zabardi-bunugga had
with me, I never fully understood, though possibly it grew from
some old jealousy his father had felt toward Lugalbanda. But these
two were determined, whatever the reason, to make me see that my
high rank and privilege had ended when the crown had passed to
 the king Dumuzi.
     In the classroom I took the front chair. It was my right, to go
 before the others. Bir-hurturre said, "That chair is mine, son of
 Lugalbanda."
     The way he said son of Lugalbanda, he made it sound like son of
 Dung-fly, son of Trash-picker.
     "The chair is mine," I told him calmly. That seemed
 self-evident to me, in no need of defense or explanation.
     "Ah. Then the chair must be yours, son of Lugalbanda," he an-
 swered, and smiled.
     When I returned from midday recess I found that someone had
 gone down to the river and captured a yellow toad, and had skewered
 it into the middle of my seat. It was not yet dead. To one side of it
 someone had drawn the face of the evil spirit Rabisu, the croucher-
 in-doorways, and on the other side was drawn the storm-bird Im-
 dugud with her tongue thrust out.
     I pulled the toad free and turned to Bir-hurturre with it. "You
 seem to have left your midday meal on my seat," I said. "Here. This
 is for you to eat, not for me."
I seized him by the hair and thrust the toad toward his mouth.
Bir-hurturre was ten years old. Though he was no taller than I
was, he was very broad through the shoulders and extremely strong.
Catching me by the wrist, he pulled my hand free of his hair and
wrenched it down to my side. No one had ever handled me like that
before. I felt rage rising in me like a winter torrent rushing down
upon the Land.
    "Doesn't he want to share his seat with his brother?" asked Za-
bardi-bunugga, who was looking on with amusement.
    I broke loose of' Bir-hurturre's grasp and hurled the toad into
Zabardi-bunugga's face. "My brother?" I cried. "Yours! Your twin!"
Indeed Zabardi-bunugga was amazingly ugly, with a nose fiat as a
button, and strange coarse hair that grew in widely spaced bunches
on his head.
    They both came at me at once. They held me with my arms behind
my back and jeered at me and slapped me. I had never been held so
impiously in the palace, not even in the roughest of play: no one
would have dared. "You may not touch me!" I shouted. "Cowards!
 Pigs! Do you know who I am?"
      "You are BugaMugal, son of Lugal-bugal," said Bir-hurturre, and
 they laughed as though he had said something enormously clever.
   "I will be king one day!"
   "Bugal-lugal! Lugal-bugal!"
  "I'll break you! I'll feed you to the river!"
  "Lugal-bugaMugal! Bugal-lugaMugal!"
     I thought my soul would burst from my breast. For a moment I
 could neither breathe nor see nor think. I strained and struggled and
 kicked, and heard a grunt, and kicked again, and heard a whimper.
 One of them released me and I pulled myself free of the other, and
 went running from the classroom, not out of fear of them but out
 of fear that I would kill them while the madness was upon me.
     The school-father and his assistant were returning just then from
 their midday meal. In the blindness of my wrath I ran right into
 them, and they caught me and held me until I was calm. I pointed
 into the classroom, where Bir-hurturre and Zabardi-bunugga were
 staring at me and making faces with their tongues, and demanded
 that they be put to death at once. But the school-father replied only
 that I had risen from my place without permission, I had spoken to
 him without permission; and he gave me over to the whipping-slave
 to cane me for my unruliness. It was not the last time those two
 tormented me, and occasionally some of the others joined in, the
 bigger ones, at least. I found I could do nothing against any of this
 persecution. School-father and his assistant always took their side,
 and told me I must hold my tongue, I must master my temper. I
 wrote down the names of my enemies, both my schoolfellows and
 my tutors, so that I could have them all flayed alive when I was
 king. But when I came to understand things a little better, soon
 afterward, I threw those lists away.
    Writing and reading were the first things I learned. It is important
for a prince to understand such matters. Imagine trusting everything
to the honesty of one's scribes and ministers when messages are going
back and forth on the battlefields, or when one is engaged in cor-
respondence with the king of another land! If the master cannot read,
any kind of deceit may be practiced on him, and a great man could
be betrayed into the grasp of his enemies.

I wish I were able to claim with any honesty that my reason for
 turning to those arts was anything so astute and far-sighted. But no
 such princely notions were in my mind. What attracted me to writing
 was my notion that it was magical. To be able to work magic, that
 magic or any other, was tremendously attractive.
    It seemed miraculous that words could be captured like hawks in
flight, and imprisoned in a piece of red clay, and set loose again by
anyone who knew the art of it. In the beginning I did not even think
such a thing was credible. "You invent the words as you go along,"
I told the school-father. "You pretend that there are meanings, but
you simply make everything up!" Coolly he handed the tablet to the
assistant, who read from it everything that the school-father had
read, word for word. Then he called in one of the older boys from
another room, and he did the same; and then I was whipped on the
knuckles for my doubting. I doubted no longer. These people--
ordinary mortals, not even gods--had some way of bringing the
words alive out of the clay. So I paid close heed as the school-father's
assistant showed me how to prepare the soft clay tablets, how to cut
a reed stylus to a wedge-shaped end, how to make the marks that
are writing, by pressing the stylus into the tablet. And I struggled
to comprehend the marks.
    Understanding them was enormously troublesome at first. The
marks were like the scratchings of a hen in the sand. I learned to tell
the differences out of which their meanings sprang. Some of the
marks stood for sounds, na and ba and ma and the like, and some
stood for ideas, like god or king or plough, and some showed how a
word was meant to stand in relation to the words around it. Then
I caught the knack of this wonderful witchcraft. I found that almost
without effort I could make the marks yield their meanings to my
eye, so that I could look down a tablet and read from it a list of
things, "gold, silver, bronze, copper," or "Nippur, Eridu, Kish,
Uruk," or "arrow, javelin, spear, sword." Of course I could never
read as a scribe reads, swiftly scanning the columns of a tablet and
bringing from it its full wealth of meaning and nuance: that is the
task ofa lifetime's devotion, and I have had other tasks. But I learned
my writing-signs well, and know them still, and can never be de-
ceived by some treacherous underling who means to play me false.
We were taught also concerning the gods, and the making of the
world, and the founding of the Land. School-father told us how
heaven and the earth had come forth from the sea, and the sky
been put between them, and the moon and the sun and the pla~
were fashioned. He spoke of the bright and shining Sky-father
who decrees what must be done, and of Ninhursag the great motl
and of Enlil the lord of the storm, and of the wise Enki and
radiant sun Utu, the fount of justice, and cool silvery Nanna,
ruler of the night; and of course he spoke much oflnanna the mist'.
of Uruk. But when he told how mankind was created it saddel
and angered me: not that we were brought into being to be serfi
the gods, for who am I to question that, but that the work was done
in such a cruel and slipshod way.
    For look, look you, how the job was managed, and how we sm
for our makers' foolishness!
    It was at a time when the gods lived like mortals on the earth
tilling the soil and caring for their flocks. But because they were
gods they would not deign to work at their tasks, and so the gr
withered and the cattle died, and the gods grew hungry. Thereafter
the sea-mother Nammu came to her son Enki, who dwelled lazily
then in the happy land of Dilmun where the lion did not kill and the
wolf did not snatch the lamb, and she told him of the sorrow a
distress of his fellow gods. "Rise from your couch," she said, "all
use your wisdom to bring forth servants, who will assume our task
and minister to our needs."
    "O my mother," he replied, "it can be done." He told her to reach
into the abyss and scoop up a handful of clay from the depths of the
sea; and then Enki and his wife the earth-mother Ninhursag and 
eight goddesses of birth took the clay and fashioned it, and shape
the body and the limbs of the first mortal being, and said, "Or
servants will look like that."
    Enki and Ninhursag, out of joy at what they had achieved, gave
a great feast for all the other gods, and showed them how the creation
of mankind would ease their lives. "See," he said, "each of you will
have your own estate on the earth, and these beings will assure
your tasks and minister to your needs. These will be the serfs who
toil, and over them we will place bailiffs and sheriffs and inspector:
and commissioners, and above them kings and queens, who will life
in palaces just as we do, with butlers and chamberlains and coachmen
and ladies-in-waiting. And all of these creatures will toil day and
 night to provide for us." The gods applauded, and drained many a
 mug of wine and beer; and they all grew gloriously drunk.
    In their drunkenness, Enki and Ninhursag continued to bring forth
beings out of the clay. They brought one forth that had neither male
organs nor female, and said it would be a eunuch to guard the royal
harem; and they laughed greatly at that. And then they brought forth
beings with this disease and that, of the body or of the spirit, and
set them loose into the world as well. And lastly they made one
whose name was "I Was Born Long Ago," whose eyes were dim
and whose hands trembled, and who could neither sit nor stand nor
bend his knees. In this way did old age come into the world, and
disease and madness and everything else that is evil--as the drunken
joke of the god Enki and the earth-mother his wife, the goddess
Ninhursag. When the mother of Enki, the sea-mother Nammu, saw
what he had done, she exiled him in her anger to the deep abyss,
where he dwells to this day. But the injury was done; the drunken
gods had had their joke; and we suffer under that and always will.
I will not quarrel with their having made us to be their creatures and
their things, but why did they make us so imperfect?
    I asked the school-father that question, and he had me whipped
on my knuckles for the asking.
    I learned other things that confused and frightened me. These were
the tales and legends of the gods, the same ones that the harper Ur-
kununna had sung in the palace courtyard. But somehow when the
stories fell from the lips of that sweet and gentle old man they had
lit a warm light of pleasure in my soul, and when I heard them in
the dry precise voice of the pinch-faced school-father they seemed
transformed into dark and disturbing things. Ur-kununna had made
the gods seem prayful and benevolent and wise; but in the school-
father's telling the gods seemed foolish and ruthless and cruel. And
yet they were the same gods; and yet they were the same stories;
and yet even the words were same. What had changed? Ur-kununna
had sung the gods loving and feasting and bringing forth life. School-
father gave us quarrelsome bickering untrustworthy gods who cast
darkness upon the world without warning and without mercy. Ur-
kununna lived in joy, and walked to his death uncomplaining, know-
ing he was beloved of the gods. School-father taught me that mortals
must live their lives in endless fear, for the gods are not kind.
yet they were the same gods: wise Enki, lordly Enlil, beautiful
anna. But the wise Enki had created old age for us, and the weak~
of the flesh. The lordly Enlil had in his unquenchable lust raped
young girl-goddess Ninlil, though she cried out in pain, and he l
fathered the moon upon her. The beautiful I nanna, to free her,
from the nether world, had sold her husband Dumuzi to the demo
The gods, then, are no better than we are:just as petty, just as selfi
just as thoughtless. How had I failed to see these things, whe~
listened to the harper Ur-kununna? Was it merely that I was t
young to understand? Or was it that in the warmth of his singi
the doings of the divine ones took on a different semblance?
    The world that school-father revealed to me was a world that x~
bleak and chancy. And there was but one escape from that wor]
to an afterlife that was even more harsh and terrifying. What hop
then? What hope for any of us, king or beggar? That was what t]
gods had made for us; and the gods themselves are just as vulnerai:
and frightened: there is Inanna, stripped bare in her descent into he
standing naked before the queen of the nether world. Monstrot
Monstrous! There is no hope, I thought, not here or anywhere afte
    Heavy thoughts, for so young a child, even a child that is the so
of a king, and who is two parts god and only one part mortal. I w:
filled with despair. Alone I went one day to the side Of the city b
the river, and peered over the wall and saw the dead bodies floatin
in the water, the corpses of those who could not afford a burial. An
I thought, it is all the same, beggar or king, king or beggar, an
there is no meaning anywhere. Dark thoughts! But after a time I pu
them from my mind. I was young. I could not brood forever o~
such things.
    Later I saw the truth within the truth: that even though the god
are as ruthless and as capricious as ourselves, it is also the case tha
we can make ourselves as exalted as gods. But that lesson was one
that I was a long time in learning.

 BECAUSE THERE is divine blood within me, I grew swiftly to
 extraordinary size and strength. When I was nine I was bigger than
 any of the boys in the little temple-school, and I had no more trouble
 with the likes of Bir-hurturre and Zabardi-bunugga. Indeed they
 looked to me as their leader, and played the games I called for playing,
 and gave me the first seat in everything. The only difference between
 us was that they had hair on their bodies and their cheeks, and I did
 not.
    I went to a sage in the Kullab district and bought from him, for
ninety se of silver and half a sila of good wine, a potion made of
powdered juniper root, cassia juice, antimony, lime, and some other
things, which was meant to hasten the onset of manhood. I rubbed
this stuff under my arms and around my loins, and it burned like a
thousand devils. But soon hair was sprouting on me as thickly as
on any warrior.
    Dumuzi launched military campaigns against Aratta, against the
city of Kish, and against the wild Martu tribesmen of the desert. I
was too young t0 take part in these wars. But already I was training
every day in the skills of the javelin, the sword, the mace, and the
axe. On account of my size the other boys were afraid to stand forth
on the training-grounds against me, and I had to practice with the
young men. When dueling with axes one day with a warrior named
Abbasagga, I split his shield in half at a single blow, and he threw
down his weapon and ran from the field. After that it was hard for
me to find opponents, even among the men. For a time I went off
by myself and studied the art of the bow and arrow, although that
is a weapon used only by hunters, not by warriors. The first bow
that was made for me was too weak, and I snapped it as I tried to
draw it; then I bought a costly bow of several woods cunningly
laminated together, cedar and mulberry and fir and willow, which
better served my purpose. I still have it.
    Another thing I learned was the art of building. I studied the
mixing of mastics and mortars out of bitumen and other kinds of
pitch, the making of bricks, the plastering and painting of walls, and
many another humble thing, and in the full heat of day I labored
sweating among the artisans, deepening my skills. One reason I did
this is that it is our custom to educate princes in such things, so that
they can play their proper roles in the construction and dedication
of new buildings and walls. In other lands, I know, princes and kings
do nothing but ride and hunt and have sport with women, but things
are not like that here. Above and beyond the matter of the respon-
sibilities I expected one day to have to assume, though, I found keen
pleasure in mastering those crafts. To make bricks and set them in
courses to form a wall gave me a powerful sense of accomplishment,
as strong as any that I have had from more heroic endeavors: in some
ways stronger, perhaps. And there was something altogether volup-
tuous about the making of bricks, the mixing of the clay and straw,
the pressing of the wet clay into the mould, the scooping away of
the excess with the side of my hand.
    Of course, there are other and more obvious sources of pleasure,
and other sensations more immediately voluptuous. I began my ed-
ucation in those things early also.
    My first teacher was a little squint-eyed goat-herder I met in the
Street of the Scorpion on a day in late winter. I was ten or eleven
and she, I suppose, must have been a bit older than that, since she
had breasts, and hair down below. She begged for the bit of golden
braid I had wound in my hair, and I said, "What will you give me
for it?" and she laughed and said, "Come with me."
    In a dark cellar atop a pile of old damp straw she earned the price
of the braid, tllough what we did was more like wrestling than
coupling. I am not even certain that I entered her that day, so much
of a novice was I. But we met two or three more times, and I know
that what we did on those occasions was the true deed. I never asked
her name or told her mine. She reeked of goat's milk and goat's
urine, and her face was coarse and her dark skin was blemished, and
she wriggled and writhed in my arms like some slippery creature of
the river. But when ! embraced her she seemed as beautiful as Inanna,
and the pleasure she gave me struck straight through me like the
lightning of Enlil. So was I initiated into the great mystery, a little
earlier than such things are supposed to happen, and in a highly
irregular way.
    There were many more after her. The city was full of smudge-
faced little girls willing to go with a sturdy young prince for an hour,
and I must have sampled half of them.
    Then I discovered that the same delights, minus the rank odors
and the other little drawbacks, could be had from girls of a higher
dass. Few refused me, and those who did, I think, said no only out
of fear of discovery and punishment. For my part I could never have
enough: I felt that when my body quivered with that ecstasy I was
entering into direct communion with the gods. It was like being
hurled straightaway into the sacred domain. And is that not the truth?
The act of engendering is the way of entry into all that is holy. Until
you have done it, you dwell outside the bounds of civilization; you
are little more than a beast. The joining of flesh and spirit in that act
is the thing that brings us close to thegods. I found myself thinking
every time, in that wild instant just before the pouring forth of my
seed, that this was no ordinary girl of Uruk beneath me, but fiery
Inanna herself--the goddess, not the priestess. It is a sacred business.
    Apart from all such lofty considerations, I should add that I no-
ticed, very early, that coupling had a wondrous way of calming my
spirit. For I boiled then, and for many years thereafter, with turbulent
inner frenzies that I scarcely understood and against which I had no
defense. I think that hot lust of mine sprang not only from the
ordinary passiofis of the flesh but from something deeper and darker,
which was the painful loneliness that assailed me like a wolf in the
darkness. Often I felt myself to be the only living being in a world
of chilly phantoms. Having no father, no brother, no real friendM
set apart from all others by the godlike strangeness that any simpleton
could see lay upon me--I found myself engulfed in a bewildering
emptiness of the soul. It stung me and burned me like mountain ice
against my skin. So I reached toward women and girls for the only
comfort I could find. The fulfillment of passion did at least give me
a few hours of respite from that agitation of the spirit.
     When I was a month short of twelve one of my uncles, observing
 in the baths that my body had become that of a man, told me, "We
 will go to the temple cloister this afternoon. I think the time is
 overdue for you."
     I knew what he meant. And I did not have the heart to tell him
 that I had not waited for a proper initiation.
    So when the midday heat had eased a little, we put on kilts of fine
white linen, and he drew a narrow red stripe across my shoulders
and sliced a lock of my hair, and we went together to the temple of
Inanna. We passed through the rear courtyard and crossed a maze
of lesser rooms--workshops and toolbins and the library where the
holy tablets were stacked--and at last we came to the cloister where
the temple priestesses wait to serve worshippers. "Now you will
give yourself to the goddess," my uncle told me.
    For one horrified moment I wondered if he had arranged for me
to yield my supposed virginity to Inanna herself. Perhaps the son of
a king might in fact warrant such a lofty initiator. By now I had
become something of a swaggerer, at least in the inwardness of my
thoughts, and I imagine I could have found the valor to couple with
a goddess: but to embrace the high priestess was another thing en-
tirely. Her hawk-featured face frightened me; that and the thought
of her thickening flesh. She was older than my mother, after all. No
doubt she had been the most superb of women once, but now she
was aging and said to be unwell, and I had seen when she appeared
at the last harvest festival, oiled and bejeweled and practically naked,
that her magnificence was going from her. But my fears were absurd.
Inanna, whether she be young or old, is reserved only for the king.
The priestess whom my uncle had provided for me was a juicy girl
of about sixteen, with golden paint on her cheeks and a glittering
red jewel mounted in her left nostril.
    "I am Abisimti," she said, touching her hand to breasts and thighs
in the holy sign of Inanna. Then she led me into her little chamber,
while my uncle went off to make his observances with a priestess of
his own.
    Abisimti's room contained a couch, a basin, an image of the god-
dess. She lit the candles and performed the libations and took me to
the long narrow couch. We knelt by it and said the prayers together,
her very solemnly, and in a copper brazier she burned the lock of
my hair that my uncle had cut off. Then she drew my garment from
me and bathed me with a cool cloth. At the sight of my nakedness
she frowned.
  "How old are you?" she asked.
  "In a month, twelve."
    "Twelve? Only twelve?" She laughed prettily and clapped her
hands. "Then the gods have favored you greatly!"
    I said nothing, merely stared intently through her light linen robe
to the high round breasts half visible beneath.
    "How eager you are!" she cried. "Your first taste of the great
mystery and you can hardly bear to wait a moment longer!"
    I dared not lie to a priestess, but I did not want to tell the truth.
So I looked away, feigning embarrassment.
    Abisimti let her robe drop. But before I could possess her she had
to tell me at length of the esoteric meaning of the rite we were about
to perform, which I had already comprehended on my own, and
then to instruct me in the method and art of coupling. That was also
superfluous but I endured it patiently enough. Then we went to it.
I pretended to a clumsiness I had long ago outgrown. Even so,
Abisimti's eyes were shining when we were done. Was that right, I
wondered, for her to take such pleasure in it, she being a priestess?
But later I came to see that it is not only right but blessed for the
priestesses of Inanna to enjoy the devotions of the temple cloister.
A common whore may hate her work and detest her customers,
perhaps, but a priestess is engaged in the most sacred act of all, which
is to bridge the great gulf between mortal and god. That is true of
a common whore as well, but the whore does not understand such matters.
    In such ways I glided toward manhood. I thought I saw the shape
of my life.unrolling before me. I would eat well and drink well and
enjoy many women, and I would be a warrior and a priest and a
prince; and one day Dumuzi would die and I would be called to the
kingship of Uruk. I did not question any of that. Plainly it was my
destiny. Though I was already well aware that the gods are capri-
cious, I did not think them stupid: and who better to rule over the
city, once he was of age, than the son of Lugalbanda? It struck me
as inevitable that the assembly of the city would choose me when
Dumuzi's time was done.
    But meanwhile Dumuzi was king. And Dumuzi, though hardly
young--he was at least four-and-twenty then--was far from old.
He might easily live another twenty years, if he was lucky on the
battlefield. That was a long time for me to wait for the throne. A
great restlessness surged in me. I struggled to contain it.

 ONE DAY in this time a slave wearing the badge of Inanna came
 to me while I was practicing the throwing of the javelin and said,
 "You will come now to the temple of the goddess."
    He led me through winding passageways I had never seen before,
in the depths of my grandfather's temple, or perhaps even beneath
it, in tunnels that descended into the White Platform. By the flick-
ering light of our oil-lamps I saw that the halls here were high-
vaulted and richly ornamented with mosaic decorations in red and
yellow, which was strange in this place of perpetual night. There
was the smell of incense in the air, and a dampness, as if the walls
themselves were sweating. This plainly was some holy sanctum,
perhaps that of Inanna herself. I was made uneasy by that, as I always
was by anything pertaining too closely to Inanna.
    I heard the scrambling of small creatures in the darkness, and the
sound of harsh congested breathing. Now and then a passage inter-
sected ours, and I saw lamps glowing far away. Twice we came upon
wizards or exorcists at work in the hallway by candleglow, crouching
against the tiled floors and scattering barley-flour and pungent-smell-
ing tamarisk branches about as they cast their spells. They paid no
attention to us. A little while afterward, as I looked down a cross-
passage, I had a quick glimpse of three squat brown two-legged
creatures with heavy shaggy chests and the hooves of goats, trudging
away from us. I am sure I saw them. I have no doubt they were
demons. I knew I was in a place of perils, where one world borders
close on another, and things that are meant to be invisible cross
boundaries that should not be crossed.

 We remained on our path, sloping ever downward. At last I arrived
at a great door plated with bronze which pivoted on a large round
black stone sunk beneath the pavement.  "Go in," the slave said.
    I entered a long narrow room, deep and dark. Its rough brick
walls were ornamented with black shale and red limestone set in
bitumen, and lamps mounted in four high sconces provided a glim-
mering light. On the floor two overlapping triangles of white metal
were inlaid to form the outline of a six-pointed star.
  At the center of that star stood a woman, perfectly motionless.
    I was expecting to find myself before Inanna herself, but this was
some lesser priestess, taller, younger, and more slender. I felt certain
I had seen her before, in the goddess-ceremonies, close at the right
hand of Inanna, robing and disrobing her as the rite required: a
handmaiden of the goddess, of the inner circle of the temple. For a
long silent moment I stared at her, and she at me. Her beauty was
extraordinary. It grasped me like a great hand which I could not
elude. I felt the power of it seizing and shaking my soul like the hot
winds of summer. She was elaborately bedecked: her cheeks were
colored with a face-bloom of yellow ochre, her upper eyelids were
darkened with kohl, her lower ones were made green with malachite,
and her thick lustrous hair had been reddened with henna. She wore
rich robes, with the reed-bundle emblem of Inanna embroidered
across her breast. A ball of myrrh was burning in a censer that rested
on a silver tripod. Her eyes, dark and piercing, traveled across me
from shoulder to shoulder, from head to toe: she seemed to be taking
my measure.
    At length she greeted me by my name, my birth-name. I had no
name for her and so I could make no answer. I merely stood there
gaping foolishly at her.
  Then she said, almost fiercely, "Well? Do you remember me?"
  "I have seen you serving Inanna at the rites."
      Her eyes flashed. "Of course you have. Everyone has. But you
and I have met. We have spoken."  "Have we?"
    "Long ago. You were very young. It must have gone from your
mind."
  "Tell me your name, and I will know if we have met."

 "Ah, you have forgotten me!"
  "I forget very little. Tell me your name," I said.
    She smiled mischievously, and spoke her name, which is one that
I may not set down here, for, like my own birth-name, it has been
replaced by a holier one and must be abandoned forever. The sound
of her name lifted the latch of my memory, and from the storehouse
of my mind came a rush of recollection: strings of blue beads, amulets
of pink shell, a bare sinuous girlish body painted with serpent designs,
budding breasts, a sharp perfume. Was this woman one and the same
with that sly child? Yes. Yes. Her breasts were more than buds, now,
and her face had grown broader from cheek to cheek, and the wicked
sparkle of her eyes was obscured by the womanly cosmetics with
which she had painted them. But I was certain that I saw the girl
hidden within the woman.
    "Yes, I remember now," I said. "The day of the naming of the
new king, when I was lost in the maze of the temple, and you came
after me, and comforted me, and led me back to the ceremony. But
you are greatly changed."
    "Not so much, I think. I was already beginning to be a woman,
then. I had bled goddess-blood three times. I think I look not so
very different now. But you are altogether changed. You were only
a child, then."
  "It was six years ago, or a little more than that."
    "Was it? What a sweet child you were!" She shot me a flagrant
glance. "But a child no longer. Abisimti tells me you are truly a
man."
    Abashed, appalled, I cried, "I thought the doings of priestesses
were sacred secrets!"
  "Abisimti tells me everything. We are like sisters."
    I shifted my weight restlessly. As before, long ago, I felt anger
and uncertainty, because I was unable to tell whether I was being
mocked. I was strangely helpless before her guile. I had grown older,
yes, but so had she; and if I was not much past twelve, she was at
least sixteen, and still far ahead of me. There was a sharp edge on
her, that cut me wherever I tried to take hold of her.  I said, a little too brusquely, "Why am I here?"
    "I thought it was time we met again. First I saw you one day
during the festival, when you were at the temple bearing offerings.
My eye fell upon you and I wondered about you, and I asked some-
one, Who is that man? And she said, that is no man, that is only a
boy, the son of Lugalbanda. It surprised me, that you had grown so
swiftly, for I thought you were still very young. Then a few days
later Abisimti said that a prince had come to her in the cloister and
she had conveyed him into manhood, and I asked her which prince
that was, and she told me that he was the son of Lugalbanda. I
thought I would speak with you again, after hearing Abisimti. The '
words of Abisimti made me curious about you."
    It infuriated me that I was still too simple to read the meanings
between her meanings. Was she saying that she wished to go to the
cloister with me herself?. So it seemed, or why else had she summoned
me, and why else would her eyes be so wanton with me? Well,
gladly would I have gone with her--more than gladly! Her beauty
drove me wild, even then. But I was not sure that that was what
she wanted, and I did not dare put it to the test, out of fear of being
refused. One may not have the priestesses of Inanna for the mere
asking, only the ones who wait in the cloister, who have dedicated
themselves as holy whores. It is shameful to approach the others,
who are set apart as brides of the god, or of the king in whom the
god is embodied. I did not know which class she belonged to. And
perhaps this was simply a game for her, and I only her plaything, a
man-doll now instead of the child-doll I once had been. I felt her
spinning webs all about me, and I was lost in them.
    She said, "How has it been for you? What do you do? I never
leave the temple; I have no news of the city, except the gossip that
the serving-maids bring me."
    "My mother is priestess of An. I do some service at his temple. I
study the things a young man studies. I wait to enter into the fullness
of my manhood."  "And then?"
  "I will do as the gods require of me."
  "Has any god chosen you yet to be his own?"
  "No," I said. "Not yet."
  "Do you wish it?"
  I shrugged. "It will happen when it happens."
  "Inanna chose me when I was seven."
  "It will happen when it happens," I said.
  "When you know, will you come to me and tell me which god  it is?"
     She was staring at me very hard. She seemed to be laying some
 sort of claim to me, and I did not understand why. Nor did I like
 it. But her power was intense. I heard myself saying meekly, "Yes,
 I will tell you. If that is what you want."  "That is what I want," she said.
     Something became softer about her now: that mischievous edge
 went from her, and the look that I interpreted as wantonness. From
 a pouch at her waist she took an amulet and pressed it into my hands,
 a statuette of Inanna, with great breasts and swollen thighs, carved
 from some smooth green stone that I had never seen before. It seemed
 to shine with an inner flame. "Keep this by you always," she said.
     It troubled me to take it from her. I felt as though the price of
 that statuette was my soul.
  I said, "How can I accept anything so precious?"
     "You may not refuse. That would be a sin, to turn back the gifts
 of a goddess."
  "The gifts of a priestess, rather."
     "The goddess speaks through her priestesses. This is yours, and
 while you have it, you are under the protection of the goddess- power."
    Maybe so. But it made me uneasy. In Uruk we are all under the
protection of the goddess-power; but nevertheless Inanna is a dan-
gerous goddess, who deals in mysterious ways with her subjects,
and it is unwise to get too close to her. My father had done his service
to Inanna, as a king of Uruk must, but whenever he had gone in
private to a temple it had been to Sky-father An. And I myself felt
more comfortable with Enlil of the storms than I did with the god-
dess. But I had no choice but to take the amulet. It may be perilous
to worship Inanna but it is far worse to anger her.
    When I left her that day I felt strange, as though I had been forced
to surrender something of great value. But I had no idea what it was.

    I was summoned several more times in the next few months to
the audience-chamber at the end of that passageway of demons and
wizards deep below the Enmerkar temple. It was the same each time:
an inconclusive conversation, a puzzling display of threatening flir-
tatiousness that led nowhere, a sense at the end that she had outplayed
me in a game with rules I did not understand. Often she had some
little gift for me, but when I brought her one she would not take it.
She wanted to know many things--news of the court, of the assem-
bly, of the king. What had I heard? What were they saying in the
palace? She was insatiable. I grew cautious with her, saying little,
answering her questions as briefly and vaguely as I could. I did not
know what she wanted from me. And I feared the power of her
beauty, which I knew was strong enough to sweep me to destruction.
With anyone else I would have said, young as I was, "Come with
me, lie with me," but how could I say such words to her? Shielded
as she was by the aura of the goddess, she was unattainable, until
she gave consent. At a word from her, at the crooking of a single
finger, I would have knelt to her. But she did not speak the word.
She did not crook the finger. I prayed that the gods would deliver
her into my arms, one of these times when she sent for me. But
though the warmth of her smile said one thing, the cool icy sparkle
of her eyes said another, and held me back from her as though I
were a eunuch. She seemed altogether beyond my reach. Yet I had
not forgotten the astonishing thing she had said to me in my child-
hood, on the day of Dumuzi's coronation: When you are king, I will
lie in your arms.

THEN IT was the month of Tashritu, the season of the new year,
when the king enters into the Sacred Marriage with Inanna and all
things are reborn. That is the time when the god strides across the
threshold of the temple like a rumbling storm and casts his seed into
the goddess, and the rains come again after the long dry harsh death-
in-life that is the summer.
    It is the greatest and most holy festival of Uruk, on which all else
depends. The preparations occupy everyone in the city for weeks as
the summer wanes. That which has been defiled during the year
must be purified by sacrifices and fumigations. Those who are ritually
unclean by birth, members of the impure castes, must take them-
selves outside the walls and build a temporary village for themselves
there. Weak and deformed animals must be slain. All houses and
public buildings in need of repair are put in order, and the festive
decorations are brought forth. Then at last come the parades, led by
harpers and tympanists. The whores don brightly colored scarves
and the cloak of the'goddess. Men adorn their left sides with women's
clothing. Priests and priestesses carry through the streets the bloody
swords, the double-edged axes, with which the sacrifices have been
performed. Dancers leap through hoops and jump over ropes. In her
temple Inanna bathes herself and anoints herself and dons the holy
ornaments, the great ring of carnelian and the beads of lapis and the
shining loin-plate of gold, and the jewels for her navel and for her
hips and for her nose and for her eyes, and the earrings of gold and
bronze, and the breast-ornaments of ivory. And the god Dumuzi,
the bringer of fertility, enters into the king, who goes by boat to the
temple district and through the gateway of the Eanna sanctuary,
leading a sheep and holding a kid. They stand together on the porch
of the temple, priestess and king, goddess and god, while all the city
hails them in joy; and then they go within, to the bedchamber that
has been prepared, and he caresses her and goes into her and ploughs
her and pours his fruitfulness into her womb. So it has been since
the beginning, when the gods alone existed and kingship had not
yet descended from heaven.
    On the day of the new moon that marked the beginning of the
new year I went with all the others to the White Platform, to wait
outside the Enmerkar temple for the showing-forth of Inanna and
Dumuzi. A light wind, moist and fragrant, blew from the south. It
was the wind we call the Cheat, which promises springtime, but in
fact heralds the winter.
    The king appeared, with his sheep, with his kid, at the western
end of the platform. The crowd parted to make way for him as he
walked slowly up the steps and toward the temple. He looked splen-
did. The god-light was upon him, and his body gleamed from within.
    There is something about performing the Sacred Marriage that
exalts any man, I suppose. This was the sixth time Dumuzi had
performed the rite since he became king, and each year, watching
him cross the platform, I had been astonished by the awehe inspired
in me, thi~ man who at all other times seemed to me so ordinary,
so flabby of soul. But when the god is in the king, the king is a god.
I would never forget how my father had looked on the night of this
rite, powerful and grand and immense, glancing neither to one side
nor the other as he went past the place where my mother and I stood
watching, and entered the temple, and returned with Inanna by his
side, and stretched forth his hands to the people of the city, and went
inside once again to lead the goddess to her bedchamber. But Lu-
galbanda had looked majestic at all times. I would not have expected
Dumuzi to be able to rival his magnificence; yet on this night each
year he did.
    Tonight, though, something unusual seemed to be happening.
The king and the priestess customarily emerge to show themselves
together at the instant when the crescent of the new moon appears
above the temple. But this night the moment came and went and
 the temple door remained closed. I do not know how long we waited.
 It seemed like hours. We looked toward one another with questioning
 eyes, but no one dared speak.
     Then at last the great brazen door swung open and the holy couple
 appeared. At the sight of them, the silence grew more intense: it was
 like a chasm of stillness that engulfed all the sound in the world. But
 only for an instant. A moment later a low murmuring and hissing
 could be heard, as those toward the front of the crowd began to
 mutter and murmur in surprise.
     From where I stood, far in the back, I was unable at first to tell
 what was amiss. There was Dumuzi in shining crown and royal robe
 of rich deep blue; there was Inanna close by his side. Then I realized
 that the woman wearing the sacred ornaments of ivory and gold and
 carnelian and lapis was not Inanna, or at least not the Inanna who
 had stood forth on this night all the previous years of my life. That
 woman had been short and sturdy of body, and this one appeared
 to have been drawn out to a finer consistency, slender, almost frail,
 and tall, her shoulder virtually of a height with Dumuzi's. And,
 when a moment later I came to perceive who she must be, I under-
 stood that I was about to lose that which had never been mine, and
 I was helpless to prevent it.
     I had to see her face. I pushed my way forward, shouldering people
 aside as though they were dry sticks.
    At a distance of twenty paces I looked straight into her eyes, and
beheld the dark mischief that sparkled there. Yes, of course, it was
she, plucked suddenly from her underground chamber to the height
of sacred power in Uruk: no longer handmaiden to the goddess, but
suddenly, astoundingly, made into Inanna herself. I could not move.
A heaviness invaded my legs and rooted them to the pavement. There
was a thickness in my throat, like a lump of sand that could not be
swallowed or expelled.
    She stared at me but did not seem to see me, though I was more
than a head taller than the tallest person around me. The ceremony
consumed her entirely. I watched her hand Dumuzi the sacred white
flask of honey, and receive from him the sacred vessel of barley. I
heard them exchanging the words of the rite: "My holy jewel, my
wondrous Inanna," he said, and she to him, "O my husband Dumuzi,
you are truly my love."

 Thick-voiced I said to some lord who stood beside me, "What
has happened? Where is Inanna?"  "There is Inanna."
  "But that girl isn't the high priestess!"
    "From this evening onward she is," he replied. And another, on
the far side of me, said, "They say the old one was ill, and worsened
all day, and then she died at the sunset hour. But they had another
all ready to be consecrated. They brought her forth in a hurry to be
bathed and dressed, and she will marry Dumuzi tonight. Which is
why there was such a delay."
    I heard the words go echoing through the caverns of my mind,
she will marry Dumuzi tonight, and I thought I would topple to the pavement.
    The king sipped from the flask of honey, and returned it to her
so that she could sip of it also. They joined their hands and emptied
the vessel of barley on the ground, and poured the golden honey
over the seed. The temple musicians strummed their instruments and
sang the hymn of the showing-forth of the god and goddess. It was
almost done, now. In a few moments they would go within. In the
divine bedchamber the handmaidens would take from her the rings
and beads and breastplates and the shining three-cornered sheet of
gold that covered her loins, and then he would caress her, and speak
the words of the Sacred Marriage to her, and then--and then--
  I could not stay to watch them any longer.
    I turned and rushed from the platform like a maddened bull,
knocking down anyone who did not get out of my way quickly
enough. From behind me came the music of cymbals and flutes. I
could not bear the sound of it. They are in the bedchamber now, I
thought, he touches her, he strokes her secret places, his mouth is
against her mouth, he will cover her with his body, he will enter her --
    I ran blindly this way and that into the darkness, not knowing or
caring where I was going. A pain that I had known all too often was
once more upon me. I felt alone, outcast, a stranger in my own city.
I had neither father nor brother nor wife, nor even anyone I could
truly call friend. My solitude was like a wall of fire around me. I
yearned to reach toward someone--anyone--but there was no one.
All I could do was run; and I ran on and on until I thought my breast
would burst. At last I found myself stumbling through the deserted
streets of the district known as the Lion, where the military barracks
are. It was not by any accident that my feet had taken me there:
when that kind of blindness comes over us, we are guided by the
gods. There was then at the center of the Lion district a shrine sacred
to the godhood of Lugalbanda, erected there by Dumuzi early in his
reign--nothing very grand, only an image of my father a little larger
than life size, lit from below by three small oil lamps that burned all
night and all day, a small enough tribute to a great king who has
become a god. I flung myself down before it and held tightly to the
bricks of its base. And I suddenly felt a familiar strangeness enter
my mind.
    It was the strangeness that first had assailed me on the day of my
father's funeral rite, and had touched me in a lighter way two or
three times in the years since: a sense of pressure against my brow,
the feeling of great invisible wings beating against my soul. But this
time it was far more powerful than ever before. There was no with-
standing its force. I felt a tingling in my skin, a numbness every-
where. I heard a faint buzzing sound, such as one hears when a distant
swarm of locusts rises in the afternoon sky and comes across the
plain. And then the buzzing grew louder, as though the locusts now
were close at hand and thick black clouds of them were darkening
the face of the sun. I smelled the pungent smell of burning candles,
though there were no candles anywhere about. Out of the streets
and buildings near me rose a cold blue fire that swept over me in
fiat surging sheets, enveloping me without burning me.
    I rose, or, rather, I floated to my feet. I saw before me a tunnel,
perfectly round, with smooth shining walls from which a bright blue
glow radiated. It drew me toward it. I yielded to its pull. I heard
the slow, steady throbbing of a drum, growing louder and louder
with each beat. I was without will, utterly in the thrall of the god-
power, and that frightened me as deeply as I have ever been frightened
in my life. For I felt myself lost, I felt myself drawn down into a
place of destruction where all identities 'are merged in the blue fire
that consumes everything.
    A quiet voice that arose behind my right ear said, "Fear nothing.
Lugalbanda is with you. There is a covenant between us for all time
to come."
                                        
 With those words all dread and sorrow and pain lifted from me,
and I knew boundless joy, an unending rapture, a sensation of deep
ecstasy.
    There was no danger. A god was with me, and I was safe. I resisted
nothing now. A god was with me. With every breath I took I breathed
in divinity. I made the great surrender. At last I allowed the god to
flow through the walls of my soul and enter me and possess me to
the fullest.
  Fear nothing. Lugalbanda is with you.
    I danced a wild dance, roaring and stamping my feet against the
ground. Lugalbanda placed in my hands a drum, and I beat upon it
and sang a canticle in his praise. Power ran through me, and a great
heat. Fearless, I ran forward into the blue tunnel, following a swirl-
ing, bobbing globe of brilliant purple light that blazed like a little
sun just ahead of me. All night I ran without tiring, through every
district of the city, across the Lion and the Reed and the Hive, through
Kullab and Eanna, past the royal palace, up the steps of the White
Platform and down them again, in and out of this temple and that,
past the breweries, the taverns, the whorehouses, the spice market,
the river quays, the cattle pens, the slaughterhouses and tanneries,
the street of the scribes and the street of the diviners. I looked down
into the heart of the earth and saw demons and ghosts toiling in fiery
caverns. I perched myself on the right arm of Lugalbanda and flew
through the heavens, and beheld the great gods far away in their
spheres of crystal, and gave them my salute. I came down to the
world again and journeyed from land to land, and sojourned in
Dilmun the blessed, and Meluhha and Makan, and the devil-guarded
Cedar Mountains, and many another distant place, full of wonders
and miracles that I would not have believed, had I been in my ordinary mind.
    What happened after that I do not recall. But then it was morning
and I found myself lying sprawled on my back in the street in front
of the shrine of Lugalbanda.
    I felt as stiff and sore as though monsters had been bending each
of my limbs the wrong way. I had no idea how I had come to be
where I was, nor what had taken place the evening before. But clearly
I had spent the night sleeping in the open, and I knew I must have
been doing strange things. My jaw ached miserably and my tongue
seemed swollen and painful--perhaps I had bitten it once or twice--
and there was dried spittle on my chin and robe. Two puzzled-
looking young soldiers were bending over me.  "He is alive, I think," one of them said.
  "Is he? His eyes are like glass. Hey, are you alive? You!"
  "Speak more gently. He is the son of Lugalbanda."
  "Makes no difference, if he's dead."
  "But he is alive. See, he is breathing. His eyes move."
    "So they do." And to me: "Are you indeed the son of Lugalbanda?
Ah, I think you are. You wear a prince's ring. Here, then. Here, let
us help you."
    I shook away his hand. "I can manage," I said in a voice like rusted
copper. "Stand back, stand back!"
    Somehow I got myself upright, not without much awkward lurch-
ing and staggering. The soldiers stood ready to catch me, looking a
little apprehensive, I suppose, on account of my size. But I held my
footing. One of them winked and said, "Been celebrating the Mar-
riage a little too hard, is that it, your lordship? Well, it's no sin. Joy
to you, lordship! Joy of the new year!"
    The Marriage. The Marriage! Recollection came flooding back,
and with it pain. Inanna, Dumuzi, Dumuzi, Inanna.
    I turned away, wincing, remembering everything now. And that
terrible sense of solitude, of knowing that I stood alone under the
uncaring stars, returned to me. Through me once again ran a torment
of the spirit that made the aches and bruises of my weary body seem
like nothing.
    They frowned. "Will you be all right? Is there anything we can
do for you?"
  "Just let me be," I said bleakly.
    "As you wish, li~rdship." They shrugged and began to move along
down the street. "The sweetness of Inanna be upon you, lordship!"
one of them called back to me. And the other laughed and said to
him, "What a very sweet sweetness it must be, this year. Did you
see her? The new young one?"
  "Ah, did I! What joy the king must have had of her!"
  "Enough? I growled.
    And back from them, out of the distance: "The goddess is dead!
Long live the goddess!"
  Then they were gone, and I was alone with my pain and my
sorrow and my aching and my bewilderment. But I was not alto-
gether alone. I still felt the divine presence, warm and glowing, far
back in that place behind my right ear, saying: Fear nothing. Fear
nothing. For now Lugalbanda was with me, within me, and always
would be.

EARLY IN the new year, when the festival of the Sacred Marriage
 was over at last and the funeral rites for the former high priestess
 had taken place, I was summoned into the presence of She-Who-Is-
 Now-Inanna. It was a summons that I could hardly reject. Yet I was
 reluctant to see her, now that the shadow of Dumuzi had fallen
 between us like a sword.
    Three little temple slaves, looking upon me with rounded eyes as
though I were some sort of giant demon, led me to the chamber of
the goddess in the most holy sector of the Eanna district. No longer
would she and I have to meet in obscure chapels along the haunted
tunnels beneath the temple. The room in which she received me was
a majestic hall of whitewashed brick, with pierced walls through
which came fiery spears of sunlight. Along the line where the walls
met the ceiling ran a curious row of strange decorations, swelling
scarlet globes that looked very much like breasts. Perhaps they were
intended to be. The goddess in one of her attributes is the great
harlot, the queen of desire.
    I waited there a !ong while, pacing, before she arrived. She swept
grandly into the room accompanied by four pages who carried the
huge loop-topped bundles of reeds, half again as high as a man, that
go wherever Inanna goes. With a quick gesture she sent the pages
from us and we were alone.
    She held herself tall before me. She looked splendid and triumphant
and terrifying. I could see that there was still some girlishness about
her, but not very much. Since I last had spoken with her she had
been transformed into something beyond my reach and beyond my
comprehension.

I thought of her lying naked in the embrace of the king who is
the god, on the night of the Sacred Marriage, which was the first
night of her high priestesshood, and the taste of bile came to my
lips.
    She was clad in a simple tufted white robe that covered her from
head to foot, with only her right shoulder bare. Her dark hair was
parted in the middle and braided into a thick rope that was wound
around her head. Her cheeks were lightly tinted with yellow ochre
and her eyelids were darkened with kohl, but otherwise she wore
no cosmetic. The only tangible sign of her new rank was a delicate
coronet of gold chain, woven in the serpent-motif of the goddess,
that encircled her forehead. But there were other, subtler signs. The
aura of power was upon her. The radiance of heaven's might glowed
beneath her skin.
    I stared at her, but my eyes could not meet her eyes. I could think
only of her body moving beneath Dumuzi's, her lips to his lips, his
hand between her thighs, and I burned with chagrin and shame.
    Then I reminded myself that the woman who stood before me
was not merely someone I had once desired. She was the embodiment
of the highest power of the world; she was the goddess herself. The
gulf between us was immense. Beside her, I and all my petty desires
were nothing.
  "Well?" she said after a long while.
      I made the goddess-sign to her. "Queen of Heaven and Earth," I
mumbled. "Divine Mother. First Daughter of the Moon."  "Look at me."
  I lifted my eyes. They did not quite reach hers.
    "Look at me! Into my eyes, into my eyes! Why this terror? Am
I that much altered?"
  "Yes," I whispered. "Very much altered."
  "And you fear me?"
  "Yes. I fear you. You are Inanna."
    "Ah. Queen of Heaven and Earth! Divine Mother! First Daughter
of the Moon!"
    She put her hand to her mouth and smothered a giggle, and then
the giggle escaped as shrill laughter.
  Astounded, trembling, I made the goddess-sign again and again.
  "Yes, fear me!" she cried, unable to hold back her wild mirth. She
 pointed imperiously. "Down and grovel! Fool! Oh, what a child you
 are! Queen of Heaven and Earth! First Daughter of the Moon!"
    I could not comprehend her laughter, ringing in uncontrollable
peals. It terrified me. I made the goddess-sign at her once more. She
had never been anything other than bewildering to me, even when
she was only a naked sparkle-eyed girl with budding breasts, laugh-
ing and hugging me fiercely in the corridor and prophesying great
things. And the wily young priestess, playing mischievous flirting-
games with me to my befuddlement: I had not understood her either.
But this was too much, this mockery of the goddess, now that she
was the goddess. I was frightened. I shivered with fear. Silently I
called upon Lugalbanda to guard me.
    After a moment she grew more calm, and I felt a little less uneasy.
Quietly she said, "Yes, I am different now. I am Inanna. But I always
was: do you understand that? Do you think the goddess did not
know from the beginning of time that she would choose my body
when she was done with that other one? And now my turn has come.
Were you there, the night of the Marriage?"
    "I was there, yes. I stood in the front row. You looked straight
at me, but you never saw me."
  "The fire of the goddess blinded my eyes that night."
  "Or the fire of the god," I said rashly.
    She stared at me in astonishment and sudden fury. Her cheeks
reddened beneath the yellow ochre, and her eyes blazed. But her
anger seemed to go as swiftly as it had come. She smiled and said,
"Ah, is that it, Gilgamesh? Is that what gnaws at you?"
  I could not speak. My cheeks flamed. I stared at my feet.
    She came to me and took my hand in hers. Softly she said, "I tell
you, think nothing of him. Nothing! It was a rite, which I dutifully
performed, and that was all it was. It was the goddess who embraced
him, and not the priestess. It changes nothing between you and me.
Do you understand?"
  When you are king, I will lie in your arms.
    I looked up, and our eyes met squarely for the first time that day.
"I think I do."
  "So be it, then."
    I was silent. She was still too powerful for me. The force of her
was overwhelming.
                                      
     Then I said, after a time, "What was that name you called me a
 moment ago?"
  "Gilgamesh."
  "But that is not my name."
    "It will be," she replied. "Gilgamesh: He-Who-Is-Chosen. You
will reign by that name. It is a name of the old ones, the goddess-
people, who held the Land long ago. The knowledge of it came to
me as I dreamed, when the goddess first walked with me. Say it:
 Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh."
   "Gilgamesh."
   "Gilgamesh the king."
  "That would be impious to say. Dumuzi is king."
  "Gilgamesh the king! Say it! Say it!"
    Once more I shivered. "Let me be, Inanna, I pray you. If the gods
mean to make me king, it will come in proper time. But Dumuzi
has the high seat now. I will not name myself king before you, not
now, not here in the house of the goddess."
The anger returned to her eyes. She did not like to be resisted.
Then she shrugged and seemed to put all that we had been saying
out of her mind between one instant and the next. In a different
voice, fiat, businesslike, she said, "Why are you concealing things
from me?"
  I was startled by that. "Concealing?"
  "You know what you are concealing."
    I felt a pressure behind my right ear, a warning. Then I knew
what she wanted me to tell her, and I feared letting her know it. I
said nothing. Speaking with her was like crossing a stream where
the footing is tricky: at any moment I might slip and be swept away.
  "Why do you hide things from me, Gilgamesh?"
  "You must not call me by that name."
  "I suppose not, not yet. But you will not evade me so easily."
  "Why do you think I am hiding something from you?"
  "I know you are."
  "Can you see into my mind?"
  She smiled enigmatically. "Perhaps I can."
    I forced myself to stubborn resistance. "Then I have no secrets
from you. You know everything already," I said.
  "I mean to hear it from your lips. I thought you would have come
 to me days ago to tell me; and when you did not come, I had you
 summoned. You have changed. There is something new within you."
   "No," I said. "You are the one who has changed."
      "You also," said Inanna. "Did I not ask you, when a god has
 chosen you, to come to me and tell me which god it is?"
   I stared at her, amazed. "You know that?"
   "It is easy to tell."
  "How? Can you see it in my face?"
    "I could feel it halfway across the city. You have a god within
you now. Can you deny it?"
  I shook my head. "No, I will not deny that."
  "You promised to tell me when you were chosen. It was a promise."
    Looking away from her I said in a downcast way, "It is a very
private thing, being chosen."
  "It was a promise," she said.
      "I thought you were too busy to see me--the Marriage festival,
the funeral of the old Inanna--"  "It was a promise," she said.
    The whole of the side of my head was throbbing now. I was
helpless before her. Lugalbanda, I prayed, guide me, guide me/But all
I felt was the throbbing.
  She said, "Tell me the name of the god who protects you now."
    "You know all things," I ventured. "Why must I tell you what
you already know?"
    That amused her, but it angered her as well. She turned from me
and strode up and down the room, and grasped her great reed-
bundles and squeezed them tightly, and would not look at me. There
was a silence that bound me like bands of bronze. I was choking
under its force. It is no small thing to reveal one's personal god: it
means surrenderin~ a portion of the strength which that god pro-
vides. I was not yet secure enough in my own strength to be able
to afford that surrender. But likewise I was not yet secure enough
to withhold from Inanna the knowledge she demanded. It was a
priestess to whom I had promised, but it was the goddess who laid
claim to that promise.
    I said very quietly, "The god who has entered me is my father,
the hero Lugalbanda."
  "Ah," she said. "Ah!"
 She said nothing else, and the frightful silence descended again.
  I said, "You must tell no one."
  "I am Inanna!" she cried, infuriated. "No one commands me!"
  "I ask you only not to tell. Is that a great deal to ask?"
  "You may not ask anything of me."
  "Simply promise--"
  "I make no promises. I am Inanna."
    The goddess-force flooded the room. The true divine presence
creates a chill deeper than the deepest cold of winter, for it draws all
the warmth of life toward itself; and in that moment I felt Inanna
taking mine, pumping it from me, leaving me a mere frozen husk.
I could not move. I could not speak. I felt young and foolish and
innocent. I saw rising before me the true goddess incarnate, with
yellow eyes glowing like those of a beast in the night.

A FEW days afterward, when I returned to my home after a day at
play on the javelin-fields, I found a sealed tablet lying on my couch.
This was, I remember, on the nineteenth day of the month: always
the unluckiest of days. Hastily I broke open the envelope of brown
clay and read the message it contained, and read it again, and read
it once more. Those few words inscribed on the tablet struck hard
at me. Those words swept me in a single moment away from the
comfort of my native city and into a strange life of exile, as though
they were not words, but the stormy breath of Enlil the high god.
    What the tablet said was: Flee Uruk at once. Dumuzi means to have
your I~.
  It was signed with the seal of Inanna.
    My instant response was one of blind hot defiance. My heart
thundered; my hands rolled up into fists. Who was Dumuzi, that he
could threaten the son of Lugalbanda? What did I have to fear from
a mere torpid slug such as he? And also I thought: the power of the
goddess is greater than the power of the king, so there is no need
for me to flee the city. Inanna will protect me.
    As I paced up and down in the heat of my anger, one of my
servants entered the room. He saw my rage and began to back out,
but I called to him to stay. "What is it?" I demanded.
  "Two men, O lord--two men were here--"
  "Who were they?"
    For a moment his mouth had trouble making words. Then he got
it out: "Slaves of Dumuzi, I think. They wore his red band around
their arms." His eyes were bright with fear. "They carried knives,
my lord. They were hidden in their robes, but I saw the glint of
them. My lord--my lord--"
  "Did they tell you what they wanted?"
    "To speak with you, they said." He was stammering. Fright had
made him pale and sickly-faced. "I s-s-said you were with the
g-goddess, and they answered that they would return--they
w-w-w-would return this evening--"
    'CAh," I said softly. "So it is true, then." I caught him by the corner
of his robe and pulled him close and whispered, "Keep watch! If you
see them nearby, come to me at once!"  "I will, O lord!"
  "And say nothing to anyone about where I might be!"
  "Not a word, O lord!"
    I dismissed him and he scurried out. Once more I began to pace
the room. I found myself dry-throated and shaking, not so much
with fear, but with rage and dismay. What else could I do except
flee? I saw the folly of what I had been thinking a little while before,
when I had been so bold. I could go on being bold, yes; but I would
surely die for it. How cocky I had been! Asking, who was Dumuzi,
that he could threaten the son of Lugalbanda? Why, Dumuzi was
the king, and my life was forfeit to him if so he decreed. And if
Inanna had any way to protect me, why would she have sent word
to me to take flight? I stared into a terrible emptiness. I could not
tarry a moment, I knew, not even to seek explanations. In the twin-
kling of an eye Uruk was lost to me. I must go and go swiftly,
without even pausing to bid farewell to my mother, or to kneel at
Lugalbanda's shrine. At this moment the two assassins Dumuzi had
chosen might be on their way back there to find me. I could not hesitate.
    I did not mean to be gone for long. I would take sanctuary in
some other city for a few days, or if necessary a couple of weeks,
until I could learn what I had done to make myself the enemy of the
king, and how the breach could be repaired. I did not then realize
that I was setting forth into four years of exile. But so it proved to be.
    Numbly, with shaking hands, I gathered together a few posses-
sions. I took as much clothing as would fit in a pack on my back,
and my bow and a sword, and the Pazuzu amulet that my mother
had given me long ago, and the little goddess-statuette of green stone
that I had had from Inanna when she was still just an ordinary priest-
ess. I had acquired a tablet on which some magical phrases were
inscribed, things for use in case of injury or illness, and I took that
along, as well as a leather pouch of the drug that one burns to drive
away ghosts in the desert. Lastly I took a small knife of antique style
with a jeweled hilt, not very keen but beloved by me because it had
been brought to me by Lugalbanda returning from one of his wars.
    At the first watch of the night, star-rise time, I slipped from my
house and made my way warily through the narrow tangles of streets,
heading toward the North Gate. A light rain was falling. Plumes of
white smoke from the lamps of ten thousand houses rose toward the
darkening sky. My heart ached miserably. I had never left Uruk
before. I had no idea what lay beyond the city walls. I was in the
hands of the gods.
    The city of Kish was where I chose to go. Eridu or Nippur were
much closer and more easily reached; but Kish seemed a safer choice.
Dumuzi had great influence in Eridu or Nippur, but Kish was hostile
to him. I did not care to arrive at a place where I would immediately
be packed up and shipped back to Uruk as a kindness to Uruk's
king. King Agga of Kish was not likely to feel any need to do favors
for Dumuzi; and Lugalbanda had often spoken of him, I recalled, as
a sturdy warrior, a worthy opponent, a man of honor. To Kish,
then: to offer myself to Agga's mercy.
    Kish lay a great distance away to the north, a march of many
days. I could not go by water. There was no ready way for a small
boat or a raft to travel upstream on the fast-flowing Buranunu, and
it was too risky for me to try to slip aboard one of the great royal
sailing vessels that ply the river between cities. But I knew that there
was a caravan track that flanked the eastern bank of the river. If I
followed it northward and put one foot forward and then the next,
sooner or later I was sure to get to Kish.
    I walked briskly, and sometimes I ran at a light trot, and soon
Uruk was falling away behind me in the darkness. I did not halt
until the middle hour of the night. By then I had a sense of being
far from home, of embarking on a great journey that would take me
to the far corners of the world, a journey that would never end. Nor
has that journey ended, to this day.
                                         
    That night I slept in a freshly ploughed field, with my cloak around
me and the rain falling in my face. But I slept, and I slept soundly.
At dawn I rose, and bathed in some farmer's muddy canal, and helped
myself to a breakfast of figs and cucumbers. Then I took myself
toward the north once more. I felt tireless, full of an inexhaustible
energy, and it did not trouble me to walk all the hours of the day.
It was the god within me, driving me on, as ever, 'to more than
mortal deeds.
    The Land was more beautiful than I had ever imagined. The sky
was vast and luminous: it trembled with god-~presence. On the rich
broad river-plain the first tender grass of autumn was beginning to
sprout in the soft meadows after the harsh summer drought. Along
the canals the mimosa trees, the willows and poplars, the reeds and
rushes, all were stirring with new green growth. The dark-hued
river Buranunu ran to my left, rising high above the plain on its bed
of its own silt. Somewhere far off to the east, I knew, was the second
great river, the swift and wild Idigna, that forms the other boundary
of the Land: for when we speak of the Land, we mean the territory
between the two rivers. All that lies outside is foreign to us, that
which lies within is the dominion allotted to us by the gods.
    From the rivers come hardship and dangermterrible torrents, kill-
ing floods--but also from them comes fertility, and I saw signs of
that great gift on all sides. This we .owe to Father Enki. They tell
the tale of the wise god taking on the form of a wild bull, who thrust
his great phallus into the dry beds of the two rivers and cast forth
his seed in mighty spurts to fill them with the sweet sparkling water
of life. So is it always: the water of the father gives fecundity to the
Land, which is our mother. It was Enki too who, once the rivers
were filled with his fertile flow, devised the canals that convey the
water of the river to the fields, and brought ~orth the fish and the
reeds of the marsh~ands, and the green grass of the hills, and the
grains and vegetables of the cultivated lands, and the cattle of the
pastures, and gave each of these into the hands of its special god.
    These {railings I had heard from the harper Ur-kununna, and from
school-father in the classroom; but it had all seemed only words to
me. Now it became real. I saw the richly laden fields of wheat and
barley. I saw the date palms heavy with unripe fruit. I saw the
mulberry and cypress trees, the vines bearing dark glistening grapes,
the almonds and walnuts, the herds of oxen and goats and sheep.
 The Land was thick with life. In the lagoons along the canals I saw
 wallowing buffaloes, great flocks of birds with brilliant plumage,
 and an abundance of turtles and snakes. Once I saw a lion with a
 black mane; but he did not see me. I longed to see an elephant, of
 which ! had heard wondrous tales, but the elephants were elsewhere
 that season. Of other creatures, thoughwboars and hyenas, jackals
 and wolves, eagles and vultures, antelopes and gazelles--there was
 a multitude.
     When I was in the wild places, I hunted hares and geese for my
 dinners, and found berries and nuts to eat as well. In the village the
 farmers took me in and shared with me their beans and peas and
 lentils, their beer, their golden melons. I told no one my name, nor
 where I was from; but my bearing was that of a young prince, and
 perhaps that was why they were so hospitable toward me. In any
 case it is an offense to the gods to turn away a peaceful stranger.
 The girls of these farms willingly kept me warm by night, and more
 than once I regretted having to move along, or debated with myself
 whether to take some one of these tender companions with me. But
 move along I did, and always I departed from the villages alone; and
 alone I was when I came at last to the great city of Kish.
    My father used to speak generously of Kish. "If there is any city
'that can with justice claim to be the equal of Uruk," he would say,
 "it is Kish." ['~ink that is true.
     Like Uruk, Kish lies close by the Buranunu, so that it prospers
 from the river trade between city and city and from the sea trade
 that comes up the river from the ocean lands. Like Uruk, it is walled
 and secure. It has a great many people, though not quite so many
 as Uruk, which is probably the largest city of the world: my tax-
 collectors, in the fiftyth year of my reign, tallied ninety thousands of
 people, including the slaves. I think Kish has but two thirds as many,
 which is still a mighty number.
     Long before Uruk became great, Kish had already attained the
 highest power of the Land. This was when kingship had descended
 from heaven a second time, after the Flood had destroyed the earlier
 ~ties. Kish then became the seat of kingship, when Uruk was only
 a village. I remember the harper Ur-kununna singing us the tale of
 Etana king of Kish, he who stabilized all the Land and was hailed
 everywhere as overlord. Etana was the one who soared into the
 heavens with the aid of an eagle when, because he was childless, he
 sought the plant of birth, which grows only in heaven.
     The wondrous journey of Etana of Kish brought him the heir he
 desired; but all the same Etana dwells today in the House of Dust
 and Darkness, and Kish no longer has mastery over all the Land. By.
 the time Enmebaraggesi was king in Kish, greatness had begun to.
 grow in Uruk. Meskiaggasher, son of the sun, became our king,
 when Uruk was still not Uruk, but only the two villages of Eanna
 and Kullab. Meskiaggasher made Enmebaraggesi take note of him.
 After him came my grandfather the hero Enmerkar, who created
 Uruk out of the two villages; and after him, Lugalbanda. And under
 those two heroes we won our freedom from Kish and came into our
 full greatness, of which I have been the steward these many years.
     At this time of my boyhood Enmebaraggesi was long dead and
 his son Agga was king in Kish. On a day of bright winter sunlight
 I had my first glimpse of his city, rising high on the fiat Buranunu
 plain behind a wall of many towers painted a dazzling white, from
 which long banners in crimson and emerald were streaming. Kish
 was a two-humped place, I saw, with twin centers to the west and
 east and a low district between them. The temples of Kish rose on
 platforms far higher than the White Platform of Uruk, with steps
 going up and up and up until they seemed to march into the sky.
 That seemed a grand thing to me, to put the houses of the gods so
 close to heaven, and when I rebuilt the temples of Uruk I kept the
 high platforms of Kish in mind. But that was many years afterward.
     I was unprepared for the awesomeness of Kish. Everything about
 it seemed to cry out, "I am great, I am all-powerful, I am the in-
 vincible city." And ! still merely a boy, going out from home for
 the first time. But there was no room in my heart for fear.
    I presented myself before the walls of Kish and a sullen long-
bearded gatekeeper came out, idly swinging his bronze mace of of-
rice. He looked me over as though I were nothing at all, merely
some meat walking on legs. I returned his insolence glare for glare.
And with my hand resting lightly on the pommel of my sword I
said to him, "Tell your master that the son of Lugalbanda has come
from Uruk to give him greetings."

THAT NIGHT I dined on golden plates in the palace of Agga the
king, and so began my four-year sojourn in Kish.
    Agga received me warmly: whether out of respect for my father,
or out of some crafty intent to use me against Dumuzi, I had no
way of telling. Very likely some of each, for he was a man of honor,
as I had been told, but also Agga was in every fiber of his body a
monarch, who meant to turn everything that came his way to the
advantage of his city.
    He was a robust pink-skinned man, fleshy and big-bellied, who
loved his beer and meat. His head was entirely without hair. He had
it shaved every morning in the throne-room of his palace, before an
audience of courtiers and officials. The blades that his barbers used
were made of a white metal that I had never seen before, and were
very keen. Agga said it was iron, which puzzled me, for I thought
of iron as a darker stuff and not of much real use: it is soft and will
not take a sharp edge. But later I asked a chamberlain, who told me
that it was a special kind of iron that had fallen from the sky in the
land of Dilmun, and was mixed with another metal without a name
which gave it its color and its special hardness. Many times since
then I have wished to have a supply of such metal for my weapons,
and the secret of working it, but I have been unable to obtain either
one.
    Be that as it may, I have never seen a man closer shaved than Agga
was. His high officials went hairless too, except for those who traced
their ancestry to the desert people, whose thick curling hair is too
great a chore to shave. I can understand that, for my hair is similar,
as was Lugalbanda's. I think I must have some desert blood in me:
my height and the texture of my hair and beard argue for that,
although my nose is not as sharp and hooked as theirs tend to be.
Though every city of the Land has many of these sons of desert-folk
living in it, there were more of them in Kish than in any other place
I have seen. They must have accounted for full half the population,
and I heard their language, so different from ours, almost as often
as I heard our own.
    Agga knew that I had fled from Dumuzi. He seemed to know a
great deal of what went on in Uruk; far more, indeed, than I. But
it was no surprise to me that a king as powerful as Agga maintained
a network of spies in the city that was his greatest rival. What did
surprise me was the source from which his information came. But
I did not learn that until much later.
    "What have you done," Agga asked, "to have caused the king to
turn against you this way?"
    I had wondered that myself. It was strange that Dumuzi would
suddenly choose to look upon me as an enemy, after paying so little
heed to me in the six or seven years since the death of my father.
During that time I had certainly offered no challenge to his power.
Though I was strong and tall beyond my years, I was far from ready
for any sort of role in the government of the city. Surely Dumuzi
and everyone else realized that. If I had sometimes boasted in my
boyhood of becoming king some day, why, that was only a boy's
loud talk, while the kingship of my father Lugalbanda had still been
bright in my memory. Whatever dreams of royal power I had had
since then--and I could not deny that I had had such dreams
--I had kept entirely to myself.
    But as I sat at Agga's table considering these things, I remembered
that there was someone else in Uruk who was much given to the
pastime of predicting my destiny, and who seemed to have no doubt
I would be king. Had she not whispered of the pleasures we would
share when that day came? Had she not gone so far as to devise the
name under which I would reign?
  And she was one who was close to the ear of Dumuzi.
    "What would Dumuzi be likely to think," I asked Agga, "if he
were to suspect that my soul had been entered by divine Lugalbanda,
and his godlike spirit now resided within me?"
     "Ah, is that the case?" Agga asked quickly, his eyes gleaming.
I picked up my bowl of beer and sipped at it and offered no reply.
He said after a moment, watching me carefully, "If that should
be the case, or if Dumuzi should merely think it is the case--why,
then I believe you would seem very dangerous to him. He knows
that he is not worth five hairs of your father's beard. He fears the
very name of Lugalbanda. Yet Lugalbanda dead is no menace to the
throne of Dumuzi."
  "Yes, that is surely so."
    "Ah," said Agga, smiling, "but if it should become known in
Uruk that the spirit of the great and valorous Lugalbanda now has
come to reside within the sturdy body of Lugalbanda's noble son--
and if that son is growing toward an age when he might be expected
to begin playing some part in the governing of the city--why, yes,
you would seem a great peril to Dumuzi, a very serious peril in-
deed--"
  "Serious enough to have me slain?"
    Agga turned up his hands, palms outward. "What does the proverb
say? 'The coward sees lions where brave men see only cats'? I would
have no fear of the ghost of Lugalbanda, if I were Dumuzi. But I
am not Dumuzi, and he perceives things in a different way." He
gave me more beer, waving away the slave and pouring from the
ewer himself. Then he said, "If indeed Lugalbanda is the god who
has chosen you--and I would not be amazed if that was the case--
then you know it was far from wise of you to let Dumuzi have any
hint of that."
    "I understand that. But whatever Dumuzi has learned, he has not
learned from me."
      "He has learned it from someone, though, and that someone must
have learned it from you. Is that not so?"  I nodded.
    "Then you have spoken carelessly to a friend who is not a friend,
and you have been betrayed, eh? Is that not so?"
    Through tight lips I said, "I asked her not to speak a word of it
to anyone! But she would not promise me that. She grew angry, in
fact, when I asked the promise of her."  "Ah. Ah. She?"
    My face turned red. "I am telling you more than I should be revealing."
   He laid his hand atop mine. "Boy, boy, you tell me nothing I
don't already know! But you are safe from Dumuzi here. You are
under my protection, and no treachery can reach you in my city.
Here. Here, take more beer. What good sweet stuffthis is! The barley
from which they make it is reserved entirely for the use of the king.
Here, drink, boy, drink, drink! Drink!"
    And I drank, and drank some more. But my mind remained clear,
for it was burning with an anger that burned away any drunkenness
Agga's beer might have brought me. No doubt of it, she had gone
running to Dumuzi with the tale the moment she had had it from
me, without once thinking that she might be betraying me into
danger. Or was that what she intended? To betray me? Why? I could
see no reason for it. Perhaps it had been mere thoughtlessness, her
telling Dumuzi the one thing that I had begged her not to tell anyone.
And yet again she might have been following some design too subtle
for me to comprehend. I understood none of it, only that she was
certainly the one who had engineered my exile by giving away my
secret to the man most likely to be threatened by it. At that moment
such rage rushed through me that had she been within my reach just
then I would have struck her down, priestess that she was.
    The fury went from me after a while. We sat together late into
the night, Agga and I, and he told me tales of his wars with Lugal-
banda, and of a day when they had engaged in single combat outside
the walls of Kish, axes battering on shields for hour after hour until
darkness came, neither man able to inflict a wound on the other. He
had always held my father in the highest regard, he said, even when
they were sworn to be enemies to the death. Then he ordered another
flagon of beer to be opened--I was astounded at how he drank; no
wonder there was so much flesh on his bones--and as he grew hazier
with liquor so too did his stories, and I could scarcely follow them.
He began telling of the campaigns of his own father Enmebaraggesi
and of those of my grandfather Enmerkar, stories of wars fought
when he had been just a boy, and afterward he drifted off into a
jumble of legends of ancient Kish, involving kings who were only
names to me, and strange names at that, Zukakip, Buanum, Mashda,
Arurim, and the like. As he grew drunker and sleepier I grew more
wide awake. But I sensed that he was less hazy than he seemed, and
was watching me always with keen vigilance: for I did not forget
asked Lugalbanda for guidance, I heard nothing within my soul
telling me it was an error to swear the oath. One point that I con-
sidered was that in a certain sense everyone in the Land still owed
allegiance to Kish, since it was to Kish that the kingship had de-
scended after the Flood, and it had never formally been withdrawn
by the gods in all the years since. So by swearing, I was merely
confirming a fealty that already had a kind of shadowy existence. It
also crossed my mind that it would make little difference to me that
I had recognized Agga as my overlord, once I was king in Uruk, so
long as I was not required to pay tribute to him or to submit to his
commands; and there was nothing in the oath about either of those
things. So I swore. By the net of Enlil I swore my loyalty to the
king of Kish.
    There was no question of my returning to Uruk in a matter of
days or weeks, as I had originally imagined I might do. Not long
after my arrival in Kish, emissaries from Dumuzi arrived and tactfully
but firmly asked Agga to turn me over to them. "The son of Lu-
galbanda is sorely missed in Uruk," they said, most piously. "Our
king craves his counsel, and seeks his strong arm for the battlefield."
    "Ah," replied Agga, rolling his eyes and looking stricken with
great sorrow, "but the son of Lugalbanda has become my son as
well, and I would not be parted from him for all the Land. Tell
Dumuzi that I would die of grief, if the son of Lugalbanda were to
leave Kish so soon."
    And privately Agga said to me that his spies reported Dumuzi
beside himself with fear that I was organizing an army in Kish to
overthrow him. In Uruk I had been proclaimed an enemy of the
city, he said, and I would surely be slain if ever I came into Dumuzi's
grasp. So I remained in Kish. But I managed to send word to my
mother that I was healthy and prosperous and was only biding my
time until the proper moment for my homefaring.
    I found Kish a city not much unlike Uruk in most respects. In
Uruk we ate meat and bread, and drank beer and date-wine, and the
same in Kish. In Uruk and in Kish the clothing was of wool or of
linen, according to the time of the year, and the fashion of wearing
it was similar in each place. The streets of Uruk were narrow and
winding, except for the grand boulevards, and so were the streets
the frontier. So in my second year of exile I went forth with the
 army of Kish into that broad wind-swept plain behind which lies
 Susa, the capital of Elam.
     I had dreamed battle-dreams for many years, from the time in
 childhood when my father, home in brief respite from his wars, told
 me tales of chariots and javelins. I had played at battle on the fields
 of Uruk, drawing plans of formation and leading my playmates on
 wild charges against invisible enemies. But there is a song of battle
 that only a warrior's ears can hear, a high, keening sound that comes
 through the sluggish air like a blade, and until you have heard that
 song, you are no warrior, you are no man. I did not know about
 that song until I heard it, for the first time, beside the waters of a
 river called the Karkhah in the Land of Elam.
     All night long, under a brilliant moon, we made ready for the
 attack, oiling that which was made of wood or leather, scouring
 everything of bronze until it gleamed. The sky was so clear that we
 could see the gods walking about in it, great dark horned figures,
 blue against the blackness, striding from cloud to cloud. The giant
 visage of An, calm, all-seeing, seemed to fill the sky. Great Enlil
 loomed on his throne, conjuring storms in distant lands. The power
 of these gods was hot and hard in the air, like the fever-wind. We
 lit fires to them and sacrificed bullocks, and they came down low to
 us, so that we could feel the pressure of their divine weight against
 our hearts. And at dawn, not having had an hour's sleep, I donned
 my shining helmet, and clad myself in a short skirt of sheepskin with
 a leather loin-guard beneath, and clambered into my chariot as though
 this were my twentieth year on the fields of war.
    The trumpets sounded. The battle-cry roared from two hundred
throats: "For Agga and Enlil! For Agga and Enlil!"
      I heard my own voice, deep and hoarse, crying those same words,
words I had never imagined I would find myself uttering:  "For Agga and Enlil!"
  And we went forward into the plain.
    My charioteer's name was Namhani. He was a broad-shouldered
thick-chested man of the city of Lagash who had been sold to Kish
when a boy, and he had known no other trade but war: scars covered
him like ribbons of honor, some an angry red, some long since faded
into the darkness of his skin. He turned to me and grinned just before
he charged. He had no teeth, only four or five wicked yellow snags.
    Agga had given me a splendid chariot--four-wheeled, not a two-
wheeler as is usually provided for novices. The son of Lugalbanda,
he told me, could ride in nothing less. To draw it, the king had
provided four sturdy asses, swift and strong. I had helped Namhani
myself to harness them, fastening the girth-straps about their chests,
fitting them to the yoke and collar, attaching the reins to the rings
in their upper lips. They were good animals, patient, shrewd. Some-
times I wonder what it would be like to go into battle with a chariot
drawn by powerful long-legged horses, rather than our placid asses:
but to dream of harnessing horses, those wild and mysterious beasts
of the mountainous northeast, is like dreaming of harnessing the
whirlwind. They say that in the lands beyond Elam the people have
found a way of taming horses and riding them, but I think that is a
lie. Now and again in distant lands I have caught sight of black horses
sailing like ghosts across storm-swept basins. I see no way such
creatures, if they could be captured at all, could ever be broken to
our use.
    Namhani seized the reins and leaned forward against the leopard-
hide that covered the chariot's frame. I heard the groaning of the
axle-rod, the creaking of the wooden wheels. Then the asses had the
rhythm of it and hit a steady stride, and we went jouncing over the
soft spongy ground toward the dark line of Elamites that waited
along the horizon.
  "For Agga! For Enlil!"
    And I, shouting along with all the others, added war-cries of my
own: "Lugalbanda! Sky-father! Inanna! Inanna! Inanna!"
    Mine was the fifth chariot: a great honor, for the four in front of
mine belonged to.the general and to three of the sons of Agga. Eight
or ten more came after me. Behind the clattering chariots marched
the columns of foot-soldiers, first the heavy infantry protected by
helmets and thick cloaks of black felt, with axes in their hands, and
then the light skirmishers, all but naked, wielding their spears or
short swords. My own weapon was the javelin. I had a dozen of
them, long and slender, most beautifully made, in my quiver. I
carried also a double-headed axe with which to defend myself when
my javelins were gone, and a little sword, a handy little skewer if
all else failed me.

    As we rumbled toward the enemy, I heard a music upon the wind
like no music I had ever heard before: a single note, piercing and
fierce, that began amazingly faintly but grew and grew until it filled
all the air. It was something like the keening sounds the women
make when they mourn the death of the god Dumuzi at the harvest-
festival; but this was no mourning-song. It was bright and fiery and
jubilant, and heat and light came from it. I did not need to be told
what music this music was: it was the battle-song, bursting from all
our souls at once. For we had fused into a single creature with a
single mind, now, those of us who charged the Elamites, and out
of the heat of that fusion came the silent song that only warriors
may hear.
    At the same time I felt the aura of the god upon me, the buzzing
droning sound within, the golden glow, the sense of great strange-
ness, that told me that Lugalbanda was stirring within me. I held
myself steady and it seemed to me that I was a rock submerged in
a swiftly moving dark river, but I was not afraid. Perhaps my con-
sciousness went from me for an instant. But then I was fully awake
again, as awake as I had never been in my life. At full gallop we
came rushing into the Elamite line.
    The Elamites have no chariots. What they have is great numbers,
and thick shields, and a thickness of soul that some might call stu-
pidity, but which I think is true bravery. They stood piled up before
us, heavy-bearded men with eyes dark as a month without moon-
light, clad in gray leather jerkins and holding ugly broad-tanged
spears. They had no faces: only eyes and hair. Namhani uttered a
 great roaring shout and guided my chariot right into their midst.
   "Enlil!" we cried. "Agga!" And I: "Inanna! Inanna.t''
     The warrior-goddess preceded us, bowling over the Elamites like
 gaming-posts. They fell shrieking before the hooves of the four asses,
 and the chariot rose and fell like a vessel laboring in heavy waters
 as the wheels passed over their fallen bodies. Namhani swung a great
 long-handled axe with a sharp-angled socket, chopping away with
 it at any Elamite spearsman who approached us. I gripped the shaft
 of a javelin in each hand and took my aim. Lugalbanda had told me
 many times that the task of the vanguard is to destroy the spirit of
 the enemy, so that the other battle-chariots and the infantrymen
 behind them can advance more freely. And the best way to achieve
that, he said, is to pick out the greatest men of the other side, the
officers and the heroes, and slay them first.
    I looked about me. I saw mere chaos, a tumult of jostling forms
and waving spears. Then I found my man. When my eyes lit upon
him, the battle-song grew louder and hotter in my ears, and the glow
of Lugalbanda's spirit flared up like the blue flame that comes when
date-wine is flung upon a bonfire. That one. There. Kill him and all
else will be easy.
    He saw me, too. He was a mountain chieftain with hair like black
fur, and a shield that bore a demon's face, yellow with blazing red
eyes. He, too, understood the importance of killing the heroes first,
and I think he had singled me out as a hero, though I was then hardly
deserving of any such acclaim. His eyes gleamed brightly; he lifted
his spear.
    My right arm rose and I cast my javelin without hesitating. The
goddess sharpened my aim: the point entered him at the throat, in
the small place below his beard and above the rim of his shield.
Blood spouted from his lips and his eyes rolled wildly. He dropped
his spear and went over backward, furiously kicking his legs.
    A great cry, like the sighing of some huge beast, came from the
men about him. Several stooped to drag him to safety. That opened
a place in the Elamite rank through which Namhani immediately
took the chariot. I cast a second javelin with my left hand just as
ably as I had the first, and another tall warrior went down. Then
we were into the heart of the enemy force, with four or five other
chariots flanking us. I saw the men of Kish staring at me and pointing,
and though I could not hear what they were saying, they were making
god-signs at me, as if they saw a divine mantle in the air above me.
    I used all my javelins and did not miss once. Under the force of
the charging chariots the Elamites were thrown into confusion, and
although they fought bravely their cause was hopeless from the first
minutes. One did manage to come up to my chariot and slash at the
lefthand-most ass, wounding it badly. Namhani cut the man down
with one blow of his axe. Then, leaping out over the poles, the brave
charioteer slit the traces with his short-sword, freeing the injured
animal so it would not slow us. An Elamite reared up with a spear
aimed at Namhani's back, but I took him down with a swing of my
own axe, and turned just in time to ram my axe-handle into the gut
of one who had hopped upon the chariot from the rear. Those were
the only moments of peril. The chariots went on and through, and
turned to fall upon the enemy from the rear, and by then our foot
soldiers were at work, marching in a frightful phalanx eleven men
broad. So went the day for Kish. By nightfall the river ran red with
blood and we had ourselves a joyful feast, while the harpers sang of
our valor and the wine flowed freely. The next day it took us almost
until twilight to divide the booty, there was so much of it.
    I fought in nine battles and six small skirmishes on that campaign.
After the first battle, my chariot was awarded the second position,
behind the general's but ahead of the sons of the king. None of the
sons of the king showed anger towarcl me for that. I took some small
wounds now and then, but they were nothing, and whenever I cast
my javelin it cost some enemy his life. I was not then fifteen years
old; but I am of the blood of gods, and that makes a difference. Even
my own men seemed frightened of me. When we had won our third
battle the general called me aside and said, "You fight like no one I
have ever seen. But there is one thing I wish you would not do when
you go among the enemy."  "And what is that?"
    "You cast your javelins with either hand. I wish you would throw
them with one hand or the other, but not with both."
    "But I can cast equally well with right and left," I said.. "And I
think it puts terror into the enemy, when they see me do it."
    The general smiled faintly. "Yes, that it does. But my own soldiers
see it as well. They are beginning to think that you are more than
mortal. They think you must be a god, for no ordinary man can
fight the way you do. Which may create problems for me, do you
understand? It is a good thing to have a hero among us, when we
go into battle, yes; but it can be very discouraging, perhaps, to have
a god in our midst. Each man of the army hopes to do miracles of
valor each day, and that hope strengthens his arm on the field. But
when he knows that he can never be the hero of the day, because he
is in competition with a god, it saps his spirit and puts a heaviness
upon his heart. So cast your javelins with your right hand, son of
Lugalbanda, or with your left, but with one or the other, not both.
Do you understand?"
  "I understand," I said. And thereafter I tried to use only my right
hand in casting the javelin, for the sake of the other men. In the press
of battle, though, it is not always easy to remember that one has
promised to use only a certain hand when fighting. Sometimes when
I reached for a javelin it was with my left hand, and it would have
been folly to give it to my right one before casting it. So after a time
I ceased to worry about such matters. We won every battle. The
general did not speak of it to me again.

I THOUGHT often of Uruk at first, and then less often, and then
hardly at all. I had become a man of Kish. In the beginning, hearing
reports in Kish of what the army of Uruk had accomplished against
the desert tribes or some city of the eastern mountains, I felt a certain
pride at what "we" had achieved, but then I noticed that I was
thinking of the army of Uruk not as we but as they, and the doings
of that army ceased to matter at all to me.
    And yet I knew, whenever I troubled to think of it, that my life
in Kish was leading me nowhere. I lived at Agga's court as a prince,
yes, and when it was the season to make war I was accorded high
precedence in the camp, almost as though I were a son of the king.
But I was not a son of the king, and I was aware that I had already
risen as high in Kish as I was ever likely to go: a prince, a warrior,
perhaps one day a general, nothing more. In Uruk I could have been king.
    Furthermore I was troubled as ever by the greatness of that chilly
gulf that separated me from other men. I had comrades, yes, fellow
warriors with whom I could go drinking or.wenching or brawling.
But their souls were closed to mine. What was it that cut me off
from them? Was it my great size, or my regal bearing, or the god-
presence that hovers always about me? I did not know. I knew only
that, here as in Uruk, I bore the curse of solitude and had no spell
by which I might lift it.
    Also thoughts of my mother often crossed my mind. It saddened
me that she was fated now to grow old without a son by her side.
I sent her little tokens by secret messengers sometimes, and received
messages in return from the priests who went as couriers between
the cities. She never asked me when I was returning, and yet I knew
that that must be uppermost in her mind. Then too I yearned to
kneel before the shrine of my father and make the necessary obser-
vances to his memory. For though I knew his spirit rode in my soul,
and beheld everything that I beheld, nevertheless that did not excuse
me from the rites that were due his ghost. I could not perform those
rites in Kish. That failure haunted me.
    Nor could I banish altogether from my mind the memory of the
priestess Inanna, her sparkling eyes, her slender supple body. Each
year when autumn came, and it was the time of the Sacred Marriage
in Uruk, I imagined I stood in the jostling crowd on the White
Platform, seeing king and priestess, god and goddess, showing them-
selves forth to the people; and bitter anguish rose within me, to think
that she would share her bed with Dumuzi that night. I told myself
that she had been treacherous to me, or at best faithless; and yet she
glowed in my mind and I felt a yearning toward her. The priestess,
like the goddess she served and embodied, was a perilous but irre-
sistible figure to me. Her aura was one of death and disaster, yet also
one of passion and the joys of the flesh, and something more even
than that, the union of two spirits that is the true Sacred Marriage.
She was my other half. She knew that and always had known it,
from that time I was a boy stumbling around in the dark corridors
of the Enmerkar temple. But I was a warrior in Kish, and she was
a goddess in Uruk; and I could not go to her, because she had made
my life forfeit in the city of my birth through her scheming, or
through her thoughtlessness.
    In the fourth year of my exile a priest with shaven head, who was
newly arrived from Uruk, came to me in Agga's palace and made
the goddess-sign 'before me. He took from his robe a little black
goatskin pouch and pressed it into my palm, saying, "It is a sign to
Gilgamesh the king, from the hand of the goddess."
    I had not heard that strange name, Gilgamesh, except once, long
ago. And the priest, in using it, made it clear to me who the sender
of the pouch must be.
    When the priest had departed I opened the pouch in my private
chambers. Within it was a small gleaming thing, a seal-cylinder, such
as we employ on letters and other important documents. It was cut
from a piece of white obsidian so clear that light journeyed through
it as easily as through air, and the design carved upon it was intricate
and fine, plainly the work of a great master. I called for a scribe and
asked him to bring me his best red clay, and carefully I rolled the
seal against the clay to see what imprint it made.
    There were two scenes depicted on the seal, both drawn from the
tale of the descent of Inanna into the land of death. On the one side
I saw Dumuzi, dressed in noble garments, sitting proudly on his
lofty throne. Before him stands Inanna, clad in sackcloth: she is newly
returned from her sojourn in hell. Her eyes are the eyes of death,
and her arms are upraised to call down a curse on him; for Dumuzi
is the chosen scapegoat whose death will bring about her release from
the nether world. The other side of the seal portrayed the sequel to
that scene, a cowering Dumuzi surrounded by glowering demons
who cut him down with axes, while Inanna looks on in triumph.
    I did not think Inanna had sent me that seal merely to awaken in
my mind some memory of that great poem. No. I took the seal-
cylinder to be a sign, aprophesy, a blunt message. It kindled a fire
in my soul: the blood began to flow within me like turbulent river-
water, and my heart soared like a bird newly set free from a trap.
    But caution returned, after that first burst of excitement. Even if
I had read the message rightly, could I trust it, or her? Inanna the
priestess had already led me once into peril; and Inanna the goddess,
as everyone knows, is the deadliest of the gods. A message that
comes from one, under the auspices of the other, might well be an
invitation to doom. I must move carefully. That afternoon I sent
word to Uruk, by one of my own slaves, saying simply, "Hail,
Inanna, great lady of heaven! Holy torch, you fill the sky with light!"
It is what the newly enthroned king sings, when he makes his first
hymn to the goddess: let her see in that what she chose. I signed the
tablet with the name she had given me, Gilgamesh, and the royal symbol.
    A day or two afterward, Agga called me into the royal throne-
chamber, that great echoing alabaster-walled room where he liked
to sit in state for hour after hour, and said, "Word has come to me
from Uruk that Dumuzi the king lies gravely ill."
    A joyous surging arose within me like the rising of the waters in
the spring. I felt the fulfilling of my destiny now beginning to begin.
Beyond doubt, I told myself, this is the confirmation of the message
inscribed in pictures on the seal-cylinder. I have read the message
rightly: she has already begun to work her deadly spell. And Uruk
will be mine.
    But to Agga I said only, with a shrug, "That news causes me very
little grief."
    He shook his head, freshly shaven, brows and beard and all, bald
as an egg. He tugged at his jowls and leaned forward so that the
pink folds of his bare belly piled one atop the other, and he peered
down at me with dark displeasure, whether real or feigned I could
not tell. At length he said, "Ah, you invite the anger of the gods,
with words like those!"
  My cheeks grew hot. "Dumuzi is my enemy."
    "As he is mine. But he is an anointed king in the Land, who carries
the blessing of Enlil upon him. His person is sacred. His illness should
grieve us all: and especially you, a child of Uruk, a subject of his. I
mean to send an embassy to Uruk to bear my prayers for his welfare.
And I intend you to be my ambassador."  "Me?"
    "A prince of Uruk, of the line of Lugalbanda, a valiant hero
--I could send no one better, not even one of my own sons."
      Amazed, I said, "Do you mean to send me to my doom, then?
For surely it is not safe even now for me to return to Uruk!"
  "It will be," said Agga blandly.
  "Can you be certain?"
    "Dumuzi suffers with the sickness unto death; you are no threat
to him any longer. All Uruk will welcome you, even Dumuzi. There
is advantage in this for you, boy: can you not see that?"  "If he is dying,, yes. And if he is not?"
    "Even if he were not, a safe-conduct is granted to my ambassador.
The gods would destroy any city that violated such an oath. Do you
think Uruk would dare to lay hands on the herald of Kish?"
"Dumuzi would. If that herald were the son of Lugalbanda."
"Dumuzi is dying," said Agga again. "There will be need soon
of a new king in Uruk. By sending you at this time, I put you into
the position most useful to you." He rose slowly from the throne
and came down to stand beside me, and laid his arm heavily across
my shoulders, as a father might; for in truth he had been virtually a
second father to me. Sweat glistened on his scalp. I felt the physical
 presence of him almost as I might a god's: he was massive, not only
 in his fleshly bulk but in his deep-seated regal authority. Yet there
 was the smell of beer on his breath. I did not think Father Enlil would
 smell of beer, nor An the Sky-father. Quietly Agga said to me, "It
 is all quite certain. My information comes to me from the highest
 power in Uruk."
  "From Dumuzi, you say?"
  "Higher."
  I stared at him. "You are in communication with her?"
  "We are very useful to one another, your goddess and I."
     In that moment the full truth came to me, and it struck me like
 the fire of the gods, so that the breath was knocked from me for a
 moment. I heard the droning buzz of the god-aura within my brain.
 I saw, enveloping Agga and everything else in the room, a luminous
 glow, gold with shadows of deep blue within it: the sign of the
 tempest in my spirit. I trembled. I clenched my fists and struggled
 to remain upright. What a fool I had been! From the first, Inanna
 had ruled me. She had engineered the necessity of my flight from
 Uruk, knowing I would go to Kish and that during my exile I would
 make myself ready to replace Dumuzi upon the throne. She and
 Agga had conspired that between themselves; and Agga had sent me
 to his wars and trained me to be a prince and a leader, and now I
 was ready; and now Dumuzi, no longer needed, was being pushed
 into the House of Dust and Darkness. I was no hero, but only a
 puppet, dancing to their tune. I would be king in Uruk, yes: but the
 priestess would have the power, she and Agga to whom I had sworn
 the oath. And the son I had engendered upon Ama-sukkul, daughter
 of the king of Kish, would be king in Uruk after me, if Agga's plan
 worked its way to its final flowering. So Agga's seed would come
 to reign in both great cities.
  Yet I might still turn all this to my advantage, if I walked warily.
  I said, "When am I to set out for Uruk?"
    "Four days hence, on the day of the feast of Utu, which is an
auspicious time for the commencement of great ventures." Agga's
hand still tightly grasped my shoulder. "You will travel in majesty,
and they will welcome you with joy. And you will bring with you
splendid gifts from me for the treasury of Uruk, in recognition of
the friendship that will exist between your city and mine when you
are king."
    On the eve of the feast of Utu, the moon, when it appeared, was
covered by a veil, which is an omen that is widely understood to
mean that the king will attain the greatest power. But the moon did
not say which king was meant--Agga the king that was, or Gil-
gamesh the king that would be. That is the great trouble with omens,
and with oracles of all sorts: they speak the truth, yes, but one is
never sure what that truth truly may be.

MY JOURNEY toward Uruk was like that of a king already en-
throned, and my entry into the city was like that of a triumphant
conqueror.
    Agga placed at my service three of his finest sailing vessels, of the
kind used for the sea trade to Dilmun, with great spread-
ing sails of scarlet and yellow cloth that caught the breeze and sped
me downriver swiftly and in the grandest style. I had with me a
great richness of gifts from the king of Kish--slaves, stone jars of
wine and oil, bales of fine fabrics, precious metals and jewels, effigies
of the gods. I was accompanied by three dozen warriors as a guard
of honor, and by a good many high officials of Agga's court, among
them his astrologer, his personal physician, and his steward of wines,
who saw to my comfort at each meal. My wife Ama-sukkul did not
come with me, for she was just then about to be delivered of my
second son. I would never see her again; but I did not know thatthen.
    At each town along the river the people came out to hail us as we
passed by. They did not know who they were hailing, of course--
certainly they did not suspect that the kingly bronze-skinned man
who returned their homage with a regal wave was one and the same
as the fugitive boy who had had their hospitality four years earlier--
but they knew that a fleet such as ours must be an important one,
and they stood on the banks shouting and waving banners until we
were gone from sight. There were at least two dozen such villages,
each of a thousand dwellers or more, the northern ones owing al-
legiance to Kish, the southern ones to Uruk.
   By night the astrologer showed me the stars and pointed out the
omens in them. I knew only the bright star of the morning and
evening, which is holy to Inanna; but he showed me the red star of
war, and the white star of truth. All these stars are planets: that is
to say, wanderers. Also he showed me the stars of the northern sky
that follow Enlil's way, and those of the southern sky that follow
Enki's way, and the stars of the celestial equator, which are those
that follow the way of An. He taught me to find the Chariot Star,
the Bow Star, and the Fire Star. He showed me the Plough, the
Twins, the Ram, and the Lion. And he imparted to me much secret
knowledge of the mysteries of these stars, and how to know the
revelations they offer. He taught me also the art of using the stars
to find one's way at night, which was of great value to me in my
later journeyings.
    Often ! would stand by myself in the darkest hours of the night
at the prow of my ship and speak with the gods. I asked counsel of
Enki the wise, and Enlil the mighty, and Sky-father An, who rises
like the arch of heaven above all things. They granted me great favor
by entering my spirit; for I know that the high gods have many
things to attend to, and the world of mortal men can occupy very
little of their time, just as mortal rulers cannot devote themselves
greatly to the needs of children or beggars. But those potent princes
of heaven inclined themselves toward me. I felt their presence and
it was comforting to me. I knew from that that I was indeed Gil-
gamesh, that is, He-Who-Is-Chosen; for it is not the business of the
gods to grant much comfort, yet they granted it to me as I sailed
toward the city of Uruk.
    On the morning of the ninth day of the month Ululu I came to
Uruk under clear skies and a huge burning sun. Runners had gone
ahead, bearing news of my coming, and half the city, so it seemed,
was waiting for me when my ships docked at the White Quay. I
heard drumming and the sound of trumpets, and then the chanting
of my name, my 61d name, my birth-name, which I was soon to
drop from me. There were some ten thousand people, I think,
crowded along the rim of the Dike of the Ship of An, and flowing
from there to the great metal-studded doors of the Royal Gate.
    I leaped lightly from my ship, and knelt and kissed the bricks of
the ancient dike. When I rose, my mother Ninsun stood before me.

She was wondrously beautiful in the brilliant light, almost like a
goddess. Her robes were of crimson interwoven with strands of
finely drawn silver, and a long curved golden pin fastened her cloak
at her shoulder. In her hair she wore the silver crown of the high
priestess of An, set with carnelian and lapis, and glinting with high-
lights of gold. She looked not a day older than when I last had seen
her. Her eyes were shining: I saw in them the warmth that emanates
not merely from one's own mother but from great Ninhursag, the
fountain of repose, the mother of us all.
    She studied me a long while, and I knew she was contemplating,
me both as a priestess and as a mother. I saw her seeing the size and
power of my body, and the presence that had come upon me in full
manhood. There could have been no stronger confirmation of the
godhood of Lugalbanda than the godly body of Lugalbanda's son.
    After a time she put out her hands to me and called me by my
birth-name, and said, "Come with me to the temple of the Sky-
father, that I may give thanks for your return."
    We walked at the head of a great procession through the Royal
Gate and along the Path of the Gods. At each holy place there was
a rite to perform. At the small temple known as the Kizalagga a
priest wearing a purple sash lit a torch in which spices had been
inserted, and sprinkled it with golden oil, and did the rite of the
washing of the mouth. At the holy place called the Ubshukkinakku
another torch was lit, and pots were broken. Near the Sanctuary of
Destinies a bull was sacrificed, and its thigh and its skin were seared
and offered up. Then we ascended to the temple of An, where the
old high priest Gungunum mixed wine and oil and made a libation
at the gate, smearing some of it on the doorsockets and some on the
gate itself. When we were withi~n, he sacrificed a bull and a ram, and
I filled the golden censers and made the offering to the Sky-father
and to all the other deities in their turn.
    Throughout all this I asked no questions and spoke no words out
of turn. It was like moving through a dream. In the distance I heard
the steady beating of the lilissu-drum, that is beaten only in the hour
of an eclipse, and at the time of the death of kings; and I knew that
Dumuzi the king was dead, and that they were going to offer the
kingship to me.
  I had not yet felt the goddess-presence. Nor had I laid eyes on the
priestess Inanna. Thus far Uruk had withheld the goddess from me,
and I had moved only in the presence of the Sky-father, to whom
my mother is dedicated. But I knew Inanna would be manifested to
me shortly.
    "Come," said Ninsun, and we crossed from the precinct of An to
the precinct of Inanna, and up the steps of the White Platform toward
the Enmerkar temple.
  Inanna waited for me there.
    The sight of her drew a gasp of amazement from me. In the four
years of my absence, time had burned all the girlishness from her.
She had entered into the deepest ripeness of her womanhood and her
beauty had become overwhelming. Her dark eyes gleamed with the
old wanton sparkle, but also with ~trange power where there had
been mere mischief before. She seemed taller, and more slender, with
the blades of her cheekbones sharply outlined; but her breasts were
fuller than I remembered. Her deep-hued skin was shining with oil.
The only garments she wore were the ornaments of the goddess, the
earrings and the beads, the golden triangle at the loins, the hip-jewels
and the nose-jewels and the navel-jewels.
    I felt the heavy musky aura of goddess-presence and the buzzing
aura of god-presence both at once. The slow steady beating of the
drum penetrated my soul and invaded it utterly, so that the drum
became me, and I became the drum. I felt myself stretched taut in
the sunlight as the felt-covered paddles descended again and again.
My eyes met Inanna's and I was drawn toward those dark immens-
ities just as long ago I had been drawn toward the eyes of my father
Lugalbanda, and I yielded myself for a moment and let myself drift
into a pool of darkness.
    She smiled, and it was a terrifying smile, the smile of the Inanna-
serpent.
    In a low husky voice she said, "The king Dumuzi has become a
god. The city is without a king. The goddess requires this service
of you."
    "I will serve," I said, as all my life I had known I was destined
one day to say.
    Though I knew that it was Agga and Inanna who had conspired
to give me this throne, for reasons of their own advantage, that did
not matter to me. When I was king, I would be king: no one would
own me, no one would use me. So I vowed to myself: I would be
king, when I was king. Let them tremble who thought to have it
otherwise!
    They had everything in readiness. At a signal from Inanna I was
taken aside, into a small three-sided building adjoining the temple
where the preparations for high services are done. There I was stripped
and bathed by halfa dozen young priestesses, and then I was anointed
in every part of my body with sweet-smelling oils, and my hair was
combed and brushed and plaited and gathered behind my head, and
they gave me a skirt of flounced wool to cover myself from my hips
downward. Finally I gathered into my arms the gifts that a new king
must offer to Inanna, and I went slowly forward from the robing-
room out into the terrible blast of the summer sunlight, and to the
vestibule of the Enmerkar temple. And went within to claim my
kingship.
    There were the three thrones, the one with the sign of Enlil, the
one with the sign of An, and the one flanked by the reed-bundle of
Inanna. There was the scepter. There was the crown. And there on
the center throne sat Inanna, priestess and goddess, radiant now in
all her awful majesty.
    Her eyes met mine. She looked close upon me, as if to say: You
are mine, you will belong to me. But I met her gaze steadily and evenly,
as if to answer: You much misjudge me, lady, if that is whatyou think.
    Then it began, the great ceremony, the prayer and the libations.
About me stood the officers of Dumuzi's reign, the chamberlains
and stewards and overseers and tax-gatherers and viceroys and gov-
ernors, who soon would be dependent upon my mercies. The flutes
sounded, the trumpets played. I lit a globe of black incense; I laid
down my gifts before each of the thrones; I touched my forehead to
the ground before Inanna, and kissed the ground, and gave the proper
gifts to her. It seemed to me I had done this a thousand times. I felt
new strength flowing through me as though my blood had doubled
in volume, as though my breath was the breath of two men, and
both of them giants.
    Inanna rose from the throne. I saw the beauty of her long arms
and graceful neck; I saw her breasts swaying beneath the blue neck-
laces of beads. "I am Ninpa the Lady of the Scepter," she said to
me, and took the scepter from the throne of Enlil and handed it to
me. "I am Ninmenna the Lady of the Crown," she said, and lifted
the crown from the throne of An and let it rest upon my brow. Her
eyes met mine; her gaze was burning, burning.
    She spoke my birth-name, which would never again be heard in
the world of mortals.
    Then she said, "You are Gilgamesh, the great man of Uruk. So
do the gods decree." And I heard the name from a hundred voices
at once, like the roaring of the river in the time of flood: "Gilgamesh!
Gilgamesh! Gilgamesh!"

 THAT NIGHT I slept in the palace of the king, in the great bed of
 ebony and gold that had been my father's, and Enmerkar's before
 him. The family of Dumuzi had already departed from the place, all
 his wives, his plump doughy daughters; the gods had not granted
 him sons. Before I went to my bed I confirmed in their position all
 the officers of the kingdom, according to the tradition, though I
 knew I would remove most of them from office in the months to
 come. And I feasted most royally with them, until spilled beer ran
 in foaming torrents along the channels of the feasting-hall floor.
     At the evening's end the chamberlain of the royal concubines asked
 me if I meant to have a woman with me in the night. I said that I
 did, as many as he could supply; and he supplied them all night,
 seven, eight, a dozen of them. From the eagerness of them I suppose
 Dumuzi had been making little use of them. I embraced each one
 only once, and sent her out and called for the next. For a moment,
 in their arms, it seemed almost as ifI might be able to fill that hollow
 place within my soul that gave me such torment. Indeed I could--
 for a moment, for half an hour, and then the pain came rolling back
 in upon me like a storm cloud. One woman alone might have freed
 me from this distress, I thought. But that woman, the woman I
 would have chosen for myself that night had I been free to choose,
 was of course not for me to have--not then, not until the new year
 and the rite of the Sacred Marriage. But I allowed myself to imagine
 that I was with her, as I pressed my body against this concubine and
 that one.
    At dawn I found that I still had vigor in me. I rose and went by
foot, disdaining all bearers, to the cloister of the holy priestesses.
There I asked for the priestess Abisimti, who had initiated me into
manhood. It seemed to me that there was terror in her eyes, as much
perhaps for my great height and strength as for the fact that I was
now the king. I smiled and took her hand in mine, and said, "Think
of me as that boy of twelve with whom you were so gentle."
    I was not gentle with her that morning, I suspect. Great strength
had come upon me, greater even than I had already had, simply from
having assumed the kingship. And there was the godhood within
me as well. Three times I had her, until she lay back panting fitfully,
looking a little dazed and plainly hoping I was sated. Nothing could
have sated me that day; but for her sake I spared her further toil.
Abisimti was as beautiful as I remembered her, with skin like cool
water and breasts round as pomegranates; but her beauty was to
Inanna's as the moon is to the sun.
    So passed my first day in the kingship. Hour by hour I felt the
power and the greatness flowing into me. On my second day I
received homage from the assembly of the city.
    If a stranger were to ask how the king of Uruk is chosen, why,
any citizen of the city would reply that he is chosen by the assembly.
And in truth that is the case; but that is not the entire case.
    The assembly elects, but the gods direct, and in particular it is
Inanna, speaking through her priestess, who makes known the one
who is to be king. Nor does the kingship pass automatically, as it
does in Kish and as I hear it does in many other cities, to the son of
the king. We understand these matters differently. We think that
there is a divine inwardness that some men have, a kind of grace,
which makes them fit to be king. If that grace happens to pass from
father to son, as it had from Enmerkar to Lugalbanda, and from
Lugalbanda to m~, it is only because a father often passes his traits
to his son--his stature, his breadth of shoulders, the turn of his nose,
and, perhaps, his kingliness. But it does not necessarily happen that
way. Not all our kings have been the sons of kings.
    Once the assembly has chosen the king, the assembly may only
advise, not command. If there is disagreement between the assembly
and the king, the king's wishes will prevail. This is not tyranny; this
is the inherent outcome of the correct choice of king. For, mark you
well, in time of crisis and doubt it is vital that a city speak with a
single voice. And have the gods not indicated which voice that voice
should be, by making him the king? The assembly, in its discourse
with the king, tunes that voice as a harper tunes his strings; but when
the voice speaks, it is the voice of the king, which is to say, it is the
voice of the city, it is the voice of heaven. And if the king in his
speech does not speak with heaven's voice, everyone will know it,
and heaven will cast him from his place.
    These matters were much on my mind when the men of the
assembly paid their ceremonial call on me in the audience-chamber
of the palace. First came the free citizens, what we have always called
the house of men: those who speak for the boatmen and fishermen,
the farmers and cattlebreeders, the scribes and jewelers and carpenters
and masons. They passed through, and put down their gifts before
me, and touched their hands to my ankles in the customary way.
When that was done, the elders of the assembly came, those who
speak for the great estates, the princely families, the priestly clans.
Their gifts were more weighty, their scrutiny of me more intense.
I met their gaze evenly and with assurance. I was aware that I was
the youngest man in the room, younger than any of the elders,
younger than any of the house of men. But I was king.
    I felt the sacred force that is a king's glory, and I revelled in it.
But even then a dark shadow lay upon my joy, for I remembered
Lugalbanda lying upon his alabaster bier, and I remembered the day
I had stood by the city wall and watched the corpses of the poor go
floating down the river. I was mindful always of the bleak jest the
gods have played upon us, even on those who are of a greatness
approaching theirs: Never forget that you are mortal, never Jbrget that
you have but a brief moment of grandeur and then you are dragged off to
the House of Dust and Darkness. Such matters chilled my warmest
moments. Yet I was young; yet I was strong; I pushed the thought
of death from me as often as it arose within me, and told myself, as
I had when I was a child: Death, I will de, at you! Death, I will devour
you.t
    "All during the time of Dumuzi," said the great landowner Enlil-
ennam, "we waited for your return. For Lugalbanda is within you."
    I looked at him, startled. Was that fact such common knowledge
in Uruk? But then I realized that he meant it only as a manner of
speaking. It was merely as if he said, Lugalbanda's bloodflows in your
veins. And everyone knew that.
    "It has been a dark time for us," said white-haired Ali-ellati, whose
standing of nobility could be traced back ninety thousand years.
"Signs and omens became confused. The gods gave no clear answers.
The portents were sinister. We lived in fear and foreboding. It was
because of the king. Yes: because of the king."
  "And what manner of king was Dumuzi?" I asked.
    "Well, he was not Lugalbanda,' Enlil-ennam said, smirking
broadly. "He was not Enmerkar."
    "He was not even Dumuzi," said Lu-Meshlam, whose estates were
like a little kingdom in themselves. "Sufficient to be Dumuzi, if one
cannot be Enmerkar. But he was not even Dumuzi!" And they all
laughed at that.
  "What are you telling me?" I asked.
    Piece by piece they unfolded a tale of weak and sorry kingship,
this one speaking a little while, then another taking up the story. A
silly man, swollen with pride--ill-starred projects, abortive military
adventures, the raising to power of upstarts and nonentities, foolish
quarrels with the great men of the city, neglect of the rituals, public
funds consumed on absurdities while necessities went unrepairedJ
the sad account went on and on. Once the dam was broken, the flow
of their accusations was unending. I felt some embarrassment for
their sake, listening to it all: for who had put Dumuzi forth to be
king, at the time of my father's death, if not they? The old priestess
Inanna must have had a reason for proposing him, and they for
accepting him, and I think that reason must have been that he was
pliant and malleable, very soft metal indeed. But the nine years of
his kingship had not, so it seemed, brought them the advantage they
had hoped to hav~ out of it. Which was small surprise, if they had
knowingly chosen a weak man. So now they were turning, eagerly,
gladly, hopefully, to a stronger one, in whose veins the blood of
greatness flowed. I could not help feeling some scorn for their folly.
But I was swift to pardon them. They saw their error; they were
redeeming themselves now from it; and, if they had not comported
themselves according to the way of the gods when they chose Du-
muzi, so be it. The fault had not been theirs. The fault was the gods'.

 "Tell me of the death of Dumuzi," I said.
     They became evasive. "Heaven withdrew the kingship from him,"
 said Lu-Meshlam, and the others nodded sagely.
 "I understand that," I said impatiently. "But how did he die?"
 They looked at one another. No one would speak. I had to draw
 it from them. A lingering, horrible death, they said. A slow wasting-
 away, in great pain. The gods forsook him and many demons entered
 him: Ashakku, Namtaru, Utukku, Alu, the fever-maker, the sick-
 maker, the evil spirit, the diabolical one. No door could shut them
 from his body. No bolt would turn them back. Through the gate-
 ways of Dumuzi they glided like snakes. Through the hinges of his
 spirit they blew like the wind. The diviners had struggled mightily,
 but there was no healing him, not even any understanding of the
 malady that consumed him.
     The old priest Arad-Nanna said, when the elders were done with
 this grim recital, "His mistake was in the choice of his name. There
 is a doom upon Dumuzi that was proclaimed at the first day of time.
 How could he have hoped to escape it, with such a name, in this
 city of all cities?"
    I was preoccupied with other thoughts at that moment and I sup-
pose I did not pay close attention to those words of Arad-Nanna.
Only afterward, when I sat alone thinking these matters through,
did I see their likely meaning. In this city of all cities. The city of
Inanna, he meant. Who is the ultimate ruler of Uruk, beyond as-
sembly, beyond king? Why, it is the goddess, and none other! And
it is in the nature of the goddess that she is destined to destroy the
god Dumuzi, the holy shepherd: we have that tale taught us from
childhood. Had the priestess Inanna re-enacted, with the king Du-
muzi, the downfall that the goddess Inanna works each year in heaven
upon the god Dumuzi? Everything cried out yes to that. She had
sent me that seal-cylinder, while I was still in Kish, showing the
death of Dumuzi, the triumph of Inanna, and I had taken it for word
that she was casting some spell which would bring an end to him.
But had she settled for mere spells, or had she made use of actual
potions? I thought back through what they had told me of the king's
sufferings, his fevers, his agonies, his wasting away. And I grew
uneasy. If Inanna could slay one king, she might slay another, when
she saw fit. And in Uruk every king plays the role of Dumuzi to
the goddess, whether his name be Dumuzi in fact, or Lugalbanda,
 or Enmerkar--or Gilgamesh.
     This I pondered, Inanna and Dumuzi, Dumuzi and Inanna. My
 mind returned, as it often had since my childhood, to that tale of
 her descent into hell, in that time when she longed for conquest
 beyond her allotted realm.
     Holding sway over heaven and earth was not enough for her. She
 must also have the nether world, the realm where her older sister,
 Ereshkigal, rules. So she dons her great scarlet robes of power, her
 crown, her double strand of lapis beads, her breastplate, her ring,
 the lapis measuring-rod and line of her authority; and she goes to
 that place in Uruk which is the gateway to hell, and makes her way
 downward. "If I do not return in three days," she tells the goddess
 Ninshubur, her vizier, her right hand, "get you to Father Enlil, beg
 him to set me free."
    At the first gate of the nether world the gatekeeper blocks her way
and demands to know why she has come. She offers a false answer,
but the gatekeeper is not deceived; he has instructions from his queen
Ereshkigal to deprive Inanna of her power and bring her to humility.
And so at the first gate the gatekeeper takes her crown from the
goddess; and at the second gate he demands the lapis beads; and thus
it is at each of the seven gates, until the scarlet royal robe itself is
taken from her, and she enters the throne-room of Ereshkigal naked,
bowing down low. For anyone who comes before the queen of the
nether world must do so naked, even if she be the queen of heaven.
What a humbling for proud Inanna! Nor is she given the chance to
assail her sister's throne: the judges of the lower realm surround her
at once, they utter their judgment, and Ereshkigal fastens the eye of
death on her. Just like that, Inanna is slain. Her corpse, like a side
of rotting meat, is 'hung from a peg on the wall. And there she
remains, for a day and a second day and a third, and in the world it
is wintertime, for Inanna is gone from it.
    Then Ninshubur takes herself to Father Enlil and begs mercy for
the dead Inanna; but Enlil will not lift a hand to save her. Nor will
Nanna of the moon, to whom Ninshubur turns next. But the wise
and compassionate Enki, who knows the water of life, is willing to
come to her aid. Enki sends two messengers into the nether world,
and they find Ereshkigal in the pangs of childbirth. "We can lift this
pain from you," they tell her, but they must have a gift in return,
 and the gift they ask is the corpse of Inanna. Ereshkigal yields; the
 envoys ease her pain; and then they take the dead Inanna from the
 wall and restore her to life. But she must not leave the nether world,
 Ereshkigal insists, unless she provides someone in her place.
    Ah, and who will Inanna send? Why, who else but Dumuzi her
husband? He sits upon his splendid throne beneath the great apple
tree in Uruk, clad in shining garments and all unmoved by Inanna's
torments. Yes, Dumuzi will be the one. Where is Inanna's love? Ah,
there is no love! It is her life or Dumuzi's, and she does not hesitate.
Dumuzi has shown no grief over Inanna's disappearance; perhaps he
feels well rid of his troublesome consort. And so he is doomed. She
looks upon him with the eyes of death, and cries out to seven demons,
"Seize him! Take him away!" The demons take him by his thighs;
they break the flute that he has been playing; they gash him with
axes so that his blood pours forth. He flees. They follow. He appeals
to the gods to spare him, and they aid him in his flight, but Inanna
is implacable, and at last he is seized and slain and carried down into
hell. It is the time when the great death of summer settles over the
Land, that time when Dumuzi is taken away. In summer he must
die, though he returns in the autumn, with the rains, with the new
year, to celebrate the Sacred Marriage with Inanna and bring about
the new birth of all things. Where is the mercy of Inanna, in this
tale? There is no mercy. Inanna is a force that will not be gainsaid.
Dumuzi must die, he who is the king, he who is the god.
    To all this I gave most careful thought. Inanna had made me king,
that much was certain: she and Agga both, working in some sly
alliance. She had made me, but she could unmake me also. I would
be on my guard, I resolved, against any further playing out in Uruk
of the tale of the goddess and god.
    On the third day of my kingship, Inanna summoned me. When
the goddess beckons, even the king must hasten.
    We met in a small room of the temple, not at all majestic, with
pink-washed walls and a few lopsided rickety chairs that a poor scribe
would have deemed too shabby for his house. She wore a plain robe
and her face was unpainted. Two days earlier she had been goddess
and priestess both, terrible in her majesty and overwhelming in her
beauty. The woman I saw now had not troubled this day to assume
the goddess. Her beauty was with her at any time, but the grandeur
of it did not shine forth. It was just as well; I had had little sleep in
my two nights of kingship, and confronting Inanna in her majesty
is an exhausting business for anyone, even one who is in part a god.
    I wanted to have the truth from her concerning Dumuzi's death.
But how could I ask it outright? "Did he die at your hands? Did you
drop poison in his bowl, priestess?" No. No. Should I say, "I am
grateful for your slaying my predecessor, so I might have his throne"?
No. Or, perhaps, "I am young and new in these matters of state.
Tell me, is it the custom for the goddess to murder a worthless king,
when the city can no longer tolerate his worthlessness?" No. Nor
did I choose to bring up the old matter of my having been forced
into exile: "Did D umuzi grow so suddenly frightened of me, perhaps,
because you happened to tell him that the spirit of Lugalbanda had
entered into me?"
    No, I said none of these things. Nor did she, who had looked
upon me with such fierce hunger in years gone by, favor me with
the flashing eyes now, the savage grin of triumph, the fiery embrace
toward which her scheming had been directed so long. She took care
to convey to me nothing but what was fitting between priestess and
king on the first ceremonial visit of his reign: cool formality, a strict
observance of the rites. Inanna and the king are not meant to embrace
in passion, except on the night of the Sacred Marriage, and that is
but once a year.
    So in the appropriate phrases she congratulated me upon my as-
cension, and offered me her blessing; and [, just as formally, pledged
myself to serve the goddess in kingly manner. We shared sweet wine
from a single bowl, and ate of the charred meat of an ox that had
been sacrificed at dawn. When all that was done, we talked, like two
old friends who 'had not seen one another for a long while, of the
past, of our first meeting in the Enmerkar temple, events of my
boyhood, how tall and strong I had grown in the four years of my
exile, and so on and so on, but everything offhand and distant. She
spoke of the death of certain princes and great men while I had been
away. That led her eventually to the subject of the death of Dumuzi:
she looked sad, she sighed, she cast down her eyes, as though the
king's passing had been a great sorrow to her. I searched her face
but saw no clues. "With my own hands I ministered to him," said
Inanna. "I put cool cloths on his forehead. I mixed the medications
myself, the quunabu and the kushumma, the duashbur seeds, the
root of nigmi and arina. But nothing availed. From day to day he
withered and shrank." I felt a chill, as she talked of mixing medicines
for Dumuzi, and wondered what devilish things she had mixed into
those powders to hasten him onward to the next world. But I did
not ask. I think I know what truths lay beneath my unspoken ques-
tions. But I did not ask.

NOW THE full weight of kingship fell upon me, and it was far
heavier a burden than I had ever imagined. Nevertheless I think I
bore it well.
    There were the rituals to perform, the offerings and sacrifices. I
expected that. But so many, so many! The Feast of the Eating of
Barley, the Feast of the Eating of Gazelles, the Feast of the Blood of
Lions, this feast and that one, a calendar of ceremonies that was
unsparing of the king's time and strength. The gods are insatiable.
They must be fed constantly. I had not been king ten days when I
found myself wholeheartedly sick of the reek of roasting flesh and
the thick sweet smell of freshly poured blood. You must understand
that I was still hardly more than a boy: I knew it was my duty, all
this ritual, but I would rather by far have been cracking heads together
in the wrestling-house, or hurling javelins on the field of war, than
spending my days and nights at spilling the blood of beasts in these
high ceremonies. Yet I moved past that early revulsion, and per-
formed my tasks as I knew I must. The king is not only the leader
in warfare and spokesman of the gods in matters of statecraft; he is
the highest of the high priests, which is a formidable job.
    So on the proper evening I would come forth on the roof of the
temple of An in the first night watch, when the star of An had
appeared, and preside at the golden table where a feast for the Sky-
father had been laid out, with food also for the wife of An and for
the seven wandering stars. To these great ones I offered the flesh of
cattle, sheep, and birds, beer of the best quality, and the wine of
dates, poured from a golden ewer. I made an offering of every kind
of fruit, and spread honey and aromatic spices on the seven golden
incense burners. I went around to each of the four horns of the altar
and kissed it to renew its holiness.
    I drank wine and beer and milk and honey, and even oil, until my
stomach was bloated from it. In some rites I had to sip from ewers
of blood, which I never have come gladly to do. I wore heavy robes
for certain rituals and in others I was altogether naked. There was
never a night without some observance, and often there were some
by day, as well. The gods must be fed. I began to feel like a cook
and a serving-boy.
    And like a butcher also, sometimes. For one rite they brought me
a sacrificial ox too fat to stand: it looked like a great tub of fat. It
peered at me with great brown sad eyes as if it knew I was its death
approaching, but it was too placid to protest. They held its head up
and put the blade in my hand. "The gods created you for this mo-
ment,'' I told it. "Now I return you to them." I cut its throat with
a single stroke. The ox, panting, sighing, sank on its forelimbs, but
was a long time dying; I thought I heard it weep. I let its warm
blood gush over my naked skin until I was slippery with it from
head to toe. This is what it is to be a king in Uruk.
    There were restrictions and constraints upon me. On this day of
the month I could not eat beef, and on that one I might not have
pork, and on another I was forbidden any cooked meat at all. On a
certain day it was perilous for me to eat garlic; on another day, for
the sake of the security of the commonwealth, I was required to
abstain from intercourse with women; on a day of setting-out of
boundary-stones in the fields I must not go within sight of the river;
and so forth. Many of these things seemed absurd to me, but I
observed them all. Some of them I still perform. But some I have
discarded with the years, and I have never seen any hardship come
to me or to Uruk for my having done that.
    These obligations and burdens of kingship grew less oppressive
as I became accustomed to them. Now and again I found myself
yearning for the freer and more vigorous life I had led as a warrior
of Kish; but such feelings passed quickly by, like the birds of winter
that flash silver in the blue sky. I did what was required of me, and
did it ungrudgingly. A king who grudges his own tasks is no king,
but a mere imposter.
   There was one rite I would have performed not merely ungrudg-
ingly, but altogether eagerly. But I had begun my reign at the height
of summer; that one that had to wait until the new year. I speak of
the Sacred Marriage, when Inanna would at last lie in my arms.
    At last the heat abated and that soft sweet wind, the Cheat, swept
out of the south. The scent of the warm sea travels on that wind; I
stood a long time on the terrace of the palace by myself, breathing
deep, drawing it into my lungs. It is the harbinger, I thought. The
season now changes; the rains return; the time arrives for tilling and
sowing. And before the fields may be sown, the goddess must be.
I trembled with anticipation.
    That morning the chamberlain in charge of such things told me I
must cease lying with the palace concubines now, for the festival-
time was nigh. The days of purification had arrived, when the seed
of the king must be dedicated entirely to Inanna. I laughed and said
that I would gladly make that sacrifice, though within a day or two
I had other thoughts about that. I have always felt the surge of desire
as the shore feels the surge of the sea, that is, something that comes
steadily, insistently, unceasingly. Nothing can check the sea-surge;
and when I sought to check that other surge within myself, I found
it almost as difficult as it would have been to halt the waves from
crashing against the beach. I had not gone without a woman's em-
brace for as much as half a day since coming into manhood, I think.
Now I decreed for myself a great drought of the passions, that parched
my blood most amazingly. It was a very hard time for me. I with-
stood it, but only because I knew that my reward would be Inanna,
coming to me as the cool winter rains do after the hellish summer.
    All ordinary business of the city halted. The festival preparations
began, the repair and cleansing of buildings, the sacrifices, the fu-
migations, the pa~ades. Exorcists were busy in every part of Uruk,
driving the demons beyonds the walls. Priests marched out into the
dry fields and sprinkled them with holy water from golden ewers.
Those who belonged to the unclean castes went to their temporary
villages outside the city, and anyone who was a stranger to Uruk
also was asked to leave.
    I remained secluded in the palace, fasting, bathing, eating no meat,
touching no woman. All day long I breathed the fumes of sacred
royal incense, burning in long-legged braziers. I slept hardly at all,
but spent my nights in prayer and chanting. Gods came and went
in my bedchamber, great shadowy figures who stood by my side a
little while. One night I felt the presence of Enlil; on another, I woke
from a light doze to see the hooded figure of Enki before me, with
eyes blazing like red embers. The visits of these gods and others left
me cold with dread. No one, not even a king, can go easy in such
presences. If there had been some good friend by my side then whom
I loved, it would have been less difficult for me to face those spirits.
But in that time I was alone. They walked about my room and
passed through me as though I were not there, and each time they
did I felt a bleak gray wind blowing into me out of the nether world.
At this season of the year, when the dry death that is summer still
grips the Land, the nether world is very close: its mouth lies just
below the gateway that opens into Uruk.
    Gungunum, the high priest of An, came to me on the third morn-
ing. My servants dressed me in the fullest of my royal regalia, and
I went with him to the chapel of the palace. There I knelt before the
Sky-father. Then Gungunum stripped me of all my ornaments of
rank, and slapped my face, and pulled my ears, and otherwise hum-
bled me before the god, and made me swear that I had nothing that
was evil in the sight of the gods; and when that was finished, he
lifted me and dressed me with his own hands, and gave me back my kingship.
    Afterward he handed me a bowl that contained tender slivers of
the heart of the palm, the young bud of the date tree. We hold this
tree to be holy, for it has as many uses as there are days in the year,
and gives us food and drink, and fibres for ropes and nets, and wood
for our furniture, and everything else: it is a godly tree. So I took
the bowl from the priest and ate the slivers of the heart of the palm,
and Dumuzi immediately entered into me.
    I mean the god Dumuzi, of course, not that silly shallow king
who had taken that name upon himself. The heart of the palm is the
power of the tree to produce new fruit, and when I ate it, that power,
which is Dumuzi the god, passed into me. All fertility now was
embodied in me. I was the rainfall; I was the rising sap; I was the
flower; I was the seed. I was the force that could engender dates and
barley, wheat and figs. From me would come the rivers. From me
would flow wine and beer, milk and cream. The god throbbed within
 me, and I was bursting with the new life of the new year. When I
 looked down at my naked body I saw the rigid scepter of my maleness
 standing out far in front of me like a third arm, and there was a
 pulsing within it.
     But Dumuzi without Inanna is useless. It was time now for me
 to release the power of the god into her receptive loins.
     So, then--at last, at last--the night of the Sacred Marriage was
 at hand. The moon had vanished into the place of its slumber. That
 morning I had bathed in pure water from the font of the temple of
 An, and then handmaidens oiled my body, omitting no part of it,
 using the golden oil pressed from the richest of dates. I put on my
 crown and my robe, leaving the upper half of my body bare. They
 took me to the dark windowless Dumuzi-house at the edge of the
 city, where I spent half the day in silence, emptying my mind of
 everything but the god. I tell you that I was like a man in a dream,
 void of all self, possessed entirely by Dumuzi. And at nightfall I
 went by boat--the journey must be done by water, so that the king
 glides into the city as seed does into the womb--to the quay nearest
 the Eanna precinct, and from there on foot to the White Platform
 and the temple where the goddess awaited me.
    I mounted the Platform at its western end, looking neither to the
left nor to the right. I led a black-fleeced sheep by a leather leash,
and held a tiny kid resting on my arm, as offerings to Inanna. I
suppose the air was warm or cool that night, and the stars were
bright or perhaps veiled by mist, and possibly there was a breeze on
which the perfume of young blossoms drifted, or possibly not. I
could not tell you. I saw and felt nothing, except the gleaming temple
before me, and the smooth brick of the Platform beneath my bare feet.
    I entered the temple and gave the kid to a priestess and the sheep
to a priest, and went to the long chamber. Inanna stood there. If I
live twelve thousand years I will never see a sight more glorious.
    She was as bright as a polished shield. She glistened in her splendor.
They had bathed her, they had anointed her, they had draped her
nakedness with ivory and gold and lapis lazuli and silver. Sheaths of
alabaster surrounded her thighs and a triangle of gold lay over her
loins. Clear blocks of lapis rested upon her breasts. Strands of gold
braided were woven through her hair. But those were mere orna-
ments. I had seen them all before, worn by her on the night of her
first Sacred Marriage to Dumuzi, and worn by her predecessor in
the time of Lugalbanda. What awed me was not the magnificence
of her jewelry but the magnificence of the goddess that shined through
from beneath. Just as I had become the embodiment of the virile
power--there was that insistent throbbing between my legs to re-
mind me of that--so too was she the blazing essence of the female,
now. From that golden triangle at the base of her belly came wave
upon wave of intense power, like the brightness of the sun.
    Smiling, she extended her hands toward me, fingertips out-
stretched. Her eyes met mine. I leaped back across the chasm of years
to that moment, in this very temple, when the girl Inanna had found
me wandering, and stroked me and spoke my name, and looked into
my eyes and told me that I would be king, and that she would lie
in my arms one day: my cheek against the little' buds of her breasts,
her perfume pungent in my nostrils. Now indeed everything that
she had prophesied had befallen, and we stood face to face in the
temple on the night of the Sacred Marriage, and her dark eyes,
gleaming like onyx by torchlight, were ablaze with goddess-fire.
  "Hail, Inanna!" I whispered.
  "Hail, royal husband, fountain of life."
  "My holy jewel."
  "My husband. My true destined love."
     Then she laughed a very human laugh. "See? It has all come to
 pass. Has it not? Has it not?"
    I heard the music of the showing-forth. My fingers touched hers--
just the tips, but it was fire! fire!--and together we walked down
the corridor and out upon the porch of the temple. The door swung
open before us. The bright crescent of the new moon rose above the
temple. A thousand pairs of eyes stared back at me out of the night.
     We spoke the words of the rites. We sipped from the flask of
 honey, and poured the vessel of barley out on the ground. We stood
 with joined hands during the singing of the hymn of the showing-
 forth. Three naked priests pronounced blessings. The blood of the
 kid, my gift, was daubed on my forearm and on her cheek. The
 seared meat of my other gift, the sheep, was offered to us on plates
of gold, and we took one mouthful each. It took me twelve hundred
years to swallow that little morsel of meat.
    Once again we entered the temple, preceded and surrounded by
priestesses and priests, musicians, dancers, all leaping and chanting
about us as we made our way to the bedchamber of the goddess. It
was a small high-vaulted room, strewn with soft green rushes made
sweet-smelling with oil of cedar. The bed that was at its center was
of the blackest ebony, inlaid with ivory and gold. A sheet of the
finest linen covered it, bearing the emblem of Inanna. All about the
bed lay heaps of freshly harvested dates, still clustered as they had
come from the tree: the true treasure of the Land, more precious
than any gem. She broke one date from a cluster and put it tenderly
in my mouth, and then I made the same offering to her.
    You may think that at this point I was maddened with desire and
impatience. But no, no, the god was in me and I had a god's divine
calmness. How many years in the making had this Marriage been?
What did a few minutes more matter, now? I remained tranquil while
the priestesses of Inanna removed the jewels from her, the beads,
the alabaster sheaths, the rings, the ornaments of her ears, her eyes,
her hips, her navel. They took from her the beads that covered her
bosom, and laid bare her breasts, which were high and round and
stood forth like those of a girl, although she was past twenty. They
lifted the latch of her golden loin-covering and revealed to me the
inner zone of her womanhood, dark and deeply thatched and richly
perfumed. And then the same women undid my robe and uncovered
my body; and when we were both naked they went from the room
and left us with each other.
    I went close to her. I stood before her. I watched the rising and
falling of her breasts. She drew her tongue across her lips, slowly,
making them gleam. Her eyes traveled shamelessly over my body;
and mine made the journey over hers, lingering at fullness of breast,
breadth of thigh, the dense rich nether beard that concealed the well
of womanhood. I took her lightly by the hand and led her toward
the couch.
    For a moment, as my body hovered above hers, my god-self
flickered and went from me and my mortal self returned. And I
thought of all the intricacies of my dealings with this woman, how
she had baffled and bewildered me. I thought of her wantonness,
her dark playfulness, her mystery, her power. I thought also of that
other Dumuzi, the mortal one, whom she had embraced year after
year in this same rite, and then, when he was of no further use to
her, had casually slain. Then the god reasserted himself in me and
all these thoughts went from me, and I said, as the god must say to
the goddess in this moment, "I am the shepherd, I am the ploughman,
I am the king: I am the bridegroom. Let the goddess rejoice!"
    I will not tell you what further words passed between us on that
night. The things that the goddess must say to the god, and the god
to the goddess, you already know, for those words are the same
every year; and the things that the priestess said to the king, and the
king to the priestess, can easily be guessed, and are of no interest.
Besides god and goddess and king and priestess, there were also a
man and a woman in that room; and as to the words that were said
by the woman to the man and by the man to the woman, why, I
think they are the secrets of that woman and that man, and I will
not tell them, though I have told so much else. Let those words
remain our mystery. The greater mystery that we performed that
night, you can imagine. You know what rites of lips and nipples,
of buttocks and hands, of mouths and loins, must be acted out by
the sacred couple. Her skin was hot, burning like the ice of the
northern mountains. Her nipples were hard as alabaster in my hands.
We did all that must be done, before the final thing, and when it
was the moment for that, we knew it without saying it. To enter
her was to glide in honey. As we joined, she laughed, and I knew
it to be as much the laughter of the girl of the corridor as the goddess
on high. I also laughed, to be having the fulfillment of my desire
after so long a waiting; and then our laughter was lost in a deeper,
heavier sound. When we moved together, she spoke in babbling
phrases that I did not know; the woman-language, the goddess-
language of the Old Way. Her eyes rolled upward so that I saw only
the whites. Then my own eyes closed, and I gripped her tightly with
both my arms. The god-power, flowing from me like liquid fire,
brought the goddess-power within her to its fruition. In the out-
pouring of my seed the new year was born. A cry of rejoicing burst
from my lips, and from hers, and we heard the answering melodies
of the musicians who waited outside the bedchamber. It was then
that we spoke with each other, first with our eyes and our smiles,
then with words. In a little while we began the rite anew, and then
again, and again and again, until the dawn brought the new year's
blessing to us, and we went quietly from the temple to stand naked
in the gentle rain that our coupling had summoned into the Land.

SO, THEN, passed the night of the Sacred Marriage, when Inanna
and I were united at last. But it was the goddess and the god who
had been married, not the priestess and the king; and once the festival
was over, we went on in our separate lives, she in the isolation of
her temple, I amidst my concubines in the palace. I did not so much
as set eyes on her again for some weeks. When I did, at the rite of
casting wheat-seed, she treated me in a cool and formal way. That
was right and proper: but I hated it. The taste of her was still on my
tongue. Yet I knew I would not embrace her a second time until the
season of the new year had come round again, twelve months hence.
I ached from that knowledge.
    Ties of ritual and responsibility kept us in constant communica-
tion, all the same. In Uruk the king is the right arm of the goddess,
and her sword; and she is the holy staff on which he leans. Without
the goddess, there would be no king; without the king, the goddess
could not touch the souls of the people. So they are forever joined,
twin centers of the city, one revolving about the other and all else
revolving about both of them.
    The gentle rain of Tashritu gave way, early in the month Arah-
samna, to rains that were not gentle at all: torrential downpours that
came sweeping out of the north nearly every day. The dry soil drank
greedily at first, but soon its thirst was slaked, and still the storms
roared across the Land. In this time I began to give close thought to
the condition of the canals. They had not been kept in proper repair
during the last year of the reign of Dumuzi. If the rains continued
with such force and the silt were not cleared from the canals we
might very well suffer from flooding by early spring.
    I was deep in the midst of these matters, conferring with my water-
chamberlain and my overseer of canals and three or four other high
officials, when my viceroy of the palace entered the royal chamber.
A priest of the temple of Enmerkar, he said, had come with a message
from Inanna. She had urgent need of me. A demon, it seemed, had
taken up residence in her huluppu-tree, and I must drive it away.
    My mind was full of the needs of the canals, and I made no attempt,
I suppose, to veil my impatience. I looked at the viceroy in amaze-
ment and said bluntly, "Can she find no other exorcist?"
    There was some muttering from the officials who sat at the table
with me. I heard their disapproving tone, and thought at first that
they were as annoyed as I was by this interruption of our work; but
no, what troubled them was my surly refusal, not Inanna's ill-timed
request. They peered at me uneasily. For a moment no one would
speak.
    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 m" 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 insist-
ence. I yielded, and I yielded smiling. ! 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, loom-
ing 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 hunch-
backed 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 I 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 pes-
tilent 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 f~ar 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 wan-
derings 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 un-
daunted. 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 Lu-
galbanda 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
 ofdrummings. 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 god-
dess-power in the drum, coming as it had out of Inanna's holy hu-
luppu-tree, or ma53be 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.

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
fields, 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 every-
thing 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 abun-
dant grain, the vineyards and orchards yielded their fruit, and the
harvest was heaped up in great hills in the granaries.
    Since then it has fallen to us to maintain and extend the canals: it
is our chief work, the great duty that underlies all others, for on the
canals all our prosperity depends. At times of high level on the rivers
they allow us to lead the dangerous waters aside into storage channels.
When the rivers begin to fall, we close the sluices, and retain the
water to use in the dry months. Other canals carry water from these
reservoirs into the cultivated fields, and even into lands that once
were desert. Thus the rivers, once our great enemies, now are our
servants. By controlling the level and the flow, we spare our fields
from the menaces of flood and of drought. Quays and wharves now
rise along the shores of our cities, where once we had only muddy
swamps. All across the land spreads the network of water-channels,
linking field to field, village to village, city to city.
    But the soil of the land is deep and soft, and easily breaks away
under the force of the current in spring, so that the canals are filled
and silt blocks their mouths. We cannot afford that. If the canals
become too shallow, water will not flow down from one to the next,
and soon nothing will flow at all, and then when the rivers are in
spate disaster will fall upon us as if the dragon Kur has returned. So
we must toil constantly at maintaining the canals. It is each farmer's
responsibility to look after his little canal, and it is the responsibility
of the overseer of each village to see that the greater feeders are in
order, and it is the responsibility of the officials of the government
to survey the main channels. But the final responsibility falls to the
king: he must understand the grand design, and know where it is
 weakening, and give the orders to send forth the armies of repair.
 Dumuzi had let that responsibility slip. For that alone, he can never
 be forgiven; for that alone, he merited being sent to the House of
 Dust and Darkness.
     There was little that I could do during the worst of the rainy
 season but look through the surveyors' reports, and decide where it
 was most essential to begin the repairs. Soon the tablets were piled
 high all about me, basket upon basket of them, bearing the close-
 packed inscriptions that told of Uruk's peril. Scribes stood at my
 right shoulder and at my left to read them to me, but I called upon
 them rarely: it seemed better to me to do my own reading, so long
 as I had the skill. It gave me a stronger grasp of what needed to be done.
     In midwinter the rains relented, and we began our task. The rivers
 and canals were high from the constant downpours, but not seriously
 so: the real danger would not arrive until the snows of the north
 began to thaw. But there was little time to spare.
    I chose as the place to begin the canal known as the Mouth of
Ninmah, which lies just north of Uruk and conveys our drinking-
water to us. It was in bad need of dredging and scouring, but that
was no serious matter, for it called for nothing more than sweat and
the straining of muscles. But also the embankments and regulating
sluices were in need of rebuilding, particularly the main dam, which
my engineers told me might very well be swept away by the first
brunt of the spring flood.
    It is an old custom, in starting any great work of construction,
that the king must make and put into place the first brick. Whether
this custom has been honored by each and every king, I cannot say;
but I took gladly t6 it, since it has always been one of my great
pleasures to toil as an artisan does. My star-watchers chose a pro-
pitious day for the ceremony. On the night before, I tied back my
hair and went in a simple robe to the small temple of Enlil, where
I bathed myself and spent the night alone, sleeping on the floor of
black stone. In the morning the sun shone splendidly. I went to the
temple of An and made an offering of cattle and goats without blem-
ish. Then, at the shrine ofLugalbanda, I performed the ritual gesture
of hand to the face, and felt the god my father stirring within me.

And when the midday hour came I went to the place where bricks
are made, wearing a head-pad and carrying builders' tools on my head.
    Priests of the several craftsman-gods stood about me beating their
drums as I began my task, working half-naked like any laborer in
the sun. First I made a libation, pouring the water of good luck into
the frame of the mold. Then I lit a fire of aromatic wood, to drive
off impurities and any evil spirits that might be lurking about. I
smeared the mold with honey and butter and fine oil of the best
quality. Now I took the clay and wet it until it puddled, and mixed
the straw with it, and trod upon it; I took the holy hod and scooped
up the mixture, and pressed it into the mold; I smoothed the face of
the bricks with my hands, and put them out in the drying-place to
dry. There was no rain that night; I think I would have flayed my
star-watchers alive if there had been. On the morrow, we had the
ceremony of the breaking of the mold, when I kindled more aromatic
wood, and seized the mold by its handles and drew it away, and
lifted out the first brick. I raised it to the sky like a crown.  "Enlil is satisfied," I cried.
    Indeed he should have been. The brick was perfect. The gods had
accepted my service, which was a sign that the period of trial was
past and Uruk would be sustained.
    Throughout those days I worked alongside the others in the mak-
ing of bricks, and the transporting of them to the canal, and the
stacking of them in great rows. Then, when the star-watchers once
again announced a propitious day, we carried out the task of closing
the flow into the canal. It was not easy; two men lost their lives at
it. But we achieved it. In those days I knew no moderation, neither
for myself nor for those about me, when there was the work of the
city to be done. I stood for an hour in mid-water, in the deepest
part, holding my arms outstretched while they wove the fabric of
the barrage about me. It was necessary for me to do it, not so much
because I was king, but because I was the tallest and the strongest
of the men. When we had accomplished the closing, we opened the
farther sluices and drained the canal, and set about the job of repairing
its lining. I placed the first brick, which was the brick I had made
with my own hands on that other ceremonial day. We labored until
darkness, and at dawn we returned, and so it was day after day: I
would not let them rest, for the time was short and the task urgent.
I never tired. When the others grew weary, I went among them,
clapping my arm to their shoulders and saying, "Come, fellow, rise
up, the gods require our service!" And, weary as they were, they
rose up and worked again. I drove them hard--I drove them un-
sparinglymbut I drove myself even harder. Great pyres of aromatic
wood purified the place of our toil, and Enlil was pleased, and the
work went swiftly and well. All was well with Uruk that winter.
When the high waters came in spring, the canals received and stored
the _flow, and there was no flooding. I rejoiced in my kingship.

THEN ON the first day of summer messengers from Agga of Kish
appeared, and demanded that I pay tribute to him.
    There were three of them, officers of his court, men known to
me from my stay in Kish. I did not realize, when they arrived, that
they had come as enemies. I received them warmly and offered a
great feast in their honor, and we sat far into the night, talking of
times gone by, the feasts in the palace of Agga, wars against the
Elamites, the turns of fate that had enmeshed this one and that one
whom I had known in Kish. I opened the wine of the cask of Enki
for them, and slaughtered three of the oxen of the fields of Enlil.
"Tell me," I said, "how goes it with the lordly Agga, my father,
my benefactor?" And they told me that Agga was well, that his love
for me was great, that when he spoke with his gods he never failed
to ask them to provide for my continued welfare. I gave each of the
envoys a choice concubine and sent them into the finest of the cham-
bers of state for the night. The next day they told me they carried
a message from Agga the king, and they put before me a tablet of
large size, sealed in a jacket of costly white clay that bore the royal
seal of Kish. Their eyes, when they put this tablet before me, were
flickering swiftly; I should have taken that for a sign.
"We ask leave to withdraw," they said, and I dismissed them.
When they were gone, I broke open the jacket of white clay and
drew the tablet forth, and began to read it. And my eyes grew wider
and wider with every line I read.
    It began in a routine way, the usual formulas, Agga son of Enme-
barragesi, king of Kish, king of kings, lord of the Land by merit of Enlil
and An, to his beloved son Gilgamesh son of Lugalbanda, lord of Kullab,
 lord of Eanna, king of Uruk by merit of lnanna, and so on and so forth,
 followed by pious expressions of wishes for my continued good
 health and prosperity, and so on and so forth, followed by expres-
 sions of regret that Agga had heard no word lately from his beloved
 son Gilgamesh, no tidings of the kingdom which Agga had placed
 into the hands of his beloved son. That was my first hint of im-
 pending trouble, this reminder that Agga had helped to make me
 king of Uruk; it was true, yes, but perhaps it was a little tactless of
 him to call attention to the point. It was not as though he had raised
 me up out of utter obscurity to give me my crown: I was the son
 of a king, and the chosen of the goddess.
    But swiftly I saw what he was after. It was implied right in his
formula of greetings: "king of kings, lord of the Land." That was
the ancient title of the king of Kish, which no one ever had formally
bothered to challenge. But Agga's use of it now seemed plainly to
say that he regarded me as a vassal. And, indeed, I had sworn an
oath of fealty to him when I came as a young fugitive to his city. I
read on, feeling a growing uneasiness.
  Now began the demands for tribute.
    He did not quite call it tribute. He spoke of it as the "gift," the
"offering," the "donation of my love." But it was tribute, all the
same. So many sheep, so many goats, so many barrels of oil, so
many jars of honey; this many gur of date-wine, this many mana of
silver, this many gu of wool, this many gin of fine linen; so many
male slaves, so many female ones, of such-and-such ages. The request
was couched in the most bland and pleasant terms, with no hint of
ultimatum. He seemed to be saying that it was unnecessary for him
to use threatening language, since these gifts and donations were self-
evidently owing to him from me, from the loyal son to the benign
father, from the vassal to the serene overlord.
    I was thrown into confusion. This letter of Agga's stole not only
my kingship but my manhood from me. Yet I had sworn fealty to
him, had I not? By the net of Enlil I had sworn it. And now I was
caught in that net. My cheeks blazed; tears of anger came to my
eyes. I read his message four times over, and each time the words
were the same, and they were damning words. I should have foreseen
this, but I had not. Agga had taken me in when I was homeless;
Agga had given me rank and privilege in his city; Agga had conspired
with Inanna to make me a king. And now he was presenting his bill.
But how could I pay his price, and still hold my head up among the
kings of the Land, and among the people of Uruk?
    By darkness I went alone to the shrine of Lugalbanda and knelt
and whispered, "Father, what shall I do?"
    The aura of the god came upon me and I heard Lugalbanda within
me saying calmly, "You owe Agga love and respect, and nothing
more than that."
  "But my oath, father! My oath!"
    "It said nothing of tribute. If you pay him these things, you sell
yourself and your city to him forever. He is testing you. He wants
to know whether he owns you. Does he own you?"  "No one owns me but the gods."
  "Then you know what you must do," said Lugalbanda within me.
    I passed the night in prayer, before this god and that, wandering
restlessly about the city from temple to temple. The only one I did
not consult was Inanna, though she was the goddess of the city. For
to do that I would have had to confess myself to the priestess Inanna,
and I did not want her to know my shame in this matter.
    In the morning, while the envoys of Agga were being diverted
with women and singing, I sent out messengers to all the elders of
the assembly, telling them to come at once to the palace. In rage and
anxiety I strode back and forth before them, corded veins standing
out on my neck, sweat on my forehead, until I could bring myself
finally to speak.
    Then I said, "We are asked to submit to the house of Kish. We
are called upon to pay tribute." They began to mutter, those old
men. I held up the tablet of Agga and shook it angrily and read the
list of demands aloud. When I was done I stared about the room and
saw their faces: pale, drawn, fear-ridden. "How can we submit to
this?" I asked. "Are we vassals? Are we serfs?"
  "Kish is very mighty," said the landowner Enlil-ennam.
    "The king of Kish is the overlord of the Land," said old Ali-ellati,
of venerable noble lineage.
    "It is not a great amount of tribute," said the wealthy
Lu-Meshlam mildly.
       And they all set up a nodding and a bowing and a murmuring,
and I saw that they were dead set against any defiance of Kish.
  "We are a free city!" I cried. "Are we to surrender?"
    "There are wells to dig and canals to dredge," said Ali-ellati. "Let
us pay what Agga demands, and go about our business in peace.
War is very expensive."
  "And Kish is very mighty," said Enlil-ennam.
    "I call for your pledges," I said. "I will defy Agga: give me your support."
    "Peace," they said. "Tribute," they said. "There are wells to dig," they said.
    They would not hear of war. In despair I sent them away, and
summoned the younger house of the assembly, the house of men. I
read Agga's lists of demands to them, I spoke to them of my anger
and indignation, and the house of men gave me the answers I wished
to hear. I knew how to speak to them. I fanned the fires of their
tempers, and appealed to their courage; for if they also went against
me, I was lost. I had the power of overruling the elders if I must,
but I could not make war if both the houses of the assembly were
against me.
    The house of men did not fail me. They gave me no talk of having
wells to dig and canals to dredge. They shouted their scorn at the
idea of tribute. I cried out for war, and they cried it louder back to
me. Do not submit, they said. Let us smite the house of Kish with
our weapons, they said. You will shatter Kish, they said--you,
Gilgamesh, king and hero, conqueror, prince beloved of An. One
after another the men of the house of men rose up and called out
such ringing words as those. What was there to fear in the coming
of Agga? they asked. His army is small, its rear-guard is feeble, its
men are afraid to lift up their eyes.
    I put a higher value on the army of Agga than they did, and I had
better reason for my opinion. But I rejoiced at their words all the
same, and my spirit brightened. For how could I have accepted
vassalhood? Whatever Agga thought I might have pledged to him,
my strength of kingship was at stake in this, my strength of man-
hood. I could not reign in Uruk at the sufferance of the king of Kish.
    So, then, it was resolved: we would cast our lot for freedom. We
would defy Agga. We would spend the summer preparing for war.

Let him come, I said to the house of men. We will be ready for him.
    I went to the palace and came upon the ambassadors of Agga in
their debauch, and said to them, cold as stone, "I have read the letter
of my father Agga your king. And you may tell him this, that I
overflow with boundless love for him, and I feel the highest gratitude
for the favor he has shown me. I send him my warmest embrace.
That is the only gift I send him: my warmest embrace. There is no
need for any other gift-giving between father and son, is there? And
Agga is my second father. Tell him, then: I embrace him."
    That night the envoys departed for Kish, carrying with them my
filial embrace, and nothing more.
    Now we began our preparations for war. I will not say that the
prospect saddened me. I had not heard that wild hot music in the
air since the days when I had fought for Agga in the land of Elam,
and that was already several years behind me. A man must make
war now and then, especially if he is a king, or he will begin to rust
from within: it is a matter of keeping one's edge, of maintaining the
sharpness of one's spirit, which will go blunt soon enough in any
case, but far more swiftly if left unhoned. So it was a time of polishing
chariots, of oiling the shafts of javelins and spears, of sharpening
blades, of taking the asses from the stables and letting them remember
what it is like to run. Although the heavy heat of summer lay upon
us, there seemed a crispness in the air of Uruk in those first few days
as though it were the finest midwinter day. It was the excitement,
the anticipation. The young men were as thirsty for battle as I was.
That was why they had shouted down the elders, that was why they
had voted for war.
    But there was a surprise for us all. No one in the Land makes war
in the summer, if it can be avoided. Why, in those months the air
itself will go ablaze, if one moves too swiftly through it. So I was
sure we had all the summer long to make ourselves ready for Agga.
I was wrong in that. My judgment was altogether confounded. For
Agga must have been expecting my defiance, and his armies were
ready; surely they must have set forth from Kish on the very day
his envoys returned with my message. Trumpets brought me the
news as I slept among my women, at dawn on the sultriest morning
of the summer. Boats of Kish had come swiftly down the river,
months before I expected them. The troops of Agga were at the
quay. The waterfront was in their hands; the city was besieged.
    It was the first full testing of my kingship. I had never led the city
in war. I stepped out on the terrace of the palace and beat the war-
drumming upon the drum that was made from Inanna's tree. It was
the first time I had sounded that drumming in Uruk, though it would
not be the last. My heroes gathered about me with darkened faces.
They were uncertain of my leadership. Many had fought in the wars
of Dumuzi, some had fought in the armies of Lugalbanda, there were
even some who might remember Enmerkar; but not one had fought under me.
    "Where is one with heart," I said, "who will go to Agga and ask
him why he trespasses here?"
    That splendid warrior Bir-hurturre stepped forth. His eyes were
shining. He had grown tall and strong, and I think there was no
man more valiant in all of Uruk. "I am the one to go," he replied.
    I put troops behind each of the gates of the city wall, the High
Gate and the Royal Gate and the North Gate and the Holy Gate, the
Ur Gate and the Nippur Gate, and the rest. I sent patrols to move
along the perimeter of the wall to guard against the men of Kish,
should they try to scale the wall with ladders, or to chop their way
through the brick. Then we opened the Water Gate, and Bir-hurturre
went out to parley with Agga. But before he had gone ten paces the
men of Kish seized him and dragged him away. This was done by
the order of Agga son of Enmebaraggesi, he who had told me that
heralds were under sacred protection. Perhaps he meant only the
heralds of Kish.
    Zabardi-bunugga came running to me with the news. "They are
torturing him, my lord! May Enlil eat their livers, they are torturing
him!" Zabardi-bunugga was now my third-in-command, a sturdy
man, no lovelier bf face than he had been in boyhood, but loyal and
steadfast. He told me that he had mounted the wall by the lookout
post of Lugalbanda's tower and had seen the men of Kish assaulting
Bir-hurturre in plain view, striking him, beating him, kicking him
as he lay in the dust. "Enlil will have their livers!" he cried. And he
told me that when he had ascended the wall, the men of Kish had
called out to him, asking if he were Gilgamesh the king. To which
he had shouted back that he was not, that he was nothing in com-
parison with Gilgamesh the king.
  "Will we ride out to them now?" he asked.
    "Wait a little longer," I answered him. "I'll go up on the wall so
that I can see what kind of enemy we have."
    I strode quickly through the streets. Faces peered at me from the
rooftops: the ordinary people, frightened, chilled. It was many years
since an enemy had come to the gates of Uruk; they did not know
what to expect, and they dreaded the worst. At the watchtower of
Lugalbanda I ran up the wide brick stairs two and three at a time,
carrying a yellow-and-blue banner that I had seized from one of the
tower guardsmen, and I stepped out onto the wide platform at the
top of the wall.
My blood sang in my ears as I looked out at that sea of inv;:ders.
The longboats of Agga crowded our quays. The troops of Kish
swaggered along the wharves. I saw the banners of Kish, crimson
and emerald. I saw tough tanned faces, men I knew, the warriors
with whom I had swept through the forces of Elam as though they
were mere fleecy clouds. Under the fierce midsummer sun they wore
their coats of thick black felt without show of discomfort; the light
gleamed like fire from their shining copper helmets. I saw two of
the sons of Agga; I saw six high officers of the Elam campaign; I
saw Namhani, my old charioteer, and he saw me and waved and
pointed and grinned his snag-toothed grin, and called me by the
name by which I had been known in Kish.
  "No," I roared back. "Gilgamesh! I am Gilgamesh!"
    "Gilgamesh," they answered me. "Look, it is Gilgamesh, Gilga-
mesh the king!"
    I carried no shield and I stood exposed against the sky, but I felt
no fear. They would not dare aim a shaft at the king of Uruk. I
scanned them from south to north, the hundreds of them, perhaps
the thousands. They had set up tents; they were here to stay for a
lengthy siege.
    "Where is Agga?" I called. "Bring out your king. Or is he afraid
to show himself?."
    Agga came. If I was unafraid of showing myself upon the wall,
he could do no less. From one of the far tents he emerged, moving
slowly, fatter than ever, a mountain of flesh, pink-skinned, freshly
shaved from scalp to chin. He carried no weapon; he leaned on a
staff of black wood carved in curves and angles that troubled my
eye. When he stood close below me I made a gracious sign of rev-
erence to him and said in a calm voice, "I bid you welcome to my
city, father Agga. If you had sent word of your visit, I would have
been better prepared to entertain you."
     "You look well, Gilgamesh. I thank you for the embrace you sent me."
  "It was only my obligation."
  "I had expected more."
    "Indeed, so you had. Where is my herald Bir-hurturre, father Agga?"
"We are discussing matters with him, in one of our tents."
"They tell me he was beaten and kicked and thrown down in the
dust, and taken off for torture, father Agga. I think I treated your
envoys with more kindness."
    "He was unruly. He lacked politeness. We are teaching him courtesy, my son."
    "In Uruk I teach such lessons, and no one else," I said. "Return
him to me, and then I will invite you within for the feast that is my
obligation to so noble a guest as you."
    "Ah," said Agga, "I think I will invite myself within. And I will
bring your lackey with me, when I am done with him. Open your
gates, Gilgamesh. The king of kings decrees it. The lord of the Land
decrees it."
    "So be it," I replied. I turned away, and threw down my banner
on the side within the wall. It was the signal: we opened every gate
at once, and came riding forth upon the men of Kish.
    When an enemy comes to the gate of a walled city, it is often best
to wait within, especially if the enemy has been so rash as to arrive
in summer. In that dry time there is no food outside the walls, except
whatever is stored in the outlying granaries, and when that is gone,
there will be nothing left for the besiegers. Within, we had supplies
enough to see us through to winter, and fresh water aplenty. They
would suffer more keenly than we, and eventually they would with-
draw: that is the usual wisdom.
    But the usual wisdom usually does not apply. Agga understood
these things as well as I; far better, in fact. If he had chosen to lay
siege in summer, plainly he did not mean the siege to be a lengthy
one. And so I guessed that he intended a direct attack. The walls of
Uruk--Enmerkar built them--were not high, then, as the walls of
great cities go. No doubt there were ladders aplenty on those boats
of Agga's, and in a little while warriors of Kish would be scrambling
up our walls in a hundred places at once. Meanwhile their axe-
wielders would be attempting to breach the ramparts from below: I
knew those axes of Kish, which could readily cut through the old
bricks of our wall. So it was pointless to sit inside the city waiting
for them to attack. I had more men at my command than Agga had
brought with him; once they were within the walls, tossing torches
about, we would be at their mercy, but if I could defeat them on
the quay we would be saved. We had to carry the attack to them.
    We burst forth in chariots out of five gates at once. I think they
had not expected us to emerge so soon, or even for us to emerge at
all. They were confident and arrogant, and thought I would bow
my knee to Agga without a struggle. But we fell upon them with
axes high and spears flashing. Zabardi-bunugga's chariot was in the
vanguard, with ten others just behind it, carrying the finest heroes
of the city. The men of Kish met that first wave with valor and
energy. I knew how well they could fight; I knew them, indeed,
better than my own soldiers. But while the first skirmishes were
under way I came down from the wall and entered my own chariot,
and led the second wave of the assault myself.
    I will be very plain about it: when the men of Kish beheld me, it
struck them with terror and froze their souls. They had known me
in the Elam wars, but though they remembered me they did not
remember me as well as they should have, until they saw me riding
into their midst, casting my javelins equally well with my right hand
and my left. Only then did they remember.
"It is the son of Lugalbanda!" they cried, and they began to panic.
There is no pretending otherwise: I know no finer music than the
music that sings through the air of the battlefield. Joy rose in me,
and I rode into the enemy like the emissary of death. My charioteer
that day was the brave Enkimansi, a narrow-faced man of thirty
years who acknowledged no fear whatever. He drove the asses for-
ward, and I stood high behind him, hurling my weapons as though
I bore the wrath of Enlil upon Kish. My first cast took the life of a
son of Agga; my second and third slew two of his generals; my
fourth pierced the throat of one of the envoys who had borne Agga's
message to me. "Lugalbanda!" I cried. "Sky-father! Inanna! Inanna!
Inanna!" It was a cry that these men of Kish had heard before. They
knew that a god rode among them that day, or at least a godling,
with divine keenness to his sight and divine strength to his arm.
    Into the breach made by Zabardi-bunugga and the rest of the front
line of chariots I followed, cutting a deep hole in the forces of Kish.
Behind me came my footsoldiers, crying out, "Gilgamesh! Inanna!
Gilgamesh! Inanna!"
    I give the men of Kish credit for courage. They tried their best to
slay me, and only some fast work with my shield and some deft
maneuvering by the skillful Enkimansi kept me from harm. But
there was no halting me. Terror overcame them despite themselves,
and they turned and ran toward the water; but we cut them off from
the sides and began to chop them apart.
    It was over far more swiftly than I could have hoped. We sent
multitudes of them rolling in the dust. We reached their longboats
and took them, and cut their prows off and carried the images of
Enlil away as trophies. We got Bir-hurturre free, and found him still
well, though he had been shamefully bloodied and bruised. As for
Agga, we fought our way through to him--he was no fighter him-
self, not at his age, but he was surrounded by a ring of a hundred
picked guardsmen, who perished to the last man--and took him
prisoner. Zabardi-bunugga led him to me as I stood leaning against
my chariot, drinking a flask of the beer of Kish that I had taken from
one of their stewards.
    Agga was dusty and sweating and flushed, and his eyes were red
with weariness and dismay. There was a small wound on his left
shoulder, only a scratch, but it shamed me to see that he had been
touched. I gestured to one of my field surgeons. "Clean and bind
the wound of the king of kings," I said. Then I went up to Agga
and to his amazement I knelt before him. "Father," I said. "Royal
master of the Land."
  "Don't mock me, Gilgamesh," he muttered.
    I shook my head. Rising, I put the flask of beer in his hand, saying,
"Take this. It will ease your thirst, father."
    He regarded me bleakly. Slowly he put his hand to his belly and
kneaded the thick rolls of flesh. Rivulets of sweat ran down him,
cutting through the dust that lay on his skin. I will not deny it: I
savored my triumph, I doted on his discomfiture. It was sweet wine to me.
  "What will you do with me?" he asked.
    "You will be my guest at .the palace this evening, and for two
days thereafter. Then we will have the rite of the burying of the
dead; and then I will send you back to Kish. For are you not my
lord, the king of kings, to whom I have sworn my loyalty?"
    He understood me now, and anger flared in his eyes; but then he
laughed, and looked sadly about at his warriors and his sons heaped
in the blood-soaked dust, and at his mutilated longboats, and he
nodded. "Ah, is that it?" he said after a time. "I did not think you
were so shrewd."
  "My debt is paid now, is that the case?"
  "Ah," he said, "that is the case. Your debt is paid, Gilgamesh."

SO IT was done. I gave a great feast to Agga, and sent him back to
Kish with what was left of his army.
    But before he left I had sad news from him: my wife
Ama-sukkul his daughter was dead, and both the children she had
borne for me. These tidings went through me like blades. Death,
there is no place to hide from you! I thought of how on my last day
at Kish I had embraced her and patted her swelling belly so lovingly.
The child in being born had been the death of her, though, and he
perished with her; and then our first-born son had languished for
lack of his mother and went quickly from the world. Doubtless the
gods had not intended for me to plant my seed in Kish. I have had
other sons since, many of them, but I wonder often what those two
would have been like had they grown to manhood. And the sweet
little Ama-sukkul: she was a gentle person and not the least loved
of my wives.
    In the hour of Agga's departure I insisted on pledging myself once
again in fealty to him. This I did of my own free will, as everyone
saw. Such a pledge given freely is a sign not of submission but of
strength: it is a gift, it is a splendid offering, which loosed me rather
than bound me. It was my way of acknowledging what Agga had
done for me in years past, when he helped me gain my kingship
upon the death of Dumuzi, and it freed me forever from any real
sort of vassalage. At last I was king in my own right, through
prowess in battle and greatness of soul. It would not be wrong to
say that the true beginning of my reign could be dated to the time
of the war with Kish.
 But if it was the true beginning of my kingship, it was the end
of Agga's, though he lived on a little while after. He withdrew within
the walls of Kish and was not heard from again outside it. When he
died it was the end of the dynasty of Kish after thousands of years,
for Mesannepadda king of Ur marched north and seized the city.
Soon we had reports that Mesannepadda had put to death the last of
Agga's sons and taken the throne for himself; and thereafter he called
himself king of Kish instead of king of Ur. I allowed this to happen
because I was preoccupied with other matters at that time, as I will
duly tell; and later I had my own reckoning to make with the king
of Ur and Kish.
    The first thing I did, when the excitement of the war had begun
to recede a little into memory, was to rebuild the walls of Uruk. In
truth I did not so much rebuild them as build them anew, for the
old walls of Uruk were as no walls at all, compared with the ones
that I constructed for the city. Perhaps they were good enough for
Enmerkar's time; but I had seen the walls of Kish. I knew what city
walls should be.
    A wall must be high, so that the enemy cannot scale it with his
ladders. It must be thick, so it cannot easily be breached. It must
have a deep and broadly based foundation, so it cannot be under-
mined and tunnels cannot be dug beneath it. All that is evident
enough; but the walls of Uruk were barely adequate in all those
respects. We needed, also, more towers from which we could observe
the approaches to the city, and a wide parapet along the top of the
wall where defenders could take up positions and aim their fire upon
the heads of the invaders. In particular there had to be guard-towers
and parapets flanking each of the city gates, since the gates are the
weak points in any wall.
    All the rest of the summer there was scarcely anything done in
Uruk but the making of bricks and the building of the wall that I
think will be known until the end of days as the Wall of Gilgamesh.
As in the repair of the canals, I worked alongside the common ar-
tisans, and I think no one worked as hard as I: I built that wall with
my own hands, and that is the truth. Nor was there any artisan more
skillful than I in the placing of the bricks as it must be done, on edge,
leaning sideways against one another in careful rows, each row lean-
ing in the direction opposite the one below it. That is the only true
way to build. We ripped away the old wall of Enmerkar so that the
city stood naked, and then, quickly as we could, we put up the new
wall, or, rather, the walls, for there are two of them. The seven wise
sages themselves could not have designed a better plan. I used only
kiln-baked bricks, for what is the use of building with mud, and
having to do it all over again five years later? And they were the
finest of bricks. The outer wall shines with the brightness of copper,
and the inner wall, a gleaming white, is a wall without equal any-
where. The foundation terrace is, I think, the mightiest ever built.
The wall of Uruk is famous throughout the world. It will last twelve
thousand thousand years, or I am not Lugalbanda's son.
    I would not have you believe we finished the entire wall in a single
summer. In truth, there has been no year of my reign when we have
not continued to work on it, strengthening it, increasing its height,
adding new parapets and watchtowers. But in that first summer we
built the greater part of it, sufficient to defend us against any enemy
we could imagine.
    In those early months I was in the fullest flush and most robust
joy of my kingship. Scarcely did I even take the time to sleep. I
worked all day at the things a king must do, and made my people
work as I did. I suppose I made them work too hard; indeed, I drove
them to exhaustion, and they began to call me tyrant behind my
back. But I did not realize that. My energies were immense, and I
did not understand that theirs were not. When their day's toil was
done, they wanted nothing but sleep. But I would feast magnificently
with my court by evening, and then at night there were the women.
Perhaps I was excessive, with the women, though I did not think
so then. My appetite for them was like the unceasing hunger of the
gods for meat and drink. I had my concubines, I had the priestesses
of the holy cloister, 'I had the casual women of the town, and even
they were not sufficient. You must never forget that I am in part a
god, by my descent from Lugalbanda, and also from Enmerkar who
called himself the son of the sun; and a god's force blazes within me.
How could I deny that force? How could I stifle it? The god-presence
throbbed in me like the beating of a drum, and I marched to its tune.
    Within my joy and vigor, though, I must tell you that there was
a hidden melancholy. All Uruk waited upon me, yet I never could
forget that I was a man alone, a lofty and isolated figure. Perhaps it
is that way with everyone: I do not know. But it seems to me that
others are bound in close league with wives, sons, friends, compan-
ions. I who had never had a brother, who had scarcely known his
father, who had been set apart by size and strength from his play-
fellows, was now as king cut off as though by colossal walls from
the normal flow of human intercourse. There was no one around
me who di4 not fear me and envy me and in some way draw back
from me. And I saw no way of altering that; but the toil by day and
the feasting by evening and the women by night were my conso-
lations for this pain of separation. Especially the women.
    My chamberlain of the royal concubines was hard pressed to meet
my needs. When the wandering tribesfolk of the desert came to Uruk
for the market, he brought their girls to me, tawny long-legged girls
with dark shadows about their eyes, and wide thin-lipped mouths.
When wedding contracts were drawn in the city, the brides were
given first to me before their husbands had them, so that I might
bring divine grace upon them. If the wife of one of my noblemen
pleased me, that man would convey her to the palace for the night
without murmur, should I ask for her. No one spoke out against
me. No one would; no one could; I was king; my strength was like
the strength of the host of heaven. I saw nothing wrong in what I
did. Was it not my privilege, as king, as god, as hero, as shepherd
of the people? Could I be left in need, when my hungers raged so
powerfully? Ah, the wine, the beer, the music, the singing of those
nights! And the women, the women, their sweet lips, their smooth
thighs, their swaying breasts! I never rested. I never halted. The
beating of the drum was unrelenting. By day I led the men in the
building of walls or the playing of the games of war, until they were
dull-eyed and drooping with fatigue, and by night I swept my way
through their women as a raging fire roars through the dry grass of summer.
    I never grew weary. I was making Uruk weary of me, but I did
not know that yet.
    Now it was the season of the new year, and once again the time
of the Sacred Marriage arrived. I had been king of Uruk a year and
some months. Tonight the goddess would open to me for the second
time. I performed the rituals of purification, I meditated in darkness
and silence in the Dumuzi-house, and when evening came they took
me in the traditional way, by boat, toward my union with Inanna.
    And as I debarked at the very quay where I had shattered the forces
of Agga, and strode into the city through a gate in the wall I had
built with my own hands, I felt a great surge of pride in what I had
achieved. I felt like a god, in truth: not like one who merely has
some godly blood in his veins, but in truth a god, a wearer of the
horned crown, who walks through the bright heavens in splendor.
Was I wrong, to feel such pride? I had come from exile to receive
the crown; I had repaired the canals; I had crushed the most powerful
of foes; I had built the walls of Uruk, and all this before I had reached
my twentieth year. Was that not godlike to have done? Did I not
have reason for pride?
  And now the goddess awaited me.
    In these months I had had little in the way of dealings with her,
only the customary sacrifices and rituals that required both our pres-
ences. We had scarcely spoken otherwise. There were times when I
could have gone to her to seek counsel or blessing, and I had not.
There were times when she might have sought me out, and she did
not. I think I understood even then why we were keeping such a
wary distance from one another. In Uruk we were like rival kings;
she had her zone of power, and I had mine. But already I was
extending the reach of my zone. This was not with the intent of
provoking her enmity, but simply because I knew no way to be king,
other than to exercise power to the fullest. When I had made war
on Agga, I had not asked her consent: it seemed too risky, when I
had already met the opposition of the house of elders to the war.
The war had to be fought; and with Inanna against me I would not
be able to levy the army I needed; therefore I did not consult Inanna.
I feared the interference her power could create. I was even then
concerned with placing myself beyond the range of that power. And,
she, seeing the growing strength of my own authority, had drawn
back, uncertain of my intentions, unwilling to challenge me before
she understood my purposes more completely.
    But on the night of the Sacred Marriage all such dreary consid-
erations of state are set aside. I went to her in the long chamber of
the temple and found her glittering in her oils and ornaments. I hailed
her as my holy jewel, and she greeted me as royal husband, fountain
of life; and we performed the rite of the showing-forth; and when
that was done we went within, to the chamber of the sweet-smelling
green rushes, and the handmaidens of the goddess undid her sheaths
of alabaster and plates of gold and left her naked to me.
    When we were alone I put my hands to her sleek shoulders, and
stared deep into the shining mysteries of her eyes, and she smiled at
me as she had smiled that first time when we were children, a smile
that was in part warm and loving, in part fierce, intense, challenging.
I knew she would devour me if she could. But on this night she was
mine. She had grown no less beautiful in the twelve months gone
by. Her bosom was deep, her waist was narrow, her hips were broad;
her fingernails were long as daggers, and painted the color of the
moon in eclipse. She beckoned me to the bed with a single small
gesture of her hand.
    We glided down to it and embraced. Her skin was like the fabrics
they weave in heaven. My body rose over hers. Her back was arched
beneath me. Her fingers dug deep into the cords and sinews of my
shoulders, and she drew her knees toward her breasts and turned
them outward, and her lips parted, her tongue came flickering out,
her breathing was a thick heavy hissing. She kept her eyes open all
the while, as women rarely do. I saw that. For I kept my eyes open
also, throughout every moment of that night.
    At dawn I heard the coming of the new year's first rain, a faint
muffled drumming against the ancient white brick of the temple
platform. I slipped from the bed and looked about for my robe, so
that I could take my leave. She lay facing me; she was watching me
the way a serpent watches its prey.
  "Stay a while longer," she said softly. "The night is not yet done."
  "The drum is beating. I must go."
    "All the city sleeps. Your friends lie sprawled in drunken dreams.
What can you do alone at this hour?" She made purring sound. I
mistrust serpents that purr. "Come back to my bed, Gilgamesh. The
night is not yet done, I tell you."
  With a smile I said, "You are not yet done, you mean."
  "And are you, then?"
    I shrugged. "We have performed the rite. And performed it amply,
I think."
  "So the insatiable one is sated, for the moment? Or are you merely
bored with me, and ready to begin the search for your next woman
of the day?"
  "You speak cruelly, Inanna."
    "But not without truth, eh, Gilgamesh? You never have enough.
Not enough women, not enough wine, not enough toil, not enough
warfare. You rage through Uruk like a torrent, sweeping everything
before you. You are a burden under which all the city groans. The
people cry out for mercy from you, so terribly do you oppress them."
    That stung me. My eyes went wide with surprise. "I, an oppressor?
I am a just and wise king, lady!"
    "Perhaps you are. No doubt you think you are. But you over-
whelm and crush your own people. You march the young men up
and down the drilling-fields, up and down and up and down, until
everything gets black before their eyes and they fall down from
exhaustion, and still you have no mercy on them. And the women!
No one has ever consumed women as you do. You use them as
though they are playthings, five, six, ten a night. I hear the stories."
  "Not ten," I said. "Not six, not five."
    She smiled. "That is not how they tell it. They say that no one
can content you, that you are like a wild bull. They look at me and
say, 'Only a goddess can satisfy him.' Well, there is a goddess within
me, and you and I have passed this night together. Are you content,
for once? Is that why you are so eager now to leave?"
    I was eager to leave now because I had no defense against this
onslaught of hers. But I would not admit that to her. Stiffly I said,
"I wish to walk by myself in the rain."
    "Walk, then, and then come back." Her eyes flashed. She had the
force within her of a snapping whip. I picked up my robe, hesitated,
let it fall again and stood naked before her. There was the musky
odor of our night's lovemaking in the chamber. The last of the incense
still sputtered in the bowl. Her lips were taut, her nostrils were
flaring. In a low harsh voice she said, "Will you come back? For you
there are ten women every night, Gilgamesh. For me there is only
you, one night a year."
    Suddenly I feared her less, hearing her trying to wheedle me that
way with pity.
  "Ah, is that how it is, Inanna? No one else, all the year long?"
"Who else but the god may touch the goddess, do you think?"
I grew more bold. I dared to tease her a little. "Not even in secret?"
I asked playfully. "Some lusty slave, summoned in the darkest watch
of the night--"
    Fury flared in her. She pulled her hands toward her breasts. Her
fingers tightened, so that they looked like claws. "You say such a
thing, under the temple's own roof?. Shame, Gilgamesh! Shame?'
Then she softened. Cat-like still, she stretched, she purred again, she
raised one knee and let her foot slide down the calf of her other leg.
More gently she said, "There is only you, one night of the year. I
swear it, though it makes me feel soiled that you should require me
to take oath on it. There is only you. I am not yet ready to let you
leave me. Will you stay? Will you stay just a little while longer? It
is only the one night I have, this one night."
  "Let me cleanse myself first in the rain," I said.
    I stood some time outside the temple, in the virgin air of the
rainswept dawn. Then I went back to her. Cat or serpent, priestess
or goddess, I could not refuse her, not if it was the only night'of
the year that she might know an embrace. And the rain, washing
the night's staleness from me, had reawakened my strength and my
desires anyway. I would not refuse her. I wanted her. I went to her
and we began the night afresh.

EARLY IN the new year a strange dream came to me, and I was
unable to make any sense of it. Later that night came a second dream
just as strange, just as unreadable.
    I was troubled that I had so little understanding of these dreams.
The gods often speak to kings as they sleep, and perhaps I was being
given some knowledge important to the welfare of the city. So I
went to the temple of An and took my dreams to my mother the
wise priestess Ninsun.
    She received me in her chamber, a dark-walled room with heavy
pilasters painted crimson. Her cloak was black, bordered below with
a broad band of beads of lapis, gold, and carnelian. There was about
her, as always, a supreme tranquility and beauty: all might be in
turbulence, but she was ever at peace.
    She took my hands between her small cool ones and held them a
long while, smiling, waiting for me to speak.
    "Last night," I said after a time, "I dreamed that a feeling of great
happiness came upon me, and I walked full of joy among the other
young heroes. Night fell, and the stars appeared in the heavens. And
as I stood beneath them one of the stars plunged to earth, a star that
bore in itself the essence of Sky-father An. I tried to lift it, but it
was too heavy for me. I tried to move it, but I could not. All Uruk
gathered around to watch. The common peoplej ostled; the noblemen
dropped down and kissed the ground before the star. And I was
drawn to it as I would be drawn to a woman. I put a carrying-strap
on my forehead and braced myself and with the help of the young
heroes I lifted it and carried it to you. And you told me, mother,
that the star was my brother. That was the dream. Its meaning baffles me."
      Ninsun appeared to stare off into some great empty space. Then
she said, still smiling, "I know the meaning."  "Tell me, then."
    "This star of heaven, that attracted you as a woman might attract
you--it is a strong companion, it is a loyal friend, your rescuer,
your comrade who will never forsake you. His strength is like the
strength of An, and you will love him as you love yourself."
      I frowned, thinking of that vast loneliness that I believed was the
inescapable price of my kingship, and how weary I was of it.
  "Friend? What friend do you mean, mother?"
  "You will know him when he comes," she said.
  I said, "Mother, I dreamed a second dream the same night."
  She nodded. She seemed to know.
    "An axe of a strange shape was lying in the streets of great-walled
Uruk," I said, "an axe unlike any of the axes familiar to us. All the
people were gathering around it, staring, whispering. As soon as I
saw it, I rejoiced. I loved it: again, I was drawn to it as I would be
to a woman. I took it and fastened it at my side. That was the second dream."
    "The axe you saw is a man. He is the comrade who is destined for you--"
  "The comrade, again!"
    "The comrade again, yes. The brave companion who rescues his
friend in a time of need. He will come to you."
"May the gods send him swiftly, then," I said with great fervor.
And I leaned forward close to her and told her something I had
never revealed to anyone before: that I was in terrible need, that a
great chilling loneliness assailed me in the midst of all my power and
plenty. Those were not easy words to speak. Twice my tongue stuck
fast, but I forced it to say the words. My mother Ninsun smiled and
nodded. She knew. I think it was she that had induced the gods to
fashion a companion for me. When I left her temple that morning I
felt a lightness in my soul, as of the lifting of storm-clouds after they
have hung heavy in the air for many days.
    About the time these dreams were coming to me a great strange-
ness--so I was afterward told--was befalling a man I did not know,
a certain hunter, Ku-ninda by name. This Ku-ninda was a man of
one of the outlying villages, who had his livelihood from trappmg
wild game; but this time when he went out into the wilderness on
the far side of the river to inspect the traps he had set, he found them
all torn apart. Whatever beasts might have been snared in them had
been set free. And when he went to look into the pits he had dug,
he discovered that they had all been filled in.
    This was a great mystery to Ku-ninda. No civilized person will
disturb the traps of a hunter or fill in his pits: it is a discourtesy, and
an ignoble act. So Ku-ninda searched for the man who had done
these things to him; and soon enough he caught sight of him. But
he was like no man Ku-ninda had ever seen. He was of huge size,
naked, rough and shaggy all over, covered with dark coarse hair
everywhere, more like a beast than a man, a wild creature of the
hills. He carried himself like an animal, crouching, grunting, snort-
ing, running swiftly on the balls of his feet. The beasts of the wil-
derness seemed to have no fear of him, but ran freely at his side:
Ku-ninda saw the wild man among the gazelles on the high ridges,
grazing with them, fondling them, eating grass as they ate grass.
Ku-ninda was troubled by the strangeness of what he saw. He made
more traps. The wild man sought them out and destroyed them,
every one. One day Ku-ninda encountered the wild man at the water-
ing-hole: they stood face to face. "You, wild one: why do you disturb
my traps?" Ku-ninda demanded. The wild man made no reply, but
only sniffed the air. He growled, he snarled, he bared his teeth, he
glared with fiery eyes. A spume of spittle came forth and rolled
down into his thick beard. Ku-ninda was no coward, but he shrank
back: his face was frozen with fear, and terror numbed his limbs.
Again the next day they met at the watering-place, and the day after
that, and each time, when the wild man saw Ku-ninda, he growled
and snarled, and Ku-ninda did not dare go near him. And at last,
seeing that the shaggy stranger was making it impossible for him to
hunt, Ku-ninda yielded, and went back empty-handed to his village,
greatly downcast.
    He told this tale to his father, who said, "Go you to Uruk, and
set yourself before Gilgamesh the king. There is no one more mighty
than he: he will find a way to help you."
  When next it was my audience-day for the common people, there
was this Ku-ninda waiting in the audience-hall, a strong and sturdy
man of more than middle height, with a lean hard face and keen
penetrating eyes. He was clad in black skins, and he had the smell
of sinews and blood about him. He put an offering of meat before
me and said, "There is a wild fellow in the fields who tears up my
traps and frees my catch. He is as strong as the host of heaven and
I dare not approach him."
    It seemed strange to me that this sturdy Ku-ninda could show fear
of anyone or anything. I asked him to tell me more, and he spoke
of the growling, the snarling, the baring of teeth; he told me how
the wild man ran with the gazelles on the high ridges, and grazed
beside them in the grass. Something in that stirred me deeply and
held me fascinated. My skin crept a little with wonder and amaze-
ment, and the hair prickled along my neck. "What a marvel," I said.
"What a mystery!"
  "Will you slay this creature for me, O king?"
    "Slay him? I think not: it would be a pity to slay him for no other
reason than being wild. But we can't let him run loose in the fields,
I suppose. We will trap him, I think."
    "Impossible, majesty!" Ku-ninda cried out. "You have not seen
him! His strength is as great as yours! There is no trap that could
hold him!"
  "There is one, I think," I said, with a smile.
    An idea had come to me as Ku-ninda spoke: a notion out of one
of the old tales that the harper Ur-kununna had sung in the courtyard
of the palace when I was a boy. I think it was the tale of the goddess
Nawirtum and the devil-monster Zababa-shum, or perhaps the god-
dess was Ninshubur and the monster was Lahamu: I do not remem-
ber, and the names are I suppose not important. The point of the
tale was the power of womanly beauty over the forces of violence
and savagery. I sent to the temple cloister for the holy courtesan
Abisimti, she of the round breasts and long shining hair who had
initiated me into the rites of fleshly love when I was young, and told
her what I would have her do. She hesitated not at all. There was
true holiness in Abisimti. She was in all ways a servant of heaven,
and her way of giving services was to give it without question, which
is the only true way.
    So Ku-ninda took Abisimti with him out onto the steppe, out into
the hunting-lands, to the watering-hole where Ku-ninda had had his
encounters with the wild man, three days'journey from Uruk. There
they waited a day and a second day, and the wild man was among
them. "That's the one," said Ku-ninda. "Go to him now, use your
arts upon him."
    All unafraid and unashamed, Abisimti went to him and stood
before him. He growled, he grunted, he frowned, not knowing what
sort of creature she might be; but he did not snarl, he did not bare
his teeth. She unfastened her robe and disclosed her breasts to him.
I think he must never have seen a woman before, but the power of
the goddess is great, and the goddess made the beauty of the holy
whore Abisimti manifest to his understanding. She uncovered herself
and showed him her soft ripe nakedness, and let him fill his nostrils
with the rich perfume of her, and lay down with him and caressed
him, and drew him down atop her so that he might possess her.
    It was his initiation. He had been like a beast; by embracing her
he became like a man. Or it would be just as true to say that by
embracing her he became a god. For that is the way that the divine
essence enters into us, through the rite of the life-giving act.
    Six days and seven nights they lay together coupling. I will testify
myself to Abisimti's skills: I could have sent no one to him who was
wiser in the ways of the flesh. When she lay with Enkidu--for that
was the wild man's name, Enkidu--she surely must have made use
of all her wisdom with him, and after that he could never be the
same. In those' hot days and nights the wildness was burned from
him in the forge of Abisimti's passion. He softened, he grew more
gentle, he gave up his savage grunting and growling. The power of
speech came into him; he became like a man.
    But he did not know yet what had befallen him. When he had
taken his fill with her, he rose to return to his beasts. But the gazelles
ran off in fright as he approached. The smell of mankind was on
him now, the smell of civilization. The wild creatures of the steppe
no longer knew him, and they drew away from him. As they fled
he would have followed them, but his body was held back as though
bound with a cord, his knees would not serve him, all his swiftness
was gone. Slowly, bewilderedly, he made his way back to Abisimti,
who smiled tenderly and drew him down beside her. "You are no
longer wild," she said, with gestures more than with words.
And at those last words his eyes grew bright and
his face became hot, and he said, in his thick-tongued way that was
still freighted with the sounds of the beasts, that he would indeed
go with her to Uruk, and to the temple of Inanna and the temple of
An. But chiefly he wished to be shown this Gilgamesh, this king,
this so-called strong man. "I mean to challenge him,' Enkidu cried.
"I will show him which one of us is the stronger. I will let him feel
the might of the man of the steppes. I will change things in Uruk,
I will reshape destinies, I who am the strongest of all? Or such, at
any rate, were the words that Abisimti reported to me afterward.
Thus was it carried out, the snaring of the wild man Enkidu. In
accordance with the strategy I had devised, he was caught in the
softest and sweetest of traps, and brought away from the fields of
beasts into the world of settled folk.
Abisimti divided her garments, clothing him with one half and                    
herself with the other, and took him by the hand; and like a mother
she led him to the place of the sheepfolds close by the city. The
shepherds gathered around him: they had never seen anyone like                   
him. When they offered him bread, he did not know what to do
with it, and held it in his hand staring at it, confused, embarrassed.
He was accustomed to eating only the wild grasses and berries of
the fields, and to sucking the milk of wild creatures. They gave him
wine, and it bewildered him, and when he tasted it it made him gag
and choke, and he spat it out.
Abisimti said, "This is bread, Enkidu: it is the staff of life. This
is wine. Eat the bread, drink the wine: it is the custom of the land."
Cautiously he nibbled, cautiously he sipped. His fear went from
him; he smiled, he ate more gladly, he gobbled bread until he was
full, he drank down seven goblets of strong wine. His face glowed,
 his heart exulted; he leaped about, he danced a merry dance. Then
 they took him and they groomed him, they rubbed the tangles out
 of his matted hair, they trimmed him and clipped him and anointed
 him with oil, and gave him decent clothing, so that he came to look
 more like a human being, although one who was of more than usual
 size and more than usual hairiness.
    He lived some while among the shepherds. Not only did he learn
to eat the food of men and drink the drink of men and wear the
clothes of men; Enkidu learned to work as men must do. The shep-
herds taught him how to use weapons, and made him the watchman
of their flocks. By night, while the herdsmen slept peacefully, he
patrolled the fields, driving away the beasts that came to raid the
sheepfold. He chased lions, he caught wolves, he was the tireless
guardian of the sheep--he who had been as a wild beast himself.
No word of any of this was brought to me. I confess that I had
forgotten all about the wild man of the steppes, so busy was I with
the tasks of kingship and with the pleasures by which I eased my
heart's ache.
    One day at this time Enkidu and Abisimti were sitting in a tavern
that the herdsmen were fond of frequenting, when a wayfarer came
in, a man of Uruk, and called for a beaker of beer. The stranger,
seeing the courtesan Abisimti, recognized her, and he nodded to her
and said, "Count yourself fortunate that you are not living in Uruk
these days."
  "Why, is life so unlucky in the city?" she asked.
    "Gilgamesh oppresses us all," said the stranger. "The city groans
beneath him. There is no containing the force of him, and he exhausts
us. And he practices abominations: the king defiles the Land."
    At that, Enkidu looked up and said, "How so? Tell me what you
mean."
    The stranger replied, "There is a house of assembly in the city
that is set aside for the people, where they celebrate their marriages.
The king ought not to intrude there; but he enters it, even while the
wedding drums are beating, he seizes the bride, he demands to be
first with her, before the husband. He says that this right was or-
dained by the gods at the time of his birth, from the time the cord
that bound him to his mother was cut. Are such things right? Are
such things proper? The wedding drums roll, but then Gilgamesh
appears to claim the bride. And all the city groans."
    Enkidu grew pale on hearing this, and great anger came over him.
"It must not be!" he shouted. And to Abisimti he cried, "Come,
take me to Uruk, show me this Gilgamesh!"
    Abisimti and Enkidu set out at once for the city. When they came
within the walls he caused a considerable stir, so broad were his
shoulders, so powerful his arms. Crowds gathered about him, and
when they heard from Abisimti that this was the famous wild man
who had been setting trapped animals free on the plains, they pressed
close, gawking, whispering. The bravest of them touched him to
feel the strength of him. "He is the equal of Gilgamesh!" someone
cried. "No, he is not as tall," said another, and a third said, "Yes,
but he is broader in the shoulders, his bones are stronger." And they
said, "A hero has arrived! He is one that was suckled on the milk of
wild beasts! Finally Gilgamesh has met his match! At last! At last!"
    This was the man, this Enkidu, whose coming had been foretold
in my two dreams. He was the companion whom the gods had
provided to lift me from my loneliness, to be the brother I had never
had, the comrade with whom I would share all things. To the people
of Uruk he was also a godsend for whom they long had prayed, but
for a different reason. For it was indeed the case--though I did not
know it--that they had been groaning under the burden of my reign,
that they feared my surging energies and condemned me for arro-
gance. So the people of Uruk had asked the gods to create my equal
and send him to their city: my double, my second self, matching me
stormy heart for stormy heart, in order that we would contend with
one another, and leave Uruk in peace. And now that man had come.

IT WAS the day of the wedding of the nobleman Lugal-annemundu
 and the maiden Ishhara. The wedding drums were beating, the bridal
 bed had been laid out. The maiden was desirable to me, and at
 nightfall I made my way to the assembly-house of the people to take
 her to the palace.
    But as I was crossing the marketplace known as the Market-of-
the-Land, which lies just across the street from the assembly-house
of the people, a burly figure rose up out of the shadows and blocked
my path. He was a man almost of my own height, no more than a
finger's breadth or two shorter: I had never seen anyone else so tall
before. His chest was deep and heavy, his shoulders were wide, wider
even than mine, his arms were as thick as an ordinary man's thighs.
By the flickering light of my servants' torches I stared close into his
face. His chin thrust boldly forward, his mouth was broad, his brow
was strong and dark; and there was something fierce and smouldering
in his eyes. His beard was thick, his hair was shaggy. And how calm
he was, how self-assured! Look at him standing in my way! Did he
not know I was Gilgamesh the king?
  I said quietly, "Step aside, fellow."
  "That I will not do."
    It amazed me to hear such words. I will not say that I felt fear,
but I was put on my guard, for I knew this could be no common
citizen. My yeomen stirred uneasily and began to draw their weap-
ons. I beckoned them to hold back. Going closer to the stranger, I
said, "Do you know me?"
  "I think you are the king."
  "So I am. It is not wise to bar my way like this."
    "Do you know me?" he asked. His voice was rough and deep, his
accent uncouth.
  I said, "Not at all."
  "I am Enkidu."
    "Ah, the wild man! I should have guessed as much. So you have
come to Uruk, now? Well, what do you want with me, wild man?
This is not the hour for presenting petitions to the king."
  Bluntly he said, "Where are you going, Gilgamesh?"
  "Am I answerable to you, then?"
  "Tell me where you are going."
    Again my yeomen stirred. I think they would gladly have speared
him dead, but I held them back.
     In some irritation I answered, waving beyond him to the assembly-
 house, "Over there. To attend a wedding. From which you delay
 me, wild man."
     "You may not go," he said. "Do you mean to take the bride for
 yourself?. You may not have her!"
     "I may not? I may not? What strange words to offer a king, wild
 man!" With a shrug I said, "This ceases to amuse me. Once more I
 tell you: step aside, fellow."
     I moved forward. But instead of yielding the way, he put out his
 foot to prevent me, and then he laid hold of me with his hands.
     It is death to touch the king in such a fashion. I left no space,
 however, for my yeomen to strike him down; for as he touched me
 a sudden terrible rage sprang up in me, and I grabbed him as if I
 meant to hurl him to the far side of the marketplace. Instantly we
 were grappling in a tight embrace, and the spearmen could not have
 struck him without wounding me; so they stepped back and let us
 go at it, not knowing what else to do.
     In the first moments I saw that he was my equal in strength, or
 nearly so. That was something new to me. In my boyhood, in my
 days of military training in Kish, in the roistering frolics with the
 young heroes of my court after I had become king, I had wrestled
 often, purely for the sport of it, and I had always sensed in the first
 laying-on of hands that the man with whom I had contended was
 at my mercy: I could throw him whenever I chose. That was sat-
 isfying only when I was a child. When I grew older I lamented it,
 since it robbed the wrestling of sport, to know that the power of
victory was mine for the taking, at any moment, always. This was
different. I had no assurance. When l tried to move him, he did not
budge. When he tried to move me, it took all my strength to resist.
I felt as though I had crossed over into some strange other world
where Gilgamesh was no longer Gilgamesh. What I tasted was not
fear--I do not think it was fear--but something almost as unfamiliar.
Doubt? Uncertainty? Unease?
    We fought like maddened bulls, snorting, lurching up and down,
never once releasing one another. We shattered doorposts and made
the walls of the buildings shake. Neither of us was able to prevail.
Because he was of my height, or nearly so, we stared eye to eye as
we contended; his eyes were deep-set and reddened with strain, and
they gleamed with an astonishing wildness. We grunted; we bel-
lowed; we roared. I shouted out defiance in the language of Uruk
and the language of the desert folk and any other language I could
think of; and he muttered and stormed at me in the language of the
beasts, the harsh growling of the lion of the plains.
    I yearned to kill him. I prayed that it be given to me to break his
back, to hear the sharp snapping sound of his spine, to toss him like
a worn-out cloak into the trash-heap. Such hatred went through me
as made me dizzy. You must understand that no one had ever stood
up to me in this way before. He was like a mountain that had risen
in the night across my highway. How could I have felt, if not enraged:
I the king, I the invincible hero? But I could not defeat him, nor he
me. I cannot tell you how long we strained and struggled, and my
strength and his were in equal measures.
    But there is godhood in me, and Enkidu was altogether mortal.
In the end it was inevitable that I would prevail. I felt my strength
holding, while his' was beginning to wane. At last I planted my foot
firmly on the ground and bent my knee, and was able to catch him
and pull him down, so that his feet flew up beneath him and he lost
his balance.
    In that moment every vestige of hatred for him went from me.
Why should I hate him? He was splendid in his strength. He was
close to being my equal. As a river batters down a dam, so did love
for him sweep away all my anger. It was a sudden love so deep that
it swept upon me like the fullest torrents of springtime and entirely
conquered me. I bethought me of my dreammof that piece of star-
stuff which had fallen from the heavens and which I had been unable
to budge. In the dream I had braced myself and with the greatest of
efforts I had lifted it and taken it to my mother, who had told me,
"This is your brother, this is your great comrade." Yes. I had never
known a man so much my equal in so many ways, so fitted to me
as though joined by a master carpenter. I clove to him in that moment
as if we were of one flesh in two bodies, long sundered, now united.
That was what f had felt, while my strength was being tested by
his. That was what had passed between us as we struggled. I went
to Enkidu and raised him from the ground and embraced him a
second time, not in strife now, but in love. Great sobs shook me,
and him also; for we both knew in the same moment what had
passed between us.
    "Ah, Gilgamesh!" he cried out. "There is not another one like you
in all the world! Glory to the mother who bore you!"
  "There is one other," I said, "who is like me. But only one."
  "No: for Enlil has given you the kingship."
  "But you are my brother," I said.
    He looked at me, dazed like one who is roused too soon from
sleep. "I came here meaning to do you injury."
    "And I the same to you. When I saw you would block my way,
I imagined myself cracking you in half, and throwing the pieces of
you aside like gnawed bones."
  He laughed. "You could not have done it, Gilgamesh!"
  "No. I could not. But I meant to try."
    "And I to cast you down from your high place. I could have done
that, if the luck had gone with me."
    "Yes," I said. "I think you could. Try it again, if you will. I will
be ready for you."
    He shook his head. "No. If I cast you down, if I do you grave
injury, I will lose you. I will be alone again. No, I would rather have
you for a friend than an enemy. That is the word I mean. Friend.
Friend. Is that not the word?"
  "A friend, yes. We are too much alike to be enemies."
    "Ah," said Enkidu, frowning. ",8re we alike? How so? You are
the king, and I am only--I amm"I He faltered. "A shepherd's watch-
man is all I am."
 "No. You are the king's friend. The king's brother."
     I had never thought I would be able to say those words to anyone.
 Yet I knew them to be true.
  "Is it so?" he asked. "Shall we not fight again, then?"
    With a grin I said, "Of course we'll fight! But it will be as brothers
fight. Eh, Enkidu? Eh?" And I took him by the hand. Forgotten
now was the wedding, forgotten was the maiden Ishhara. "Come
with me, Enkidu. To Ninsun my mother, the priestess of An. I
would have her meet her other son. Come, Enkidu. Come now!"
And we went to the temple of the Sky-father, and knelt in the
darkness before Ninsun; and it was very strange and wonderful for
us both. I had thought the loneliness would be with me forever; and
here it was gone, suddenly, vanished like a thief in the night at the
moment of the coming of Enkidu.
    That was the beginning of that great friendship, the like of which
I had never known before, and will never know again. He was to
me my other half; he filled a place in me where there had been an emptiness.
    But it has been whispered that we were lovers as men and women
are. I would not have you believe that. That was not the case at all.
I know that there are certain men in whom the gods have mixed
manhood and womanhood so that they have no need or liking for
women, but I am not one of them, nor was Enkidu. For me the
union of man and woman is the great holy thing, which it is not
possible for a man to experience with another man: they say that
they do experience it, those men, but I think they deceive themselves.
It is not the true union. I have had that union, in the Sacred Marriage
with the priestess Inanna, in whom the goddess resides. Inanna too
is my other half, though a dark and troubled half. But a man may
have several halves, or so it seems to me, and he may love a man in
a way that is altogether different from the way in which he finds
union with a woman.
    That kind of love that exists between man and man existed be-
tween Enkidu and me. It sprang to life in the moment of our wres-
tling, and it never faded thereafter. We did not speak of it with one
another. We did not need to speak of it. But we knew its presence.
We were one soul in two bodies. We scarcely had to voice our
thoughts, because we could hear them unspoken in one another. We
were well matched. There is a god within me; there was the earth
within him. I come from the heavens downward; he came from the
ground upward. Our meeting-place was the place between, which
is the world of mortal men.
    I gave him rooms in the palace, the grand white-walled suite along
the southwestern wall that previously had been reserved for the use
of visiting governors and kings of other cities. I provided robes of
the finest white linen and wool for him, and gave him maidens to
bathe and oil him, and sent him my barbers and my surgeons to
trim and polish the last traces of wildness out of him. I awoke in
him a love of fine roasted meats, and sweet strong wines and rich
foaming beer. I gave him the skins of leopards and lions to bedeck
himself and his rooms. I shared all my concubines with him, holding
back none for myself alone. I had a bronze shield made for him
engraved with portrayals of the campaigns of Lugalbanda, and a
sword that gleamed like the eye of the sun, and a richly ornamented
red and gold helmet, and spears of the most exquisite balance. I
taught him myself the arts of the chariot, and the casting of the javelin.
    Though there remained always something rough and earthy at the
core of him, nevertheless he quickly came to take on the outer look
and manner of a noble of the court, dignified, accomplished, hand-
some. I tried even to have him taught to read and write, but he drew
the line at attempting that. Well, there are many great men of the
court who lack that skill also, and few who have mastered it.
     If there was jealousy of him at court, I suppose I did not notice
 it. Perhaps there were some in the inner circle of heroes and warriors
 who turned away bitterly, saying behind his back and mine, "There
 is the king's favorite, the wild man. Why was he chosen, and not
 me?" But if they did, they hid their scowls and mutterings very well.
 I prefer to think that no such envious feelings existed. It was not as
 though Enkidu had displaced some earlier favorite. I had never had
 a favorite before, not even such old comrades as Bir-hurturre or
 Zabardi-bunugga; I had never allowed anyone so close. They saw
 at once that the companionship I enjoyed with Enkidu was of a
 different sort from anything I had known with them, just as his
 strength was of a different sort from theirs. There was no one like
 him in the world; and there was nothing like our friendship.
    I took him completely into my confidence. I made every aspect
of myself open to him. I even allowed him to watch me when I went
into seclusion to beat the drum made of the huluppu-tree in the
special way that put me into the trance. He crouched beside me as
I disappeared into that other realm of blue light; and when I came
out of it I found myself lying with my head cradled against his knees.
He was staring at me as though he had seen the god emanating from
me: he touched my cheekbones, he made holy signs with his fin-
gertips. "Can you show me how to go to that place?" he asked. And
I replied, "I will, Enkidu," but he never could reach it, try as he
would. I think it was that he had not been touched in an inward way
by the god as I had been; he had never felt the fluttering of the great
wings in his soul, he had not heard the droning and the buzzing, or
seen the crackling aura, that are the first signs of being possessed.
But often I let him sit beside me as I drummed, and he guarded me
when I rolled about on the floor and thrashed and lashed my arms
and legs in the ecstatic fit.
    When there was work to do--the construction of canals, the
strengthening of the wall, whatever labor the gods decreed for me--
Enkidu was by my side. At the rituals he stood near me, and handed
me the sacred vessels, or lifted the offerings of oxen and sheep to
the altar as easily as if they were birds. When it was the season of
hunting, we hunted together, and in that he was my superior, since
he knew the wild beasts with a brother's knowledge. He stood with
his head thrown back and sniffed the air, and said, pointing, "That
way is lion. That way is elephant." He was never wrong. We went
time and again into the marshes or the steppes or the other places
where the great beasts dwelled, and there was no beast that did not
fall to us. Together ~ve killed three strong male elephants in the great
bend of the river, and we carried their hides and teeth to Uruk and
hung them up for a show on the facade of the palace. Another time
he built a pit covered with branches and we captured an elephant
alive, and brought it to the city also, where it stood bellowing and
snorting in an enclosure for the whole winter until we offered it to
Enlil. We hunted lions of the two kinds, the black-maned ones and
those without manes, from our chariot: like me, Enkidu cast his
javelins with the right hand or the left, with equal accuracy. I tell
you, we were one soul in two bodies.
    He was different from me, of course, in many ways. He was louder
and far more boisterous, especially when he had had overmuch wine,
and he had a low taste in wit, roaring endlessly with laughter over
jokes that would make a child's nose wrinkle with distaste. Well, he
was a man who had been reared among beasts. He had a dignity, a
natural one, but it was not the dignity of one who has grown up in
a palace with a king for a father. It was good for me to have Enkidu
booming and roistering at my side, for I am too serious a man for
my own good, and he lightened my hours, not as a court jester does
with his carefully devised jollities, but in an easy and natural way,
like a cool crisp breeze on a sultry sweltering day.
    He spoke out with complete honesty. When I took him into the
Enmerkar temple, thinking he would be overwhelmed by its beauty
and majesty, he said at once, "It is very small and ugly, is it not?"
I had not expected that. Afterward I began to see my grandfather's
great temple through Enkidu's eyes, and indeed it did appear small
and ugly to me, and old, and in bad need of repair. Instead of repairing
it I tore it down and built a splendid new one, five times its size,
atop the White Platform: that is the temple that stands there now,
which I think will win me fame through the thousands of years to come.
    It cost me some little trouble with the priestess Inanna, when I
tore the Enmerkar temple down. I told her what I meant to do, and
she looked at me as if I had spat upon the altars and replied, "But it
is the greatest of temples!"
    "The one that was there before it, that Meskiaggasher built, was
also the greatest of temples, in its day. No one remembers it now.
It is in the nature of kings to replace temples with greater temples.
Enmerkar built well, but I will build better."
    She glared at me sourly. "And where will the goddess live, while
you are building your temple?"
    "The goddess inhabits all of Uruk. She'll live in every house and
in every street and in the air about us, as she does now."
    Inanna was furious. She summoned the assembly of elders and
the house of men to declare her protest; but no one could not stop
me from building the temple. It is in the province of the king to
enhance the grandeur of the goddess by offering temples to her. So
 we swept the Enmerkar temple away, down to its foundations, al-
 though we left intact those demon-haunted ancient underground
 passageways beneath it: I did not want to meddle with those. I
 brought in limestone blocks from the limestone country to be the
 new foundations of my temple, and laid it out on a scale that no one
 in Uruk had ever imagined before. The citizens gasped in surprise
 when they came to watch the work and saw the length and breadth
 of what I intended to build.
    In building the new temple I made use of everything I had learned
of the craft. I raised the height of the White Platform until it towered
halfway to heaven, and put my temple high on its foundations above
that, as the temples are in Kish. I made the walls thicker than anyone
had ever thought to make walls, and I supported them on immense
columns as sturdy as the thighs of the gods. By way of ornament
for the walls and columns I devised a new thing so wondrous that
I should be remembered for it alone, even if all my other achieve-
ments are forgotten. This was, to drive thousands of long pointed
cones of baked clay into the mud-plaster that covered the walls and
columns, before it had hardened. Only the heads of these cones were
allowed to remain visible, and they were painted in red or yellow
or black, and placed one next to the other to form dazzling colorful
patterns in diagonals and zigzags and lozenges and chevrons and
triangles. The result is that wherever the eye looks within my temple,
it is delighted by vividness and complexity: it is like seeing a vast
tapestry, woven not with colored wools but of an uncountable num-
ber of small bright roundels of painted clay.
    Enkidu thought also that the small shrine to Lugalbanda that Du-
muzi had erected years ago by the military barracks in the Lion district
was unworthy of'my father. I had to agree; and I tore that down
too, and built a far more appropriate one, with arches and pilasters
of great size all covered over with my cone-mosaic decorations in
brilliant colors. At the center of it I put the old image of Lugalbanda
in black stone that Dumuzi had erected, for it was a noble enough
representation, and I would not lightly discard anything made of a
material so rare as the black stone; but I surrounded it by tripod-
mounted lamps against mirrors of bright copper, so that a dazzling
light filled the shrine at every hour. We painted the walls with pictures
and leopards and bulls, as offerings to Enlil of the storms, whom
Lugalbanda loved. At the dedication I poured the blood of lions and
elephants over the tiles of the floor. Can anyone say that the hero
Lugalbanda merited anything less?
    There were no wars in those years. The Elamites were quiet, the
Martu desert tribesmen went marauding elsewhere, the collapse of
the dynasty of Agga of Kish removed a powerful menace to our
north. That the king of Ur had made himself king of Kish did not
trouble me; Ur and Kish are far apart, and I saw no way that he
could combine the power of the two cities in league against us. So
we lived a calm and easy life in Uruk, growing rich in peace, fattening
ourselves with trade instead of going forth to seek the booty of
warfare.
    In those years the merchants and emissaries of Uruk went every-
where at my bidding, to the great enhancement of the city. From
the mountains in the east they brought beams of cedar-wood fifty
and even sixty cubits in length, and logs of urkarinnu-wood to the
length of twenty-five cubits, which we used for the beams of the
new temple. From the town of Ursu in the mountain of Ibla they
fetched zabalu-wood, great beams ofashukhu-wood, and the timber
of plane-trees. From Umanu, a mountain in the land of Menua, and
from Basalla, a mountain of the land of Amurru, my envoys returned
with great blocks of the rare black stone, out of which the craftsmen
fashioned new images of the gods for all the older temples. I imported
copper from Kagalad, a mountain of Kimash, and with my own
hands I made a great mace-head out of it. Out of Gubin, the mountain
of huluppu-trees, I brought huluppu-wood, and from Madga came
asphalt to use in the platform of the temple, and from the mountain
of Barshib I fetched blocks of the sumptuous nalua-stone by boat. I
laid plans to send expeditions even farther, to Magan, to Meluhha,
to Dilmun. The city thrived. It grew daily in splendor. I took a wife,
and she bore me a son; and I took a second wife, as was my right.
There was peace. On the night of the new year I went to the temple
I had built, and lay with fiery Inanna in the rite of the Sacred Marriage:
each year she clung more fiercely to me, and her body moved with
greater abandon, as she received in a single night the whole year's
fulfillment of her hungers. I had the love of Enkidu to buoy me
through my days. The wine flowed freely; the smoke of burning
meat rose each day to the gods, and all was well. This was how I
thought my reign would be forever and ever. But the gods do not
grant such ease forever and ever: it is a miracle when they grant it at all.

ONE DAY I came upon Enkidu and found him in a bleak and
downcast mood, scowling and sighing and well-nigh close to tears.
I asked him what troubled him, though I was fairly sure that I knew;
and he said, "You will think me a fool if I tell you."
  "Perhaps I will, and what of it? Come, speak it forth."
  "It is foolishness, Gilgamesh!"
    "I think not," I said. I gave him a close look and said, "Allow me
a guess. You grow restless in our civilized life of ease, is that not it?
You've become weary of dallying here in idleness."
    His face reddened and he replied, startled, "By the gods, how did
you know that?"
  "It takes no great wisdom to see it, Enkidu."
      "I would not have you think that I want to return to my old life
and run naked on the steppe."  "No. I doubt that you do."
    "But I tell you, I'm becoming soft here. The edge of my strength
is going from me. My arms are limp, my breath comes short."
    "And the hunting trips we make? And the games we play on the
jousting-field? Not enough, are they, Enkidu?"
    In a low voice I could barely hear he said, "I am ashamed to say
it. But they are not enough."
    I put my hand to his arm. "Well, they are not enough for me
either."
  He blinked in surprise. "What is that you say?"
    "That I feel the same restlessness you do. My kingship binds and
confines me. The tranquility that I've labored to achieve for the city
has become my enemy. My soul is troubled even as yours is. I yearn
 as much as you for adventure, Enkidu, for danger, for mighty deeds
 that will raise up my name before mankind. I chafe here. I long to
 take a great journey."
     It was the truth. All was so serene in Uruk that being the king
 did not seem much different to me from being a shopkeeper. I could
 not accept a shopkeeper's lot, for the gods had put divinity in me,
 and the divine part of me was and is unsleeping, forever questing,
 forever unsatisfied. That is the jest the gods have played on me--
 that I yearn for peace but am not satisfied when I attain it; but I think
 I have solved the riddle of that jest now, as I will tell you in its
 proper time.
  "Ah, is it so?" he said. "You suffer as I do?"
  "Exactly as you do."
     He laughed. "We are like two overgrown boys, casting about for
 new diversions. But what will we do, then, Gilgamesh? Where can  we go?"
     I gave him a long steady look. Slowly I said, "There is a place
 known as the Land of Cedars. For some time now I have been
 thinking of undertaking an expedition to that place." That was not
 the truth: the idea had leaped into my mind that moment. "Do you
 know of it, Enkidu?"
    With a frown he said, speaking somewhat darkly and grimly, "I
know of it, yes."
    "Would it cure your restlessness, do you think, to go there with me?"
  He moistened his lips. "Why that place, Gilgamesh?"
    "We have need of cedar. It is a splendid wood. There is none of
it in the Land." I was not being devious with him. It was the truth.
But also I had chosen the Land of Cedars for its sharp and bracing
air, which I thought would bring Enkidu out of his melancholy.
And above and beyond that, there was talk of late that the Elamites
were staking claim to all the land around the cedar forest. I could
not permit that.
  "There are other places where you can obtain cedar."
    "Perhaps. But I mean to go to the Land of Cedars for it. They
say it's wondrous country there, high and green and cool, very beautiful."
  "And very dangerous," said Enkidu.
  "Is it?" I shrugged. "Better and better! You said you were growing
restless dallying here in civilized ease--that you are hungry for chal-
lenge, for peril--"
    He said, looking as abashed as I had ever seen him, "Possibly you
offer more than I bargain for."
    "What? Too much peril, is that it? Did those words come from
Enkidu's lips? I never thought to hear you speak in a cowardly way."
    His eyes flashed; but with an effort he kept himself in check.
"There is a free line, brother, between cowardice and common sense."
  "And is it common sense to fear a skirmish with a few Elamites?"
  "No, not with Elamites, Gilgamesh."
  "Then what--"
    "Are you not aware that the Lord Enlil placed the demon Huwawa
at the gateway to the Land of Cedars to guard the holy trees?"
    I nearly laughed out loud at that. Indeed I had heard tales of the
demon of the forest; every forest has its demon or two, and terrifying
tales abound. But generally demons can be propitiated or otherwise
turned aside; and I had not expected Enkidu to care a rat's eyelash
for beings of that sort in any case.
    I said lightly, "Well, there is some such story. But perhaps the
demon will be busy elsewhere when we get there. Or perhaps the
demon isn't as ferocious as the tales make him out to be. Or perhaps,
Enkidu, there's no demon in the forest at all."
    Quietly Enkidu said, "I have looked upon Huwawa with my own
eyes."
    His words had the force of a blow in the belly, so hushed was his
voice, so taut with conviction. Now it was my turn to blink with
amazement. "What?" I blurted. "You have actually seen him?"
    "When I was still ranging through the wilderness with the wild
beasts," he said, "I wandered once far to the east, and came into the
forest where the cedars grow. It extends ten thousand leagues in
every direction; and Huwawa is everywhere in it. There is no hiding
from him. He rose up before me and roared, and I thought I would
die of fright; and I am no coward, Gilgamesh." He looked at me
very closely. "Am I a coward, do you think? But Huwawa rose up
and roared, and when he roars it is like the roaring of the storms
that bring the great floods. I thought I would die of fright. His mouth
is fire itself, his breath is death."
 I still could not believe it. "You say that you saw the face of the
demon?" I asked.
    "I saw it. There is nothing more frightening in this world. This
Huwawa is a monster beyond belief. His teeth are like the fangs of
a dragon. His face is a lion's face." Enkidu was trembling. His eyes
were gleaming with the recollection of terror. "When he charges, it
is like the onrushing waters of the river. He devours trees and reeds
as though they are grass."
  Dully I said yet again, "You saw the demon!"
    "I saw him, Gilgamesh. I was lucky to get away. He turned aside;
he forgot me. I would not get away a second time. He will slay us.
I tell you this: if we go to the Land of Cedars, he will slay us. He
perceives everything that happens in that forest. He can hear the
sound of the wild heifers roaming in the woods, even if they are
sixty leagues away. There's no escaping him. The contest is unequal."
He shook his head. "Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh, I am as hungry for some
great exploit as you are: but are you hungry for death?"  "Do you think that I am?"
  "You mean to go to the Land of Cedars."
    "For the sake of adventure, yes. For the sake of making my heart
beat faster in my breast. But I have no hunger for death. It is the
love of life that draws me to the Land of Cedars, not any craving
for dying. You know that."
  "Yet to enter the lair of Huwawa--"
    "No, Enkidu. I have seen the corpses floating on the river, and it
weighs heavy on my soul, seeing them and knowing that that is our
fate too. I abhor death. Death is my enemy."
  "Then why go--"
  "Because we must."
    "Ah, why must we? We can go north! We can go south! We can
go--"
    "No," I said. The fire was upon me now. It pained me to see
Enkidu languishing in such fear. His soul had softened in Uruk; he
would die of it if I did not pull him forth. For his sake we must
undertake this thing, no matter the risks. "There is only one place
we can go, and that is the Land of Cedars."  "Where we will most certainly die."
  "I am not so certain of that. But consider this, friend: only the
gods live forever under the sun, and even they taste death now and
then. As for mortals like us, what we attempt is nothing but empty
air, the blowing of the wind. Yet we must attempt it, I think, even so."
    "And die. I have never known you so eager for death, Gilgamesh.
No matter what you say, that is how you seem."
    "No! No! I mean to fend off death as long as I can. But I will not
live in fear. How can it be, Enkidu, that you are afraid?"
    This time my jeering roused no anger in him. He looked away,
scowling, bleak-faced.
  "I have seen Huwawa," he said sullenly.
Now I grew angry myself. This was not the Enkidu I knew.
"Well, then," I cried, "fear him! But I will not. Stay back where
it is safe, then. Come with me to the Land of Cedars, yes. The
journey will refresh you; the keen air will awaken your soul. But
when we are in the forest, I will let you walk behind me. What if
he slays me? If I fall to him, well, at the least of it I will have left
behind me a name to last forever. They will say of me, 'Gilgamesh
has fallen to fierce Huwawa.' That is no disgrace, eh? Where can
there be any disgrace, in falling to a demon so dreadful that he
frightens even the hero Enkidu?"
      His eyes met mine. He grinned fiercely, and his nostrils flared.
"How sly you are, Gilgamesh!"  "Am I? How so?"
  "To tell me you'll let me walk behind you."
  "It will be safer for you there, Enkidu."
    "Do you think so? And have everyone in Uruk say afterward,
'That is Enkidu, he walked behind his brother in the forest of the demon'!"
  "But if the demon frightens youm"
    "You know I will walk at your side when we come into Huwawa's domain."
    "Ah, I would not require that of you--you who have seen the
dreadful Huwawa."
    "Spare me your mockery," said Enkidu wearily. "I will stand
beside you. You know that, Gilgamesh. You have known it from
the beginning."
  "If you are unwilling to go?"
 "I tell you, I will stand beside you!" he bellowed. And we laughed
and seized each other in a great hug, and made an end to all this talk:
and I let the word go out that I soon would set forth from Uruk to
the Land of Cedars.
    I cannot tell you how many times, as we made our preparations
for the journey, I asked Enkidu to describe the demon for me. Each
time he offered the same words. He spoke of the roaring, the mouth
like fire, the vast outpouring of storm-force. Well, I could not give
him the lie: there was no artifice in Enkidu, he had not the slightest
trace of the skills of deception. Plainly he had seen the demon, and
plainly the demon was no trifling foe. From time to time we all see
demons, for they are everywhere about, lurking behind the doors,
in the air, on the rooftops, under bushes; I had seen demons often
enough myself; but I had never seen one to match Huwawa. Still, ]
felt no fear. The very fear Enkidu had voiced only sharpened my
resolve to fetch cedars from Huwawa's forest.
    I chose fifty men to go with us, among them Bir-hurturre, but
not Zabardi-bunugga, for I told him that he must remain to com-
mand the army of the city while I was away. I had great adzes cast
for felling the trees, of a weight of three talents each, with handles
of willow and box-wood; and my artisans made for us swords wor-
thy of heroes, with blades of two talents' weight each, and golden
sheaths, and pommels on the hilts that only a big man's hand could
grasp. We gathered together our finest axes, our hunting-bows, our
spears. Even before the day of departure I heard the war-song hum-
ming in my ears, which I had not heard in too long a time, and I
felt like a boy again, I felt fresh blood coursing hot in my veins.
    Of course the elders were gloomy. They formed a delegation on
the quay and marched into town through the Gate of Seven Bolts,
chanting prayer~ in their dour long-faced way. The people gathered
around them in the Market-of-the-Land and began to chant and weep
too, and I saw there was going to be trouble; so I went to the
marketplace and presented myself before the elders. It was not hard
to predict what they would say: "You are still young, Gilgamesh,
your courage is greater than your wisdom, your heart leads you into
something rash. You take a road you have never traveled, and you
will be lost. You are strong, but you will never prevail against Hu-
wawa. He is a being of a monstrous kind; his roaring is like that of
the storm-flood, his mouth is fire itself, his breath is the breath of
death. "And so on and so forth. Which was exactly what they said.
I heard them out; and then I replied, smiling, that I would seek the
protection of the gods and that I was confident the gods would protect
me, as they always had in the past. "It is a road I have never traveled,
I admit," I said, "but I go without fear. I go with joyful heart."
    When they saw there was no changing my mind, they altered their
tune. Now they warned me simply not to be too sure of my own
strength. Let Enkidu go first, they said. Let him lead the way, let
him protect the king. To this advice I listened calmly, smiling still,
not entering into any dispute with them. They told me also to place
myself under the mercy of Utu of the sun, who is the god who
guards those in danger, and I swore to go that very day to the temple
of Utu and offer him two kids, a white one without blemish and a
brown one. I would beg the aid of Utu, and I would promise him
a glorious offering of praise and gifts if he granted me a safe return.
And on my journey to the Land of Cedars I would perform this rite
and that one, this observance and that, to insure myself against all
harm. I promised these things in all sincerity. I was not unaware,
after all, of the perils.
    When the elders were done plaguing me, it was the turn of the
priestess Inanna, who summoned me to the temple I had built for
her and said angrily, "What is this madness, Gilgamesh? Where are
you going?"
  "Are you my mother, to speak to me this way?"
    "Hardly. But you are king of Uruk, and if you die in this venture,
who will be king after you?"
      Shrugging, I said, "That is for the goddess to determine, is it not,
and not I. But have no fear, Inanna. I will not die on this journey."
  "And if you do?"
  "I will not die," I said again.
  "Is it so important to attempt this thing?"
  "We must have the cedar."
"Send your troops, then, and let them fight with the demons."
"Ah, and would you have me tell them that I am afraid of Hu-
wawa, and send them in my place, while I sit here comfortably at
home all the rest of my days? I will go, Inanna. That much is settled."
    She stared at me furiously. I felt, as I always did, the power of
 her beauty, which was in its fullest ripeness now; and I felt also the
 force of her love for me, which had raged within her like the fire of
 the heavens since we were children; and I felt, beyond that, the anger
 that she had for me because she was unable in any way to fulfill that
 love as women and men ordinarily do.
     I thought also of those times, one night a year, when she and I
 had come together in the bed of the goddess, when she had lain
 naked in my arms with her breasts heaving and her thighs parted
 and her fingers clawing the skin of my back, and I wondered whether
 I would live to embrace her that way again. For in my way I loved
 her also, though my love was always mixed with a certain mistrust
 and more than a little dread of her wiles. We were silent a time.
 Then she said, "I will make offerings for your safety. And go, get
 you to your mother the old queen, and ask her to do the same."
   "I mean to go to her next," I said.
    It was true. Enkidu and I crossed the city to the wise and great
Ninsun, and I knelt before her and told her that I was setting out on
an uncertain road, with a strange battle to fight. She sighed, and
asked why it was that the gods, having given her Gilgamesh for a
son, had endowed him with such a restless heart; but she made no
attempt to dissuade me from going. Instead she rose and cloaked
herself in her holy crimson robe, and donned her breastplate of gold
and her necklaces of lapis and carnelian, and put her tiara on her
head, and went to the altar of Utu on the roof of her dwelling. She
lit incense to him and spoke to the god for a time; and then she
returned to us, and turned to Enkidu, saying, "You are not the child
of my flesh, strong Enkidu, but I adopt you as my son. Before all
my priestesses and votaries I adopt you." She hung an amulet about
Enkidu's neck, and embraced him, and said to him, "I entrust him
to you. Guard him. Protect him. Bring him back safely. He is the
king, Enkidu. And he is my son."
    The praying and discussion were done with at last; and I led my
men forth out of Uruk the city, to the Land of Cedars.

SWIFTLY WE went up out of the warm lowlands, leaving behind
us the groves of date-palms and the golden breast of the desert, and
rose into the cool green high country to the east. We traveled in
forced marches from dawn to dusk, crossing seven mountains one
after the other without pausing, until at last the forests of cedar stood
before us, uncountable legions of trees ranging along the slopes of
the rough land ahead. It was strange for us seeing so many trees, the
Land having scarcely any. They made the jagged hills look almost
black. They seemed like a hostile army, waiting calmly for our onslaught.
    There was another great strangeness in those fanged ridges and
rocky gullies: the fires of the outcast gods and demons that rose out
of the stone here and there, and their thick black oily outpourings,
which came rolling down toward us like the sluggish snakes of the
nether world. For we were entering the land that is known as the
Rebel Lands, into which the gods who rose up against Enlil were
exiled. Here did the victorious warriors Enlil and Ninurta and Nin-
girsu cast their banished enemies in that great battle of gods long
ago; and here they still sulked, still rumbling and growling and
shaking the earth, still giving off their great blasts of smoke and fire
and letting their serpents of oil seep from the depths of the ground.
With each step we took we penetrated deeper into this dark realm,
knowing all the time that sinister deities with angry red eyes snorted
and puffed beneath our feet.
    Yet we allowed ourselves no fear. We paused at the proper times
and made the proper observances to Utu, to An, to Enlil, to Inanna.
When we camped at night we dug wells and let the holy Waters rise
to the surface as offerings. At the last, before sleep, I invoked Lu-
galbanda and took COUnsel with him, for he had been in these lands
himself, and had suffered greatly from the noxious fumes and blasts
of the rebel gods. His presence was a strong comfort within me.
Enkidu knew this country well. Like the wild creature he once
had been, he guided us through the
out fall. He took us around the places that had been burned and
blackened by the hot breath of dangerous spirits. He led us past the
regions where the land had slipped and broken and heaved Upward
and was impassable. He brought us past thick deep oily slicks that
lay like black lakes upon the breast of the earth. Nearer and nearer
did we draw to the inner forest itself, to the domain of the demon Huwawa.
Now we Were amidst the first outlying cedar trees. If we had come
only for Wood, I suppose we could have chopped down twenty or
sixty of the trees and returned happily with them to Uruk, claiming
triumph. But we had not come only for Wood.
   Enkidu said, "There is a great gate here, sealing off the sacred
groves within. We are very near it now."
"And Huwawa?" I asked.
"On the other side of the gate, not far."
I peered close at him. His voice Was Strong and steady, but yet I
was not entirely SUre of him. I had no desire to injure his Pride; but
after a moment I asked, "Is all well with you thus far, Enkidu?',
He smiled and said, "Do I look pale? Do you see me quaking with
fear, Gilgamesh?"                   
   "In Uruk I heard you speak with great respect of Huwawa. There
is no escaping him, you said. He is a monster you said. 
When he roared, you thought you would die of the fright of
it. You said those things."
  "I said those things in Uruk, perhaps. In cities
 men grow soft. Here I feel my strength returning. There is nothing
 to fear, my friend. Follow me: I know where Huwawa dwells, and
 the road he travels." And he put his hand to my arm and squeezed
 it, and locked his arm hard around mine.  
A day later we came to the wall of the forest, and to the great gate.


    I had wondered about that wall since Enkidu first told me of it.
The Land of Cedars lies in the unsettled borderland between the Land
and the country of the Elamites, and ownership of it has been in
dispute at least since the days of Meskiaggasher, the first king of
Uruk. Since it is a territory that cannot be farmed, we have never
tried to take formal possession of it, but whenever we found need
of cedar-wood we have freely entered into it and collected all that
we wanted. It was a serious business if someone was building walls
through the forest. It is one thing if Enlil chooses to post some dread
fire-demon here to guard the trees in his name: I have no say in what
Enlil does. But I would not tolerate the setting-up of walls here by
any black-bearded Elamitish mountain king who meant to try to
claim the whole forest for his dirty ragged tribesfolk.
    The moment I saw the wall I knew that Elamites and not Huwawa
or any other spirit had built it. It had the mark of men all over it,
and not very skillful men at that. Cedar logs, roughly squared and
indifferently bound with withes, were piled in a helter-skelter fashion
along a crudely slashed track that stretched off in both directions as
far as the eye could see: the pink heartwood of the trees was sadly
exposed, as if the timber had been flayed rather than planed. Anger
rose in me at the sight of this huge clumsy wall. I looked about at
my men and said, "Well, shall we knock the thing apart and go into the forest?"
  "You should see the gate first," said Enkidu.
    The gate lay half a league around to the south. Even before I
reached it I gasped in surprise. It rose high above the wall, more a
tower than a gate, and it was superb in every aspect. That gate would
have been no disgrace to the walls of Uruk. It too was of cedar,
trimmed and cut by a master's hand, and framed and joined with
high skill. Its pivot and rod were wondrously smooth and its great
jamb was superbly fitted.
    "A gate of the gods!" Bir-hurturre cried. "A gate put up by Enlil himself!"
    "A gate that no Elamite could have built, at any rate," I said, going
close to inspect it.
    Indeed it was perfection. Not only was it flawlessly built, it was
magnificently adorned: carved upon the finely seasoned wood of its
face were monsters and serpents and gods and goddesses, in Elamitish
designs that I remembered having seen on the shields of the warriors
 I slew in my campaigns for Agga of Kish. Mounted high at the top
 of the gate were three huge horns set close together, much like the
 massive horns that the Elamites carve and place on the facades of
 their temples. And down the sides of the wall were inscriptions in
 the barbaric Elamitish script, which is awkwardly patterned after our
 own: pictures of beasts, vases, jugs, stars, mountains, and many other
 things, tumbling together in some sort of declaration indecipherable
 to me. The carvings were nicely done, but it seemed a foolish way
 to write, this silly making of pictures.
     Then I saw something that angered me, low down on the left
 hand side of the gate. It was an inscription in the wedge-shaped
 characters of the Land, clear and unmistakable, saying, Utuøragaba
 the great craftsman of Nippur built this gate Jbr Zinuba king of kings, king
 of Hatamti.
     "Ah, the traitor!" I exclaimed. "Better that he had stayed in Nippur
 than to come here and render such excellent service to an Elamite
 lord." And I lifted my axe to smash the face of the gate.
     But Enkidu caught my arm and stayed me. I looked about at him,  frowning.
  "What is it?"
  His eyes were aglow. "The gate is very beautiful, Gilgamesh."
     "So it is. But see, here, this writing? A man of my own nation
 constructed it for our enemies."
    "That may be," said Enkidu indifferently. "All the same, beauty
is beauty, and ought not to be desecrated. Beauty comes from the
gods, does it not? I think you should not shatter the gate. Step aside,
brother, and let me force it instead. What does it matter if a traitor
built it, so long as his work was righteously accomplished? The gods
clearly guided his' hand. Do you not see that?"
    It amazed me to hear him reason in this fashion; but I saw the
wisdom in his words, which humbled me, and I yielded to him. I
wish now that I had not. Enkidu stepped boldly forward and pushed
the edge'~of his axe against the bolt, and thrust at the gate with all
his strength, so that cords and sinews stood out all over his body.
He grunted mightily under the strain and the gate swung open before
him; but in that moment he cried out in a strange choking way and
dropped his axe, and slapped his left hand to his right arm, which
suddenly was dangling down as limp as a length of rope. He fell to
his knees, moaning, desperately rubbing his arm.
    I knelt beside him. "What is it, friend? What has happened to you?"
    In a thick voice he muttered, "There must have been a demon in
the gate. Look, I have hurt my arm! All strength is gone from my
hand! It is torn within, Gilgamesh. It is ruined, it is useless. Come,
see for yourself." And indeed his hand was fearfully cold to the touch,
and swung like a dead thing, and the skin looked strangely blotched
and mottled. He was trembling as if some ague had come into him.
I heard the chattering of his teeth.
  "Wine!" I called. "Bring wine for Enkidu!"
    The wine warmed him, and his shivering ceased; but his hand
remained lame, though we heated it and rubbed it for hours. Indeed
he did not begin to recover the use of it for many days, nor was it
ever fully the same again. That was a sad thing, that such a hero as
Enkidu should lose a part of his strength, especially when it had been
for the sake of preserving something of beauty. What was worse,
the fear of Huwawa returned to him when he injured himself, for
he was convinced that the demon had put a curse on the gate; now
he drew back, unwilling to pass through the gate that he himself had
opened for us.
    It grieved me that he felt fear again, and that our comrades should
see him in such a state. But he would not go through the gate, and
I could hardly leave him behind. So we made camp in that place and
stayed there some time, until he ceased to writhe in anguish and said
he felt the power of his hand returning. Even then he was reluctant
to go forward. He sat in dismal bleak silence, lost in brooding. Fear
was upon him like a dreadful bird of night that clung with terrible
talons to his shoulder. I went to him and said, "Come, dear friend,
it is time to move on."
  He shook his head. "Go without me, Gilgamesh!"
    Sharply I said, "It makes me ache to hear you speak like a weakling.
Have we traveled so far, and come through so many dangers, only
to turn back at the gate?"
  Just as sharply he replied, "When did I ask you to turn back?'
  "No, you never did."
  "Then go on without me!"
  "That I will not do. Nor am I willing to go back empty-handed
   to Uruk."
       "If that is so, you leave me no choice. Must I come with you,
   then? Am I to be swept along by whatever you wish?"
       "I would not force you," I said in no little distress. "But we are
   brothers, Enkidu. We should face all perils side by side."
       He gave me a bitterjaundiced look. "We should, should we? And
   if I am unwilling?"
    I stared. "This is not like you."
      "No," he said gloomily, with a sigh. "This is not like me. But
  what can I do? What can we do? When I hurt my hand a great terror
  entered me, Gilgamesh. I am afraid. Do you understand that word?
  I am aj3aid, Gfigamesh! There was a look in his eyes I had never
  seen there before: terror, shame, self-reproach, anger, fifty somber
  things gleaming there at once. His face was glossy with sweat. He
  looked around as if fearing that the others had overheard us. In a
  low anguished voice he said, "What can we do?"
      I shook my head. "There is a way. Here: stand close by me, take
  hold of my robe. My strength will go into you. Your weakness will
  pass. The trembling will leave your hand. And then let us go down
  into the forest together. Will you do that?"
     He hesitated. Then he said, "Do you think I am a coward, Gilgamesh?"
   "No. You are no coward, Enkidu."
   "You called me a weakling."
     "I said it pained me to hear you speak like a weakling. It is because
 you are not a weakling that it pained me. Do you understand that,  brother?"
  "I understand."
  "Come, then. Let me heal you."
  "Can you do that?"
  "I think I can."
  "Do it, then."
  He came to me and stood close; he reached for my robe and held
it a moment; then I embraced him so tightly that my arms quivered.
After a moment he grasped me with equal strength. We did not
speak, but I could feel his fear leaving him. I could feel his courage
returning. He seemed to be becoming Enkidu again, and I knew that
he would journey onward with me into the forest.
    "Go," I said. "Make yourself ready. Huwawa awaits us. The heat
of combat will warm your blood and strengthen your resolve. I think
there is no demon that can harm us, if we stand side by side. But if
we fall in the struggle, why, we will leave a name that will last forever."
    He listened without replying. After a time he nodded and rose
and touched his hand to mine, and trampled out our campfire, and
went off to oil his weapons. In the morning we passed through the
gate and into the forest of cedars, not in any foolhardy way, but
with boldness and determination.
    It was an awesome place. It was almost like a temple: I felt the
presence of gods all about me, though I did not know which gods
they were. The cedars were the loftiest trees I had ever seen, rising
like spears into the heavens, with clear open space between them;
but so dense were their crowns that the sunlight could scarcely pen-
etrate the cover they made. It was a green and silent world, cool,
full of delight. Ahead of us lay a single mountain, beyond doubt an
abode of the gods, a fitting throne for the highest of them. But also
about us lay the presence of Huwawa: we felt him, and we saw the
traces of him, for there were certain zones of the forest where the
underground gases and fires had broken through, and that was the
mark of the demon.
    Yet there was no immediate sign of him. We went deeper, until
darkness halted us. As the sun began to descend I dug a well and
made the water-offering, and scattered three handfuls of fine meal
before the mountain, and asked the gods of the mountain to send
me a favorable dream. Then I lay down beside Enkidu and entrusted
myself to sleep.
    In the middle hour of the night I woke suddenly, and sat bolt
upright, utterly awake. By the smouldering light of our fire I saw
Enkidu's gleaming eyes.
  "What troubles you, brother?"
  "Was it you that awakened me?"
  "Not I," he said. "You must have had a dream."
  "A dream, yes. Yes."
  "Tell me."
    I looked inward and saw the mists lying heavy on my mind, like
thick white fleece; but behind them I caught sight of my dream, or
of some part of it. We were crossing a deep gorge of the cedar
mountain, Enkidu and I, in that dream; against the great bulk of the
mountain we seemed no larger than the little black flies that buzz
among the swamp-reeds; and then the mountain heaved like a ship
tossed on the bosom of the sea and began to fall. That was all I could
remember. I told the dream to Enkidu, hoping he would be able to
read it for me; but he shrugged and said it was an unfinished vision,
and urged me to return to it. I doubted I would sleep again that
night, but I was wrong, for as soon as I closed my eyes I was dreaming
once more. And it was the same dream: the mountain was toppling
upon me. A rumbling rockslide swept my feet from under me, and
a terrible light glared and blazed intolerably. But then a man ap-
peared, or a god, I think, of such grace and beauty as is not found
in this world. He pulled me out from under the mountain and gave
me water to drink, and my heart took comfort; he raised me and set
my feet on the ground.
    I woke Enkidu and told him my second dream. He said at once,
"It is a favorable dream, it is an excellent dream. The mountain you
saw, my friend, is Huwawa. Even if he falls on us, we will defeat
him, do you see? The gods stand by you: tomorrow we will seize
him. We will kill him. We will cast his body on the plain."  "You sound very certain of that."
"I am certain," he said. "Now sleep again, brother. Sleep."
Once more we slept. This time the cedar mountain devised a dream
for Enkidu, and not a cheering one: cold rain-showers fell upon him,
and he huddled and shivered like the mountain barley in a winter
storm. I heard him cry out, and awakened, and he told me his dream.
We did not search for its meaning. There are times when it is best
not to probe a dream too deeply. One more time in that dream-
thronged night ,I let my chin rest upon my knees and gave myself
up to sleep; and yet again I dreamed, and again I woke amazed from
it, startled, trembling.
  "Another?" Enkidu asked.
      "Look how I shake!" I whispered. "What awakened me? Did some
god pass by? Why is my flesh so numb?"  "Tell me, did you dream again?"
  "Yes. I dreamed a third dream, more frightful even than the others."
"Tell it."
  "What did we eat, that gave us such dreams tonight?"
  "Until you tell it, it will burden your soul."
    "Yes. Yes," I said. But still I held back from it, though its hor-
rendous images still blazed in my mind. He was right: one must tell
dreams, one must bring them into the light, or they will bore your
soul like maggots. After a moment I took a deep breath and said,
speaking in a slow halting way, "This is what it was. The day was
calm, the air was still. And then suddenly the heavens shrieked, the
earth cried out in booming roars. Daylight failed; darkness came.
Lightning flashed, and fires blazed on the horizon. The clouds grew
heavy and death came raining down from them. Then the brightness
vanished. The fire went out, and everything about us was turned to ashes."
    Enkidu shivered. "I think we should not sleep again tonight," he said.
  "But the dream? What of the dream?"
  "Come, rise, walk with me, brother. Forget the dream."
  "Forget it? How?"
  "It is only a dream, Gilgamesh."
    I looked at him, puzzled. Then I smiled. "When the omens are
favorable, you say the dream is excellent. When the omens are grim,
you say it is only a dream. Do you not see--"
    "I see that the morning is near," he said. "Come, walk with me
in the forest. We have heavy work to do at dawn."
    Yes, I thought. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps the dream did not
bear close inspection. The morning would bring great challenges:
we needed all our courage about us.
    By first light I roused my men. We donned our breastplates and
swords and grasped our axes, and set out down the slope into the
valley that lay before the cedar-covered mountain. This was the place,
said Enkidu, where he had encountered Huwawa that other time he
had been here. The demon had risen up without warning from the
ground, he said: he had been lucky to escape.
    "Today," I said, "it will be Huwawa who is lucky to escape. And
when we have done with him, we will see to these Elamites who
build walls around a forest, eh, brother?" And I laughed. It felt good
to be going to war. No matter that our enemy was a demon. No
matter that my last dream and Enkidu's had been full of dark omens.
There is a joy in going to war: there is poetry in it, there is music.
It is what we were meant to do on this world, those of us who are
warriors. You will not understand this, you who sit at home in cities
and grow fat. But true warfare is not mere mindless destruction: it
is the setting to rights of those things which must be set to rights,
and that is a holy task.
    As we went forward I felt a rumbling in the earth, distant but
unmistakable. It seemed perhaps as though one of the horn-crowned
gods might be stirring and walking to and fro down there. That
gave me some pause. I will do battle against demons with a glad
heart, but what hope is there in contending against the gods? I prayed
to Lugalbanda that I was mistaken, that the far-off underground
thundering that I felt did not portend the anger of Enlil. Let it merely
be Huwawa awakening, I prayed. Let it be just the demon, and not
the god.
    Behind me I heard my men murmuring uneasily. "What is this
demon like?" asked one, and another said, "Dragon's fangs, lion's
face," and another said, "He roars like the whirlwind," and yet an-
other said, "Feet with claws, eyes of death." I looked back at them
and laughed out loud and cried, "Yes, go on, frighten yourselves!
Make him really awesome! Three heads, ten arms!" And I cupped
my hand to my lips and called into the mist-shrouded forest, "Hu-
wawa! Come! Come, Huwawa!"
  The earth trembled again, more vehemently.
    I rushed onward, Enkidu beside me and the others keeping close
pace just behind. There was a single great cedar that stood like a
mast before us, higher than all the others, and I thought, this is the
way to summon Huwawa. So I unslung my axe and set to work at
it with all my might, and Enkidu worked on its other side, cutting
the lesser notch to guide it in its falling. I felt a great heat entering
the air, which was strange, this still being the coolest part of the
morning. A third time there were tremors beneath my feet. Some-
thing was awakening, no question of it, something vast and fierce,
hot and furious. In the distance I saw the treetops swaying. I heard
the tearing and crackling of branches. With stroke upon stroke we
cut away at that great cedar, until it was on the verge of toppling.
  Then to my horror I became aware of the droning and buzzing
that told me the god-presence was surging within me. My fit was
coming upon me as surely as though I had drummed it into wake-
fulness. Not now, I begged desperately. Not now! But it would have
been easier to hold back the eight winds. The veins of my neck
swelled up and beat with a hard pulsation. My eyeballs throbbed as
if they meant to leap from their sockets. My hands tingled. Each
stroke of the axe against the wood sent fire through my veins.
    "Chop, brother, chop!" Enkidu called from the far side of the
cedar. He did not understand what was happening to me. "We have
it, now. Another four strokes--three--"
    I felt ecstasy and terror both at once. The air about me was blue
and sizzling. A river of black water was rising from the earth. A
golden aura surrounded everything I could see. The god was seizing
my mind.
    The earth shook and bucked and heaved wildly. I called out to
Lugalbanda three times.
    Then I heard Enkidu's voice roaring above all the confusion: "Hu-
wawa! Huwawa! Huwawa!"
    The demon came, but I did not see him just then. The blackness
overtook me; the god swallowed me up.

WHEN NEXT I perceived anything that made sense to me I found
myself lying on the ground with my head in Enkidu's lap. He was
rubbing my forehead and shoulders, which was most soothing. I
ached everywhere, but most especially in my face and neck. The
great cedar was down; indeed, most of the trees around us were
toppled or partly toppled, as if half the forest had been thrown over
in the earthquake. Dark fissures furrowed the ground in a dozen
places. Directly in front of us the earth had split wide open and a
horrendous column of smoke, black with fiery streaks in it, was
belching forth straight up to the sky, making a noise like that of the
bellowing of the Bull of Heaven upon the last day of the world.
    "What is that thing?" I said to Enkidu, pointing at the roaring
column of smoke.
  "It is Huwawa," he said.
  "That? Is Huwawa nothing but smoke and flame?"
  "That is the form he has taken today."
  "Did he have another form, that time you were here?"
    "He is a demon," said Enkidu with a shrug. "Demons take what-
ever appearance they please. He is afraid to strike, for he feels the
god in you. He hovers there, pouring himself forth. This is the
moment to slay him."
  "Help me to my feet."
    He lifted me as though I were a child, and set me aright. I felt
dizzy, and swayed, but he steadied me, and then the dizziness passed.
I planted my feet on the ground. The e~frth beneath me was thrum-
ming from the force of the outrush of Huwawa from his subterranean
lair, but otherwise it was firm again. Whatever had stirred down
there before the quake, whether it had been horned Enlil or only his
minion Huwawa, was no longer troubling the pillars and foundations
that uphold the world.
  I stepped forward and looked upon Huwawa.
    It was difficult to get close. The air in the vicinity of that smoky
column was foul and oily, and lay upon my lungs like something
slimy. My head pounded, and not only from the aftermath of my
fit. I bethought me of the time of which they tell when Lugalbanda,
traveling in these eastern parts, was overcome by a smoke-demon
much like this on the slopes of Mount Hurum, and was left for dead
by his comrades. "We must be careful," I told the others, "to keep
the demon-stuff from entering into our nostrils." We cut apart the
hems of our robes and wrapped them over our faces, and took care
to breathe the smallest of breaths while we peered into that noxious
smoke.
    The crevice that had opened in the earth to release Huwawa was
not large: I could span the width of it between my two hands. Out
of it, though, the demon came boiling upward with enormous force.
I looked, trying to see the face and eyes, but I saw nothing but
smoke. I cried out, "I conjure you, Huwawa, show yourself as you
are!" But still I saw nothing but smoke.
  Enkidu said, "How can we slay him, if he is only smoke?"
  "By drowning him," I replied. "And by smothering him."
    I pointed toward the side, where the earthquake had set free some
underground spring. A little rivulet now was running toward the
bottom of the valley: the water was warm, from the breath of the
god beneath the earth, I suppose, and steam was rising from it. We
drew ourselves together and formed a plan. I put thirty of my men
to work digging a channel to guide the stream sideways toward the
mouth through which Huwawa raged into the air; and I assigned
the others the task of trimming the trunk of the great cedar, cutting
a length about twice the length of a man from it and giving it the
form of a pointed stake. We worked swiftly, lest the demon take on
its solid form and attack us; but the god-presence in me still seemed
to hold it at bay. To be certain of safety I set three men at work
chanting and making signs without pause.
    When we were ready I called out, "Huwawa? Do you hear my
voice, demon? It is Gilgamesh king of Uruk who slays you now!"
     I looked to Enkidu, and for an instant, I tell you in truth, I felt fear
     and doubt. It is no little thing to slay a demon who is in the service
     of Enlil. Also I wondered after all whether there was need to slay
     him--whether it might not be sufficient only to seal his hole and
     leave him bound in there. I tell you my heart was moved with
     compassion for the demon. Does that sound strange? But it is what I felt.
        Enkidu, who knew my soul as he did his own, saw me waver.
    He said to me, "Hurry, now, Gilgamesh! This is no moment for
    hesitating. The demon must die, brother, if you have any hope of
    leaving this place. There is no arguing it. Spare him and you will
    never make it back to your own city and to the mother who bore
    you. He will block the mountain road against you. He will make
    the pathways impassable."
    I saw the wisdom of that. I raised my hand and gave the signal.
    In that moment my men chopped an opening in the earthen dam
    that they had built across the rivulet, and let its waters pour forth
    into the new channel that ran toward Huwawa's blowhole. I watched
    the cascade of steaming water flow swiftly to its home: and when it
    reached the crevice and tumbled in, there arose such a wailing and
   howling from the depths that I could scarcely believe it. A white jet
   of hot cloud rose up in the heart of the black cloud, and I heard
   thunder and roaring. The ground trembled as though it would begin
   to heave and upsurge all over again. But it held fast. The crevice
   drank the stream, and the stream poured onward, giving it all it
   could drink. The red sparks dimmed within the black column; the
   foul smoke wavered and came in choked spurts.     "Now," I said, and we raised the cedar stake.
       I bore the brunt of the weight, though Enkidu with his one good
   hand offered more force than any other man could have provided
   whole and healthy, and seven or eight of my other men ran alongside
   us, giving support. We carried that tremendous stake at a dead trot
   until we were poised over the smoking hole, as close to it as we
     could manage, with our eyes running tears and our faces red from
  holding our breaths; and then we rose up on the tips of our feet and
   we thrust the stake forward and downward and rammed it into the opening.

    We leaped back, thinking the earth might erupt. But no: the demon
was weakened or drowned by the water, and he could not force the
wooden plug. I saw some coiling strands of smoke break from the
earth a little distance away; but then they were gone, and we heard
nothing more.
    All was deathly still. The blaze and the glory that had been Hu-
wawa was quenched. There was no smoke, there was no fire, only
the afterstench that stained the air and assailed our nostrils, and even
that was quickly beginning to dissipate in the cool sweet cedar forest.
I think they will say of Enkidu and me, when the tellings and re-
tellings of the story begin to change it as these stories always are
changed with time, that we rushed upon Huwawa and cut off his
head; for the harpers of the days to come will not understand how
we could slay a demon with nothing more than a dammed stream
and a sharpened stake. So be it; but that was what we did, whatever
they may tell you when I am not here to testify to the truth.
  "He is dead," I said. "Come, let us purify the site, and get ourselves onward."
     We cut cedar boughs and laid them over the demon's tomb, and
 made the offerings, and said the words. Afterward we chose fifty
 fine cedar logs to bring back with us to Uruk, and we stripped them
 and loaded them; and when we were done with that, we returned
 to the wall that the Elamites had built and scattered it apart as though
 it had been made of straws, though for beauty's sake we left intact
 the splendorous gate that the traitor Utu-ragaba had fashioned for
 the mountain king.
     When we were taking our leave of the place, a hundred Elamitish
 warriors came upon us, and asked us in the name of their king why
 we were trespassing here. To which I replied that we were not
 trespassing at all, but merely coming to gather a little wood for our
 temple, which had required us to slay the demon of the place. They
 found this insolent of me. "Who are you, man?" their leader demanded.
   "Who am I?" I asked of Enkidu. "Tell him."
     "Why, you are Gilgamegh king of Uruk, greatest of heroes, the
 wild bull who plunders the mountains as he pleases: Gilgamesh the
 king, Gilgamesh the god. And I am Enkidu your brother." He clapped
 his belly and laughed and said to the Elamite, "Do you know the
 name of Gilgamesh, fellow?" But the Elamites were already in flight.
We followed after them and slew about half, and let the others go,
so that they could bring word back to their king that it was unwise
to build walls about the forest of cedars. I think he came to see the
wisdom of that, for I heard no more of such walls, nor of Huwawa
the dreadful, and in years afterward we had all the cedar we required
from that forest without hindrance.

IT WAS a triumphant time. We marched into Uruk as joyous as
though we had conquered six kingdoms. There was a kind of mad-
ness in our pride, I think, but I think it was a pardonable pride. One
does not kill a demon every day, after all.
    So we celebrated our exploits in the Land of Cedars and our safe
return with feasting and laughter. But there was a touch of discord
at the outset of that night of glorious revelry, and there was another
before it ended.
    As we approached the city walls in late afternoon with our booty
the Royal Gate swung open, and through it rode a welcoming party
of many chariots, led by Zabardi-bunugga. Trumpets sounded, ban-
ners waved; I heard my name shouted over and over. We halted and
waited. Zabardi-bunugga, riding up to me, hailed me with upraised
hands and presented me with the bundle of barley-sheaves that is the
customary salute to a returning king. He made his thanksgiving
offering for my safety, and then together we poured out a libation
to the divine ones. Good loyal flat-faced Zabardi-bunugga: what a
worthy prince!
    When these ceremonies were done we embraced in a less formal
way. He nodded graciously also to Enkidu, and smiled his greetings
to Bir-hurturre. If there was any envy about Zabardi-bunugga be-
cause he had not taken part in our grand adventure, I did not see it.
I told him how the journey had gone; but he already knew that, for
runners had gone ahead bearing news of our victory. Then I asked
how things had fared in Uruk during my absence, and a shadow
 passed across his eyes, and he looked away as he said, "The city
 prospers, O Gilgamesh."
     It was not hard to perceive the uneasiness about him, the hesitation,
 the discomfort. I said, "Does it, in all truth?"
 In a restless way he replied, "May I ride with you into the city?"
 I beckoned him into my chariot. He glanced toward Enkidu, who
 rode beside me; but I shrugged as though to say, whatever you have
 to say to me, it is fitting that my brother hear it as well. Which
 Zabardi-bunugga understood without my needing to say it. Lightly
 he stepped up into the chariot, and Enkidu gave the signal for the
 procession to continue through the city's great gate.
  "Well?" I said. "There is trouble, is there? Tell me."
      In a low voice Zabardi-bunugga said, "The goddess stirs. I think
 there is danger, Gilgamesh."  "How so?"
    "She broods. She frets. She feels that you have cast her into eclipse,
that you overreach yourself. She says that you ignore her, that you
fail to consult her, that you go your own way as though this is not
at all the city oflnanna, but has become only the city of Gilgamesh."
  "I am king," I said. "I bear the burden."
    "She would remind you, I think, that you are king by grace of
the goddess."
    "So I am, and I never forget it. But she must remember that she
is not the goddess, but only the goddess' voice." Then I laughed.
"Do you think I speak blasphemy, Zabardi-bunugga? No. No. It is
the truth: we must all remember it. The goddess speaks through her;
but she is only a priestess. And I bear the burden of the city each
day." As we came near the gate of the city I said, "What evidence
do you have of this wrath of hers?"
    "I have it from my father, who says she visited him in the temple
of An to consult ancient tablets, writings from the time of Enmerkar,
the annals of your grandfather's reign, the record of his dealings with
the priestess of his time. She has been to the archives of the priests
of Enlil also. And several times she summoned the assembly of elders
to meet with her while you were away."
  Lightly I said, "Perhaps she is writing a book of history, eh?"
  "I think not, Gilgamesh. She seeks ways of bringing you in check:

she looks for precedent, she searches for trustworthy strategies."
  "Do you merely suspect this or do you know?"
    "It is certain knowledge. She has been speaking out, and many
have heard her. Your journey angered her. She said so to your mother,
to my father Gungunum, to some of the assembly of elders, even
to her acolytes: she made no secret of her fury. She says it was
presumptuous of you to undertake the venture without first seeking
her blessing."
    "Ah, was it? But we needed the cedar. The Elamites had built a
wall in the forest. It was not only a sacred quest, Zabardi-bunugga:
it was a war. Decisions concerning warfare lie in the province of the king."
  "She sees it otherwise, I think."
  "I will educate her, then."
  "Be wary. She is a troublesome woman."
    I laid my hand upon his wrist and smiled. "You tell me nothing
new, old friend, when you tell me that. But I will be on my guard.
And you have my thanks."
    We rode through the gate. I turned from him and lifted my shield
high, so that it caught the last glow of the waning day and sent lances
of golden light into the crowd that lined the grand processional
highway. Half the city had turned out to welcome me. "Gilgamesh!"
they cried, till their voices were hoarse. "Gilgamesh! Gi!gamesh!"
And they used the word that means divine, which is not used ordi-
narily of a king while he still lives. "Gilgamesh the god! Gilgamesh
the god!" I felt abashed; but only a little, for it would have been folly
to deny the godhood within me.
    Zabardi-bunugga's warnings had darkened my homecoming
somewhat. But I had not been greatly surprised to hear them: Inanna
had been quiescent too long, and I had for some while been expecting
difficulties from her. Well, we would see; but I chose not to brood
on these matters just now. It was the night of my homecoming; it
was the night of my triumph.
    At the palace I oiled and polished my weapons and put them in
their storehouse, and said the laying-to-rest prayers over them. Then
I went to the palace baths and opened my braid so that my hair
streamed down my back, and the handmaidens rinsed the grime of
the journey from it. Afterward I chose to leave my hair loose and
long. I wrapped a fine fringed cloak about me and fastened a scarlet
sash at my middle and even put on my royal tiara, which I did not
wear often. When all that was done I called my fifty heroes about
me, and Enkidu, and we gathered in the great hall of the palace for
a feast of roasted calves and lambs, and cakes of flour mixed with
honey, and beer both of the strong and the mild kinds, and royal
palm-wine, the thickest and the richest in the Land. We even drank
the wine made of grapes, which we bring in from the territories in
the north, dark purple stuff that makes the soul soar upward. We
sang and told tales of the warriors of old, and we stripped and
wrestled by firelight, and we enjoyed the maidens of the palace until
we felt sated; and then we bathed and dressed ourselves in our finery
again and paraded out into the town, playing on fifes and trumpets
and clapping our hands as we strutted about. Ah, it was a fine time,
a splendid time! I will never know another like it.
    In the silver-gray hours of the dawn slumbering heroes lay sprawled
in heaps all about the palace, snoring forth their wine. I felt no need
of sleep; and so I went to bathe at the palace fountain. Enkidu was
with me. His robes reeked of drink and the juice of meat, and I
suppose mine must have been no better. Bits of straw and charred
twigs from the fire were in our beards and hair. But the cool fresh
water refreshed and cleansed us as though it were a font of the gods.
As I emerged I looked about me for a slave to bring us clean robes,
and I caught sight of a slender figure at the far side of the courtyard,
a woman, wearing an ashen-hued robe of some thin shimmering
fabric, and a shawl pulled up around her face so that her features
could not be seen. She appeared to be heading in my direction.
  "You, there!" I called. "Come here and do us a service, will you?"
    She turned to me and lowered the shawl, and I saw her face. But
I did not believe what I saw.
  "Gilgamesh?" she said softly.
    My breath went from me in astonishment. This could only be
some apparition. "A demon!" I whispered. "Look, Enkidu, she wears
Inanna's face! It must be Lilitu come to haunt us, or is it the ghost
Utukku?" Fear and awe struck me like the clangor of a brazen bell,
and I shuddered, and groped in my discarded clothes for the little
amulet of the goddess that the young priestess Inanna had given me
so long ago.

  In the same soft voice she said, "Have no fear, Gilgamesh. I am
Inanna."
    "Here? In the palace? The priestess never leaves the temple to see
the king: she calls the king to wait on her in her own domain."
    "This night it is I who comes to you," she said. She was close
beside me, now, and it seemed to me she was telling the truth: if
this was some demon, it had more skill at mimicry than any demon
I knew. And what demon, anyway, would dare to put on the guise
of the goddess within the walls of the goddess' own city? Yet I could
not understand the presence of Inanna in the palace precinct. It was
not right. It was not done. My loins grew cold and there was a chill
at the back of my neck, and I picked up my robe and draped it about
me, soiled and sweaty though it was. Enkidu was staring at her as
though she were some ravening beast of the fields, all fangs and
teeth, making ready to spring.
  I said hoarsely, "What do you want with me?"
  "Some words. Only some words."
  My throat was dry, my lips were cracking. "Speak, then!"
  "What I have to say, I would rather say in privacy."
    I glanced at Enkidu, who was scowling now. It displeased me to
send him away; but I knew Inanna well enough to realize she would
not be moved on this point. Sadly I said, "I ask you to leave us, friend."
  "Must I go?"
    "This time you must," I said, and slowly he went from the court-
yard, looking back several times, as if he feared the priestess would
pounce on me the moment he was gone.
    She said then, "I saw you from the temple portico, when you
paraded through the town this evening with your heroes. You have
never looked more beautiful, Gilgamesh. You were as radiant as a
god."
    "The joy of my victory put that glow upon me. We slew the
demon; we obtained the wood; we cast down the wall the Elamites
had raised."
    "So I have heard. It was a wondrous victory. You are a hero
beyond compare: they will sing of you in ages yet to come."
    I stared into her eyes. At this hour, by this pale gray dawn-light,
they seemed a color I had never seen before, darker even than black.

I studied the flawless arches of her eyebrows; I made scrutiny of her
fine straight nose and the fullness of her lips. There was heat coming
from her, but it was a cold heat. I could not tell whether she stood
before me as goddess or as woman; the two seemed mixed in her
even more than usual. I thought of the warnings I had had from
Zabardi-bunugga, and I knew from what he had said that she was
my enemy; but she did not appear to be an enemy at this moment.
  "Why are you here, Inanna?"
    "I could not help myself. When I saw you in the evening I said,
I will go to him when his feast is done, I will come to him before
the dawn comes, I will offer myself."
  "Offer yourself?. What are you saying?"
      Her eyes were shining strangely, like silvery suns rising at mid-
night. "Marry me, Gilgamesh. Be my husband."  I was altogether dumbfounded at that.
    In a halting way I said, "But it is not the proper season, Inanna!
The new year festival is still some months away, and--"
    "I am not speaking now of the Sacred Marriage," she said crisply.
"I speak of the marriage between man and wife, who live under the
same roof, and bring forth children, and grow old together in the
manner of husbands and wives."
    Had she spoken in the language of the people of the moon I could
not have been more bewildered.
    "But such a thing is impossible," I said, when I found the use of
my tongue again. "The king--the priestess--never since the found-
ing of the city--never in all the time of the Land--"
    "I have spoken with the goddess. She gives consent. It can be
done. I know that it is new and strange. But it can be done." She
took a step toward me, and put her hands to my hands. "Hear me,
Gilgamesh. Be lily husband, give me the gift of the seed of your
body, not one night out of the year but every night. Be my husband
and I will be your wife. Listen, I will bring splendid gifts to you: I
will harness for you a chariot of lapis lazuli and gold, with wheels
of gold, and brazen horns. You will have storm-demons to draw it
for you, in place of mules. Our dwelling will be fragrant of cedars,
and when you enter it, the threshold and dais will kiss your feet."
  "Inanna--"
  There was no halting her. As though chanting in a trance she went
 on: "Kings and lords and princes will bow down before you! All the
yield of mountains and plains will they bring you as tribute! Your
goats will bear triplets, your sheep will drop twins! The ass that
carries burdens for you will outrun the swiftest of mules; your char-
iots will prevail in every race; your oxen will be without rivals, if
only you let me bring my blessings upon you, Gilgamesh!"  "The people would not allow it," I said numbly.
    "The people! The people!" Her face became harsh and dark; her
eyes turned cold. "The people could not prevent us!" Her grip on
my hand grew tighter: I imagined I could feel my bones moving
about. In a low strange tone she said, "The gods are angered with
you, Gilgamesh, for the killing of Huwawa. Do you know that?
They mean to take revenge on you."  "It is not so, Inanna."
    "Ah, do you walk with the gods as I walk with the gods? I tell
you, Enlil grieves for the guardian of his forest. They will have a
blood-price from you for the death. They will make you grieve as
Enlil grieves. But I can shield you from that. I can intercede. Give
yourself to me, Gilgamesh! Take me as your wife! I am your only
hope of peace."
    Her words fell upon me like an icy torrent that knew no mercy.
I wanted to run from her; I wanted to bury my head in some soft
dark place and sleep. All this was madness. Marry her? There was
no way that could be. I thought for a wild moment of what it would
be like to share her bed night after night, to feel the fire of her breath
against my cheek, to taste the sweetness of her mouth. Yes, of course,
what man would refuse such joys? But marriage? To the priestess,
to the goddess? She could not marry; I could not marry her. Even
if the city would permit it--and the city would not, the city would
rise up instantly against us and give our corpses to the wolves--I
could not bear it. To go humbly to the temple with my wedding
gifts, kneeling before my own wife because she was also the goddess,
the Queen of Heaven--no, no, it would be my ruin. I am the king.
The king must not kneel. I shook my head as though to sweep away
a gathering fog that grew thick in my spirit. I began to understand
the truth. Her scheme became clear to me: a compound of greed and
lust and envy. Her aim was to ensnare me in her trap, and bring me
down. If she could not break the power of the king any other way,
 she would break him through marriage. Because she was a goddess
 she would make me kneel for her as no man, certainly no king, ever
 kneels to his wife. The people would laugh at me in the streets. The
 dogs themselves would howl at my heels. But I would not let her
 make me subservient to her. I would not let her buy me into this
 slavery with her body. And all her talk of the anger of gods, which
 she alone could avert from me--no, that must be some silly lie meant
 to frighten me. I would not let myself be threatened, either.
    As these things became clear to me, a hot rage rose in me like fire
on a summer mountain. Perhaps it was from having been awake all
the night, perhaps it was the wine, perhaps it was some dark floating
demon of the dawn air that entered into my spirit; or maybe it was
simply that I was full of the overweening pride that came of my
victory over Huwawa; but I grew intemperately fierce. I pulled my
hand free of hers and loomed high above her and cried, "You are
my only hope, you say? What hope do you offer me, except the
hope of pain and humiliation? What could I expect, if I were so
foolish as to take you in marriage? You bring only peril and torment."
The angry words poured from me. I would not and could not halt.
"What are you? A brazier that goes out in the cold. A back door
which keeps out neither wind nor rain. A leaky waterskin that wets
its bearer. A sandal that trips its wearer?"
    She gaped at me, amazed, as I had been amazed when she had
come to me with this talk of marriage.
    I went on and on. "What are you? A shoe that pinches its owner's
foot. A stone that falls from a parapet. Pitch that defiles the hand, a
palace that collapses on its inhabitants, a turban that does not cover
the head. Marry you? Marry you? Ah, Inanna, Inanna, what folly,
what madness!"
  "Gilgamesh--"
    "Where is there any hope for a man who falls into Inanna's snare?
The gardener Ishullanu--I know that story. He came to you with
baskets of dates, and you looked at him and smiled your smile, and
said, 'Ishullanu, come close to me, let me enjoy you, touch me here
and touch me there.' And he shrank back in terror of you, saying,
'What do you want with me? I am only a gardener. You will freeze
me as the frosts freeze the young rushes.' And when you heard that
you changed him into a mole and cast him down to tunnel in the earth."
    She said, astounded, "Gilgamesh, that is only a tale of the goddess!
That was not my doing, but the goddess' long ago!"
    "It is all the same. You are the goddess, the goddess is you. Her
sins are yours. Her crimes are yours. What has befallen the lovers
of Inanna? The shepherd who heaped up meal-cakes for you, and
slaughtered the tender kids: he wearied you and you struck him and
turned him into a wolf, and now his own herd-boys drive him away,
and his own dogs bite his thighs--"  "A fable, Gilgamesh, a story!"
    "The lion you loved: seven pits you dug for him, and seven more.
The bird of many colors: you broke his wing, and he sits in the
grove now, crying, 'My wing, my wing!' The stallion so noble ~
battle: you ordained the whip and the spur and the thong for him~
and made him gallop seven leagues, and ordered him to drink from
muddied water--"
    "Are you mad? What are you saying? These are old tales the harpers
tell, tales of the goddess!"
    I suppose I was in a kind of madness. But I would not relent.
"Have you ever kept faith with one of your lovers? And will you
not treat me as you treated them?" She opened her mouth to speak,
but nothing came forth, and into her silence I said, "What of Du-
muzi? Tell me of him! You sent him down into hell."
    "Why do you throw ancient fables in my face? Why do you keep
reproaching me with things that have nothing to do with me?"
    I ignored her. I was in a madness. "Not Dumuzi the god," I said.
"Dumuzi the king, who ruled in this city, and died before his years.
Yes, tell me of Dumuzi! Dumuzi the god, Dumuzi the king, Inanna
the goddess, Inanna the priestess--it is all the same. Every child
knows the tale. She snares him and uses him and has her triumph
over him. You will not do that with me." Then I caught my breath
and wiped my brow and in another voice entirely said, very coldly,
"This is the royal palace. You have no business being here. Go. Go.t"
    She reached for words and again no words came, only little wrath-
ful stammering sounds. She gaped and stammered and backed away,
her eyes hot, her face flaming. At the door she halted a moment and
gave me a long chilling look. Then she said in a quiet calm voice
that seemed to rise from the depths of the nether world, "You will
suffer, Gilgamesh. That I promise. You will feel pain beyond any
pain you have ever imagined. So the goddess pledges." And she was gone.

THAT YEAR at the time of the new year festival the heat of the
summer did not break, the moist wind called the Cheat did not blow
from the south, and there was no sign of rain in the northern sky.
These things gave me great fear, but I kept my uneasiness to myself,
saying nothing even to Enkidu. After all, there had been other dry
autumns in the past, and the rains had always come sooner or later.
If this year it was later rather than sooner, nevertheless they would
come. Or so I believed: so I hoped. But my fear was great, for I
knew that I nanna was my enemy.
    On the night of the ceremony of the Sacred Marriage she and I
stood face to face for the first time since the visit she had paid to the
palace that time at dawn. But when I came to the long chamber of
the temple to greet her, her eyes were like polished stones, and she
greeted me with the silence of a stone, and when I said, "Hail,
Inanna," she did not reply, as Inanna must, with the words, "Hail,
royal husband, fountain of life." I knew then that a doom had come
to lie upon Uruk, a doom of her making.
    I did not know what to do. We performed the showing-forth on
the temple portico, we carried out the rites of the barley and honey,
we went to the bedchamber and stood before the bed of ebony inlaid
with ivory and gold. All this while she said not a single word to me,
but I knew from her eyes that her hatred for me was unabated. The
handmaiden-priestesses took her beads and breastplates from her,
and lifted the latch of her loin-covering, and left her naked before
me, and uncovered my body to her, and went from the room. She
was as beautiful as ever, but yet there was no glow of desire upon
her: her nipples were soft, her skin did not have the sheen of fleshly
fire. This was not the Inanna I had known so long, the woman of
unquenchable passion. She stood beside the bed with folded arms
and said, "You may stay here or not, as you wish. But you will not
have me tonight."
    "It is the night of the Sacred Marriage. I am the god. You are the goddess."
    "I will not have the king of Uruk enter my body this night. The
wrath of Enlil falls upon Uruk and its king. The Bull of Heaven will be loosed."
  "Will you destroy your own people?"
    "I will destroy your arrogance," she said. "I have gone to my
knees before Father Enlil--I, the goddess! Father, I said, turn loose
the Bull of Heaven to bring down Gilgamesh for me, for Gilgamesh
has scorned me. And I said to Enlil that if he did not do this thing,
I would smash the door of the nether world and shatter its bolts, I
would throw open the gate of hell and raise up the dead to devour
the food of the living, and the hosts of the dead in the world would
be greater than the number of the living. He yielded to me: he said
he would loose the Bull."
    "Out of anger at me, you bring down years of drought upon
Uruk? The people will starve!"
    "There is grain in my warehouses, Gilgamesh. The people have
paid their tithes to the goddess, and I have stored grain enough to
last through seven years of seedless husks. I have fodder set aside
for the cattle. When the hunger strikes, Inanna will be ready to aid
her people. But you will already have fallen, Gilgamesh. They will
have cast you from your high place, for bringing the wrath of the
gods upon them." Her voice was very calm. She stood naked before
me as if it was nothing at all to reveal her body, as if she were only
a statue of herself, or I a eunuch. I looked at her and there was
nothing I could say or do. If the goddess did not embrace the god
in the Sacred Marriage there would be no rain; but how could I force
her? It would have been worse, if I had forced her. She told me
again, "You may stay or not, as you wish." But I had no wish to
spend the night shivering in the cold gale of her wrath. I gathered
my splendid kingly robes and draped them about me and made my
way from the temple in sorrow and in fear.


    In the palace I found Enkidu with three concubines, celebrating
the night of the Sacred Marriage in his own way. Rivers of dark
wine ran across the floor and half-eaten joints of roasted meat were
on the table. In great surprise he said, "Why are you back so soon,
Gilgamesh?"
  "Let me be, brother. This is a sad night for Uruk."
    He did not seem to hear me. "Are you done with your goddess
so soon? Why, then, have a goddess or two of mine!" And he laughed;
but his laughter died away in a moment, when he saw the wintry
bleakness of my face. He shook himself free of the girls who were
twined all over him, and came to me and put his hands on my
shoulders, and said, "What is this, brother? Tell me what has happened!"
    I told him; and he said, "If this Bull of hers is to be set loose in
the city, why, we will have to catch it and put it back in its pen,
will we not? Is that not so, Gilgamesh? How can we allow a wild
bull to run free in Uruk?" And he laughed again, and threw his arms
around me in his great bearish embrace. For the first time that evening
my heart rose, and I thought, perhaps we will withstand this: perhaps
we can contend successfully with her, Enkidu and I.
    But there was no rain. Day upon day the sky was a sheet of brilliant
blue in which Utu's great eye stared remorselessly down on u~. The
scorching wind was a knife slicing into the earth, hurling aloft the
dry mud of the riverbanks and the sand of the gray and yellow desert
beyond. Suffocating dust-clouds fell upon us like shrouds. The barley
withered in the fields. The fronds of the palms grew black with dust,
and drooped like the wings of crippled birds. Thunder came, and
lightning, and dreadful flares of light covered the land like a cloth;
but the storms were dry storms, and still there was no rain. Enlil
was our enemy. Inanna was our enemy. An ignored us. Utu would
not hear us. The people gathered in the streets and cried out, "Gil-
gamesh, Gilgamesh, where is the rain?" and what could I tell them,
what could I tell them?
    Then far to the east the earth shook and the hills roared and there
came such a belching of flame and foul gas as to make the outpouring
of Huwawa seem like a sweet gentle breeze. I had an army of a
thousand men in that territory, searching out the places where the
Elamites were descending to our domain, and of those thousand men
scarce half returned to Uruk. "It was the Bull of Heaven breaking
  loose," they told me. "The sky grew dark and black smoke arose,
  and there was a landslide that roared, and we saw the Bull in the air
  over our heads. Three times he snorted; and with his first snort he
  slew a hundred men, and a hundred more with the second, and with
  the third snort two hundred more. The earth shook, the hills roared,
  the Bull of Heaven breathed foulness upon us. The smell of it is in
  our nostrils still. And now the Bull marches upon Uruk."   What was I to do? Where could I turn?
   "It is the Bull," the people cried. "The Bull is upon us!"
      "The Bull still grazes in the temple pasture," I said. "All will be
  well. These tribulations soon shall end."
     And I looked toward the blazing sky, and said inwardly to Lu-
 galbanda, Father, .~ther, go to Enlil, ask him ~r rain. But there was no
 rain.
     Inanna kept to her temple. She accepted no petitions, she per-
 formed no rites. When the people gathered before the White Platform
 and begged for mercy, she sent her maidens out with word that they
 had come to the wrong place, that they should go to Gilgamesh for
 mercy, for it was Gilgamesh who had brought this evil upon the
 land. Again, they came to me. But what could I tell them? What
 could I do?
    The wind grew more fierce. A story arose in the town that this
wind that blew was the wind of the nether world, a demon-wind
that carried the seeds of death and decay up to us out of the House
of Dust and Darkness. I said it was not. It was whispered in the
town that there was a curse upon the wells, and they soon would
fill with blood, so that the vineyards and palm groves would run
red with it. I told them it would not happen. The rumor spread in
the town that an army of locusts was flying toward us out of the
north, and soon the sky would darken under their wings. They will
not come, I said.
    I gave the people grain from my storehouses. I provided fodder
for the cattle. But there was not enough, not nearly enough. It is
not the province of the king to provide the grain in time of drought
and famine; it is the province oflnanna. And Inanna withheld herself
from the people, and withheld her grain. Nor did the people hate
her for it: she let it be known in the town that Uruk must first be
purified, and then she would open her granaries to the needy. They
understood. I understood. She meant to bring me down.
    And at the last she loosed the Bull within the confines of the city.
I mean the bull that grazed in the temple pasture, the one that em-
bodied in himself the might and majesty of the gods. For twenty
thousand years, or twice twenty, there have been bulls in the pasture
of Inanna's temple, great bulls, mighty bulls, giant bulls without
equal in the Land; they grow fat and huge on the grain of the temple
offerings, and wear garlands of fresh flowers in every season of the
land, and heifers are brought to them daily for their pleasure, and
when they die--for they do die, even they, these bulls who play the
part of the Bull of Heaven--they are buried in the temple grounds
with rites worthy of a god. I cannot tell you how many bulls have
been buried there in the years of Uruk, but I think that if that pasture
were to be ploughed, the ploughman would turn up a sea of horns.
    Never once does the bull leave the pasture of the temple, once he
has taken up residence there. Guards are posted night and day to see
that that does not happen; and though he snort like Enlil himself,
and paw the ground and crash with all his force against the gate, he
cannot go free. But on the holy midwinter day, when the drought
stood at its worst and the sky was gray with swirling dust and those
of us whose senses were most keen could smell the reek of the deadly
black outpourings that were rushing into the air from the vents of
the Rebel Lands far to the east--on that day when calamity was
already rife in Uruk, Inanna turned loose the Bull of Heaven into
the streets of the city.
    The outcry of grief and terror that arose was like nothing that had
ever been heard in Uruk before. I think that cry must have resounded
in Kish; I think they must have heard it in Nippur; perhaps even in
the Elamite lands they looked up and said, "What is that awful cry
out of the west?"
    In my palace I trembled with dismay and woe. It seemed to me
now that I must go to Inanna, and kneel to her, and yield to her,
and deliver up the city to her; for otherwise the people all would
perish, or else I would be cast down from my high place. It had
begun to seem to me that I must after all be responsible for this ruin
that had come upon Uruk, that it was I and not Inanna who had
brought these evils to the city, even as she was saying. Perhaps the
 gods were indeed taking their vengeance for the death of Huwawa.
 Perhaps I had erred in refusing to make the priestess my queen.
 Perhaps--perhaps--perhaps
     I had never known such despair as on that day when Inanna's bull
 pranced and snorted in the streets of Uruk. It was Enkidu who lifted
 me from it. He found me grieving in the palace, and drew me up
 and embraced me and said, "Come, brother, why do you weep?
 Deliverance is at hand!"
     "Do you not know that the Bull of Heaven is loose in the city?"
 I asked him.
     "Yes, Gilgamesh, yes, the bull is loose! And this is our moment.
 Can we turn back the dry winds? Can we call rain from the heavens?
 Can we turn sand into water? No, no, no, none of those things can
 we do: but we can kill a bull, brother. We can surely kill a bull.
 Now at last Inanna has poured all of her fury into a single vessel.
 Let us go out there, Gilgamesh: let us break that vessel." His eyes
 were glittering with excitement. His body throbbed with strength.
 I took heart from his vigor. I smiled for the first time in I cannot
 tell you how many days, and I embraced him until he grunted with
 the force of my embrace. "Come, brother," he said, and we went
 out into the dry and dusty streets to seek the Bull of Heaven.
    It was the noon hour. The streets were empty in that terrible heat.
But I did not need to ask the way to the bull. Its presence announced
itself in the city like the heat of a heated anvil: I felt the red glow of
it hot against my cheeks. As did Enkidu, in whom the wisdom of
the wilderness still lived. He held his face to the wind, he flared his
nostrils wide, he turned his head so that his ears gathered in all sounds;
and he pointed, and we went forward. In the district known as the
Lion we saw the dung of the bull fresh in the streets, with a golden
aura about it, and 131ue-headed flies buzzing above it but not daring
to touch it. In the district known as the Reed we found the carts of
ú the merchants overturned, and their merchandise strewn in the path,
for the bull had come this way. And in the district known as the
Hive, where the streets press close upon one another and there is
scarcely room to walk, we saw bricks ripped loose from the buildings
where the bull had run between them.
     A little while on, we came upon something worse: the cobble-
 stones stained bright with blood, the sounds of bitter sobbing and
 wailing, and a man and a woman standing like statues, blank-eyed.
The man held a child's broken body in his arms. A boy, I think,
four or five years old, who must have darted into the bull's path. I
prayed that Enlil had granted the child a swift death; but what mercy
would the god grant the mother and the father? As we ran past, the
woman recognized us. Without saying a word she held her hand out
toward me, as though to beg me, O king, give me back my son. I could
not do that for her. I could give her nothing to ease her sorrow but
the blood of the bull, and I did not think that would be enough.
    This little death, I thought, must be tallied to Inanna's account.
Is that how she serves her people, by killing their innocent children
with her furious vengeful beast?
    Enkidu and I sped onward, grim-faced, intent. A few moments
more and we turned into the great open space known as the Place
of Ningal: and there we came upon the bull himself, prancing wildly
like a playful calf.
    He was white--all the bulls of the temple are white--and he was
huge, and his eyes were rimmed with red, and his horns were long
and sharp as spears, but they curved in a strange wicked way almost
like the frame of a lyre. I saw splashes of the child's blood on the
hooves of his forelegs, and on his pastern. When we came upon him
he smelled our sweat, and halted and turned and glared at us out of
eyes that blazed like coals; and he snorted, he stamped, he lowered
his head, he seemed to be making ready to charge. Enkidu looked
at me, and I at Enkidu. Together we had slain elephants and we had
slain lions and we had slain wolves. We had even slain a demon that
came belching out of the ground like a column of fire. But we had
never slain a bull, and this was a bull enjoying the first heady measure
of freedom after too long a captivity. He was full of his own power,
and the power of Father Enlil was in him besides; for I did not doubt
that this bull was the Bull of Heaven today, just as at certain times
Inanna the priestess is Inanna the goddess, and the king of Uruk is
Dumuzi the god of the fields. So we caught our breaths and we made
ready to meet his thrust, knowing it would not be an easy combat.
    I beckoned him with my hand. "Come to us," I said, whispering
it, making my voice seductive. "Come here. Come. Come. Come.
I am Gilgamesh: this is Enkidu my brother."
    The bull stamped. The bull snorted. The bull lifted his great head
and tossed his horns. And then he charged, running with great grace
and majesty. He appeared almost to float as he came across the worn
brick pavement of the Place of Ningal.
    Enkidu, laughing, cried out to me, "What sport this will be, brother!
Play him! Play him, brother! We have nothing to fear!"
    He ran to one side, and I to the other. The bull stopped in mid-
stride and pivoted and whirled and charged again, and halted a second
time and pivoted and whirled, kicking up dust. He seemed almost
to frown as we darted back and forth around him, laughing, slapping
each other on the shoulders. The bull cast his foam in our faces
and brushed us with the thick of his tail. But he could not run us
down; he could not bring us to earth.
    Five times the bull charged, and five times we skipped past him,
until he was angry and perplexed. Then he charged once more,
feinting with demonic intelligence and feinting again, changing his
course as lithely as any dancing-boy of the temple, going now this
way, now that. Fiercely he sprang at Enkidu with lowered horns,
and I feared that my brother would be gored: but no, as the bull
drew near Enkidu reached out and clamped one hand to each of his
horns and swung himself up in a single swift leap, twisting in mid-
air so that when he landed he was astride the bull's back, still grasping
the horns.
    Now began such a combat as I think the world had never seen
before. Enkidu atop the Bull of Heaven grappled with him by the
horns, twisting his head this way and that. The bull in rage reared
high on his hind legs to throw him off, but could not do it. I stood
before them watching in joy and delight. It seemed to me that my
friend must now have fully recovered the strength of his hand, for
he held so tight against so great a power; but even if he were not
fully recovered, hi~ strength was still sufficient to maintain his grip.
The bull could not rid himself of Enkidu. He roared, he stamped,
he hurled flecks of spittle about, and still Enkidu held on. Enkidu
turned all his enormous strength to the breaking of the bull, forcing
him into weariness, making him lower his mighty head. I heard
Enkidu's booming laughter, and rejoiced; I saw Enkidu's massive
arms bulging with the strain, and took pleasure in the sight. I watched
the bull grow sullen and downcast. But then the combat took a
different turn. The bull, having rested a moment, summoned new
strength, and plunged and leaped and plunged and leaped again,
striving with renewed ferocity to hurl Enkidu to the ground. I feared
for him; but Enkidu showed no fear at all. He clung, he held, he
twisted the great head from side to side; once again he forced the
bull's muzzle toward the ground.
    "Now, brother!" Enkidu called. "Strike, strike now! Thrust in
your sword!"
    It was the moment. I rushed forward and took the hilt of my
sword in both my hands, and rose to my greatest height, and drove
the sword downward. I thrust it in between the nape and the horns,
forcing it deep. The bull made a sound like the sound of the going
out of the sea when the tide is dwindling, and a film came over the
blazing fury of his eyes. For a moment he stood entirely still, and
then his legs turned to water beneath him. As he fell, Enkidu sprang
clear, landing beside me, and we laughed and embraced and rested
a little time beside the dying bull until he was dead. Then we cut
out his heart and made an offering of it on the spot to Utu of the sun.
    When that was done I looked about me, and when I looked toward
the west, toward the rampart of the city, I saw figures upon the wall.
I touched Enkidu's arm and pointed.  "It is your goddess," he said.
    In truth it was. Inanna and her handmaidens were on the wall.
She must have watched the battle with the bull; I could feel the heat
and the force of her wrath even at this distance. I cupped my hands
and called out to her, "See, priestess! We have slain your bull: the
rains soon will come, I think!"
    "Woe to you," she replied in a voice like a voice out of hell. And
to her maidens and the other onlookers she cried, "Woe to Gilgamesh!
Woe to him who dares to hold me in contempt! Woe to the slayer
of the Bull of Heaven!"
    To which Enkidu cried back, "And woe to you, croaking bird of
doom! Here: I make my offering to you!"
    Boldly he ripped loose the private parts of the dead bull and flung
them with all his might, so that the bloody flesh landed on the
rampart almost at her feet. He laughed his rumbling laugh and called
to her, "There, goddess! Does that appease you? If I could get hold
of you, I'd drape you in the bull's own guts!" At that blasphemy
she cursed us again, both Enkidu and me; and the women beside her
on the wall, the priestesses, the handmaidens, the temple courtesans,
the votaries of all sorts who had come with her to see us destroyed
by the bull that now lay dead at our feet, set up a great wailing and
a lamentation.

I WOULD not even let her have the carcass of the bull to bury at
the temple grounds: I meant to deny her everything. I summoned
the butchers and had the meat cut into strips and given freely to the
dogs of the town, to show my contempt for Inanna and her bull.
But the horns of the bull I took for myself. I turned them over to
my craftsmen and my armorers, who were wonderstruck by the
length of the horns, and their thickness. I commanded them to plate
the horns with lapis lazuli to a thickness of two fingers, for I meant
to hang them on the wall of the palace. So great were they that they
had a capacity of six measures of oil: I filled them with the finest of
ointments, and then I poured the oil out at the shrine of Lugalbanda,
in honor of the god my father who had brought me this triumph.
    When all this was done we washed our hands in the waters of the
river and rode together through the streets of Uruk to the palace.
The people crept forth one by one from their houses to see us, and
after the first had come out the others took heart, until a great mul-
titude lined our path. Heroes and warriors of Uruk were there, and
girls playing lyres, and many more. Boastfulness took hold of me,
and I called out to them, "Who is the most glorious of the heroes?
Who is the greatest among men?" They called back, "Gilgamesh is
the most glorious of the heroes! Gilgamesh is the greatest among
men!" Why should I not have been boastful? Inanna had set loose
the Bull of Heaven; and I had slain it--Enkidu and I. Did we not
have the right to boast?
    There was feasting and celebration at the palace that night. We
sang and danced and drank until .we could revel no more, and we
went to our beds. In that night the wind called the Cheat began to
 blow; and the air grew soft and moist. Before morning the first rain
 that had fallen all that winter began to fall upon Uruk.
     That day was the peak of my glory. That day was the height of
 my triumph. I felt that there was nothing I could not achieve. I had
 increased the wealth of my city and made it preeminent in the land;
 I had slain Huwawa; I had slain the Bull of Heaven; I had brought
 rain to Uruk; I had been a good shepherd to my people. Nevertheless
 after that day I knew little joy and much sadness, which I suppose
 is the lot that the gods had intended for me even while they permitted
 me my moments of triumph. That is the way of life: there is gran-
 deur, and there is sorrow, and we learn in time that the darkness
 follows upon the light whether or not we choose to have it that way.
    In the morning Enkidu came to me, looking somber and weary,
as though some great darkness of the soul had visited him while he
slept. I said, "Why is it you carry yourself so mournfully, brother,
when the bull lies dead and the rains have come to Uruk?" He sat
down by the side of my couch and sighed and said, "My friend,
why are the great gods in council?" I did not understand; but then
he said, "I have had a dream that lies heavy on me, brother. Shall I
tell you my dream?"
    He had dreamed that the gods were sitting in their council-cham-
ber: An was there, and Enlil, and heavenly Utu, and the wise Enki.
And Sky-father An said to Enlil, "They have killed the Bull of Heaven,
and they have killed Huwawa also. Therefore one of the two must
die: let it be the one who stripped the cedar from the mountains."
    Then Enlil spoke up and said, "No, Gilgamesh must not die, for
he is king. It is Enkidu who must die." At this Utu raised his voice
to declare, "They sought my protection when they went to slay
Huwawa, and I granted it. When they slew the Bull, they made an
offering of his heart to me. They have done no wrong. Enkidu is
innocent: why should he die?" Which enraged Enlil, and he turned
angrily to heavenly Utu, saying, "You speak of them as though they
are your comrades! But sins have been committed; and Enkidu is
the one who must die." And so the argument raged until Enkidu awakened.
    I was quiet for a time when he had finished, and I kept my face
a mask. Such a dire dream! It filled me with fear. I did not want him
to see that. I did not want to face that fear myself. Fear gives dreams
power they might otherwise not have. I resolved to let this dream
have no power, to sweep it aside as one would sweep aside a dry reed.
    At length I said, "I think you ought not take this too close to
heart, brother. Often the true meaning of a dream is less obvious
than it seems."
    Enkidu stared in a dismal way at the floor. "A dream portending
death is a dream portending death," he said sulkily. "All the sages
will agree on that. I am a dead man already, Gilgamesh."
    I thought that was nonsense, and I told him so. I said he was not
dead so long as he lived, and he looked full of life to me. I said also
that it is folly to take any dream so literally that you let it govern
your waking life. I will not pretend that I fully believed that, even
as I said it: I know as well as anyone~that dreams are whispered into
our souls at night by the gods, and that they often carry messages
worth heeding. But I found nothing in this dream that Enkidu might
do well to heed, and much that would be harmful if brooded upon.
And so I urged him to put all gloomy thoughts behind him and go
about his business as if he had heard nothing but the chattering of
birds in his dream, or the murmuring of the winds.
      That seemed to hearten him. Gradually his face brightened, and
he nodded and said, "Yes, perhaps I take this thing too seriously."
  "Too seriously by half, Enkidu."
     "Yes. Yes. It is my great fault. But you always bring me back to
 my right senses, old friend." He smiled and gripped my arm. Then,
 rising, he dropped into a wrestler's crouch and beckoned to me.
 "Come: what do you say to a little sport to lighten the day?"
     "A fine idea!" I answered. I laughed to see him turn less doleful. For
 an hour we wrestled, and then we bathed; and then it was time for me
 to attend to the meeting of the assembly. By midday I had put Enkidu's
 dream behind me, and I think so had he. For a moment it had darkened
 our lives; but it had passed like a shadow across the ground. Or so I
 believed.
     A few days later, as an act of thanksgiving for the lifting of the
 Bull of Heaven from the city, I decreed that we would perform the
 rite of purification known as the Closing of the Gate. That was
 something which had not been done in Uruk for so long that not
even the oldest priests remembered the exact details of it. I set six
scholars to work for three days searching through the library of the
Temple of An for an account of the rite, and the best they could find
was a tablet written in such an antique way that they could hardly
make out the picture-writing it bore. "Never mind," I said. "I will
ask Lugalbanda for guidance. He will show me what must be done."
    I meant to make certain that the passageway which runs downward
from Uruk into the nether world was properly sealed, since Inanna
had threatened to open it as part of the loosing of the Bull of Heaven.
In her wrath she could actually have done some harm to the gate,
so that evil spirits or perhaps the ghosts of the dead might be able
to drift up through it into the city. So I must be sure the gate is shut,
I thought, and I devised a rite intended to accomplish that. I drew
the procedure out of the hazy memories of the oldest priests and the
writing on that ancient tablet and my own sense of what would be
fitting. It was a proper rite, I think. Yet if I had it to do over again,
I would let the gate of hell stand open for a thousand years, rather
than have what happened that day befall me.
    The gate is one of the oldest structures in Uruk--some say even
older than the White Platform, and that, of course, was built by the
gods themselves. The gate lies a hundred twenty paces east of the
White Platform. It is nothing more than a ring of weather-beaten
kiln-baked bricks of a very old-fashioned shape, surrounding a stout
round door of flaked and rusted copper that lies fiat on the ground,
like a trapdoor. A ring is set in the middle of that door, fashioned
of some black metal that no one can identify. Two or three strong
men pulling on that ring with all their might can raise the door out
of the ground. When the door is lifted it reveals a dark hole that is
the mouth of a tunnel, scarcely wider than the shoulders of a sturdy
man, which slopeg down under the earth. If one goes down into it
one comes after a short time to a second gate which is nothing more
than some metal bars mounted from floor to ceiling of the tunnel
like the bars of a cage. On the far side of that the angle of the tunnel's
descent becomes much steeper, and if one were mad enough to follow
it one would come eventually to the first of the seven walls of the
underworld itself. Each of those walls has its gate; the demon Neti,
gatekeeper of the nether world, guards them; and behind the seventh
wall is the lair of Ereshkigal, Queen of Hell, sister of Inanna.
Until the ill-starred day when I chose to do the rite of the Closing
of the Gate no one had passed through that gate for thousands of
years. The last to do it, so far as I knew, was the goddess Inanna
long ago, when she made her unhappy descent into hell to challenge
the power of Ereshkigal. Since then the dread tunnel surely had gone
unentered. Although we pull the door from the ground once every
twelve years for the rite known as the Opening of the Gate, in which
we cast libations into the tunnel to propitiate Ereshkigal and her
demon hordes, no one in his right mind would step as much as half
a stride across its threshold.
    We commenced the Closing of the Gate at the noon hour sharp,
when it is the middle of the night in the nether world and I thought
it likely most of the demons would be at rest. The day was warm
and bright, though it had rained in the dark hours. Enkidu was at
my side, and my mother Ninsun just behind me; arrayed in a circle
about me were the chief priests of all the temples of the city and the
high members of the royal court. The only great personage of Uruk
who did not attend was Inanna. She remained brooding behind the
walls of the temple I had built for her. Beyond the circle of dignœtaries
were lesser priests by the double dozen, and hundreds of musicians
ready to make a fierce outcry with drums and fifes and trumpets if
spirits should begin coming forth through the gate when we opened
it. And behind them were all the common citizens of Uruk.
    I nodded to Enkidu. He put his left hand to the ring in the door,
and I my right, and we lifted it. Though it was said to be a mighty
task to raise that door, we pulled it from the ground as easily as if
it had been a feather. Out of the pit came the stale, sour odor of old
air. My hands were cold. My face was set hard and tight. I felt the
chill of death coming from the nether world. I stared downward,
but I saw nothing but darkness after the first few steps.
    I held my spirit tautly in check. There are some places that arouse
such fear we dare not think of the peril; we act without giving
thought, for to think is to be lost. That was how I acted then. I gave
the signal, and we began the ceremony.
    The rite that I had devised began with an offering of aromatic
barley seed, which I tossed into the opening myself. If any dark
beings were lurking just within the tunnel, perhaps they would busy
themselves down there quarreling over the barley, and would not
emerge even though the gateway was open. Then the priests of An
and Enlil and Utu and Enki came forward and made libations of
honey, milk, beer, wine, and oil. That insured us the good will of
the high gods. A small child, the daughter of a priest, led a white
sheep forth, and I sacrificed it with one quick clean stroke of my
blade at a sacrificial stand that Enkidu had erected at the edge of the
passageway. Blood of a startling brightness spurted as if from a
fountain and ran down along the little creature's slender white throat,
and it quivered and sighed and looked at me sadly and died. That
was intended as a gift to the gatekeeper Neti, so that he would prevent
spirits and demons from emerging into our world. I drew a band of
the blood across my forehead and another down my left cheek as a
protection for myself.
    When these things were done, the priests and I knelt at the rim
of the tunnel and chanted spells of sealing, to weave a band of magic
acrosg the opening as our final line of defense. I knew that neither
the lower gate nor the trapdoor would have any real effect on a spirit
that was determined to come forth. The gate and the door were
useful merely in keeping living folk from straying into the under-
world; but it was by incantations alone that the dwellers beneath
could be made to stay where they belonged.
    I was frightened. What man would not be, however brave a face
he offered to the world? The nether world itself stood open before
me. I heard the black waters of its hidden rivers lapping at unseen
shores. The pungent acrid smoke of its deadly vapors rose and coiled
like hungry serpents about me. But yet, fearful though I was, I was
excited also, and filled with a high boldness of purpose. For I was
Gilgamesh who had said, even as a boy, Death, I will conquer you!
Death, you are no match for me!
     So we wove our spells. "All you who would do us harm, whoever
 you may be, you whose heart conceives our misforttme, whose tongue
 utters mischief against us, whose lips poison us, in whose footsteps
 death stands: I ban you!" I cried. "I ban your mouth, I ban your
 tongue, I ban your glittering eyes, I ban your swift feet, I ban your
 toiling knees, I ban your laden hands. By these conjurings I bind
 your hands behind your back. Whether you are a ghost unburied,
 or a ghost that none cares for, or a ghost with none to make offerings
 to it, or a ghost that has none to pour libations to it, or a ghost that
 has no descendants, whatever cause leads you to wander, nevertheless
 I compel you to remain below. By Ereshkigal and Gugalanna, by
 Nergal and Namtaru, I conjure you never to pass these gates. By
 the might of Enlil that is in me--by An and Utu, by Enki and
 Ninazu, by Allatu, by Irkalla, by Belit-seri, by Apsu, Tiamat, Lahmu,
 Lahamu--"
    That was the chant I chanted. I bound the beings below by every
name that they might hold holy, except for one; I did not bind them
in the name of Inanna. Though she was the patron goddess of the
city, I would not bind them in her name. I knew that such a binding
would be of no avail so long as Inanna's priestess was my enemy.
    And because I had not bound them by Inanna's name, I was not
certain that any of my spells would be of value. So I had with me
at the ceremony my sacred drum, which the craftsman Ur-nangar
had made for me out of the wood of the huluppu-tree. I meant to
beat on it in my special way and put myself into my trance in front
of all the people of Uruk, a thing I had never done before; and then
I would send my spirit down into the tunnel, I would venture even
to 'the gates of the underworld, for when I was in my trance there
was no barrier to my roving. In that way I would be able to see for
myself whether our spells had truly sealed the passage against those
terrible creatures of black smoke and dank musty vapor.
    I said to Enkidu, "There should be revelry and dancing while I
do this. Give the order: have the musicians strike up."
    Almost at once the sound of trumpets and fifes filled the air. I
bent low over my drum and began the slow quiet tapping I knew
so well. I felt myself in the presence of the great mystery of mysteries,
which is the life beyond life that the gods alone can know. All
awareness of the solid world about me faded. There was only my
drum and my drumstick, and the steady subtle rhythm of my drum-
ming. It took possession of my soul. It seized me, it lifted me. I saw
an aura coming out of the tunnel, rising like flame, cool and blue.
There was a buzzing in my ears, a droning, a crackling. I felt a
stirring within my body, as though some wild thing were moving
about inside me. My breath came fast; my vision dimmed. I was over-
flowing; a sea was rising out of me and engulfing me.
    But then just as the full ecstasy was about to come upon me, and
I was making ready to launch myself from my body, there came a
shriek from behind me that cut through my soul as an axe cuts
through wood, and ripped me from my trance; a shrill harsh outcry,
piercing and fierce, over and over.  "Utu.t Utu.t Utu.t''
    Gods, what a scream! The unearthly sound jolted me and shook
me and stunned me. I went numb and pitched forward, all but
insensible, as though I had been struck between the shoulders. Enkidu
caught me by the shoulders and held me, or I would have toppled
down the tunnel; but my drum and my drumstick fell from my
frozen hands. I watched with horror as I saw them disappear into
the dark mouth of the nether world.
    At once almost without thinking I started to scramble down after
them. But Enkidu, still gripping my shoulders, hauled me roughly
back and flung me to one side as though I were a sack of barley.
"Not you!" he cried angrily. "You must not go into that place,
Gilgamesh!" And before I could say or do anything he ran down the
steps that led into the earth, and vanished entirely from sight in that
black pit.
    Dazed, I peered after him. I could not speak. There was an over-
whelming silence all about me: the musicians were motionless, the
dancers were still. Out of that silence rose a single sound, a muffled
sobbing or whimpering that came from a girl of eight or ten years
who lay writhing on the ground not far away, held down by one of
the priests. It was she who had screamed in that terrible way and
had broken my trance; I saw that the beating of my drum must have
worked on her soul much as it did on mine, but even more pow-
erfully. The drumming had driven her not into the trance of ecstasy
but into a terrible fit, under the force of which her mind had given
way. Her convulsions still continued. They were frightful to behold.
    And Enkidu?'Where was Enkidu? Trembling, I stared into the
tunnel, and saw only blackness. I found my voice and called his
name, or croaked it, rather, and heard nothing. I called again, more
loudly. Silence. Silence. "Enkidu.t'' I cried, and it was a great wail of
pain and loss. I was sure he had been set upon by the minions of
Ereshkigal; perhaps they had already carried him off to hell. "Wait!"
I shouted. "I'm coming after you!"
    "You must not," said my mother sharply, and suddenly three or
four men were at my elbows ready to hold me back. If they had
tried to restrain me I would have hurled them over the city wall into
the river. But there was no need of that, for just then I heard the
sound of a choking cough close by in the tunnel, and Enkidu came
slowly up out of it. He was holding my drum and my drumstick in
his hand.
    He looked ghostly. He was like one who had returned from the
dead. All color was gone from his skin: his face seemed bleached,
so pale was it. His hair and beard were gray with dust, and his white
robe was badly soiled. Great tangles of cobwebs were snarled about
his body, and even over his mouth; he was trying to brush at them
with his shoulders as he emerged into the light. He stood there a
moment dazzled and blinking. There was a look in his eyes of such
wildness, such strangeness, that I scarcely knew him to be my friend.
Those who had been standing near me backed away. I felt almost
like backing away from him myself.
    "I have brought back your drum and your drumstick,
Gilgamesh," he said in a voice like cinders and ashes. "They fell a
long way: they were beyond the second gate. But I went on my
hands and knees until I touched them in the dark."
    I stared at him, appalled. "It was madness. You should not have
gone into that tunnel."
    "But you had dropped your drum," he said, in that same strange
whisper. He shivered and rubbed his shoulder against his face again,
and coughed and sneezed from the dust. "I had to try to bring it
back. I know how important it is to you."  "But the dangers--the evils--"
    Enkidu shrugged. "Here is your drum, Gilgamesh. Here is your
drumstick."
    I took them from him. They did not feel right; it was as if they
had lost eleven parts out of twelve of their weight. They were so
light I thought they might float out of my grasp. Enkidu nodded~
"Yes," he said. "They are different now. I think the god-strength
must have gone out of them. It is a terrible place, down there." He
shuddered once more. "I could not see anything. But as I crawled,
I felt bones breaking beneath me. Old dry bones. There is a carpet
of bones in that tunnel, Gilgamesh. People have gone down into it
before me. But I think I may have been the first one to come out."
    Something hung in the air between us like a curtain. The strange-
 ness that had come upon him in that other world now screened his
 soul from mine. I felt I could not reach him; I felt almost as though
 I did not know him any longer. A sense of irretrievable loss choked
 my soul. The Enkidu I had known had vanished. He had been to a
 place I dared not enter and he had returned with knowledge that I
 would never be able to comprehend.
   "Tell me what you saw there," I said. "Were there demons?"
     "I told you: it was dark. I saw nothing. But I felt their presence.
 I felt them all around me." He gestured toward the gaping tunnel.
 "You should close up that pit, brother, and never open it again. Seal
 the door, and seal it again and seven times over."
     I thought I would burst with rage, to see him so shattered for the
 sake of my drum. How could I call back the moment? Cling to the
 drum lest it fall into that hole, cling to Enkidu lest he go rushing
 off after it? But all that was engraved forever in the book of time.
 Bitterly I said, "I will seal it, yes. But it is too late, Enkidu! If only
 you had not gone down there--!"
    He smiled a faint wan smile. "I would do it for you again, if I
had to. But I hope I will not have to." Then he came close to me.
I could smell the dry smell of the dust and cobwebs that were on
him. In a voice like a torch that has gone out he said, "I saw nothing
while I was in the underworld because everything was black there.
But there was one thing I saw that I saw with my heart and not with
my eyes, and it was myself, Gilgamesh, my own body, which the
vermin were devouring as though it were an old cloak. Those were
my own bones I crawled on in that tunnel. And now I am frightened,
old friend. I am very frightened." He put his arms lightly to my
shoulders and gave me a dusty embrace. Gently he said, "I am sorry
that your drum has lost its god-strength. I would have brought it
back to you as it was, if I could have done it. You know that: I
would have brought it back to you as it was."

I THINK it was the next day that Enkidu's illness began. He com-
plained that his hand, the one he had injured when forcing the gate
in the forest of cedars, felt chilled. An hour or two later he spoke of
a stiffness and a soreness in that arm. Then he said he was feverish,
and took to his bed.
    "It is as it was in my dream," he said gloomily to me. "The gods
have met in council, and they have decreed that I am the one who
must die, because you are king."
    "You will not die," I said with a loving anger in my voice. "No
one dies of a soreness in the arm! You must have hurt it again while
you were crawling about in that foul tunnel. I have sent for the
healers: they will set you aright before nightfall."
  He shook his head. "I tell you I am dying, Gilgamesh."
    It frightened and maddened me to hear him so weary and faint.
He was yielding to whatever demon had seized him, and that was
not like him. "I will not have it!" I cried. "I will not let you die!" I
knelt beside his bed. He was flushed and his forehead was shiny with
sweat. Urgently I said, "Brother, I cannot abide losing you. I beg
you: speak no more of dying. The healers are on their way, and they
will make you well again."
    I watched over him as a lioness watches over her cub. He muttered,
he moaned, his eyes were veiled by a film. He said that his head hurt
him and his mouth pricked him, his eyes troubled him, his ears were
singing. His throat choked him, his neck muscles hurt. His breast,
his shoulders, and his loins hurt him; his fingers were cramped; his
stomach was inflamed; his bowels were hot. His hands, his feet, and
his knees were aching. There was no part of his body that did not
 trouble him. He lay trembling, gripped by death or the fear of death,
 and I felt for his sake that f~ar as well. Seeing him in mortal terror
 I was reminded of my own mortality, which tormented me like a
 knife in my flesh. It was the old enemy, and though he was coming
 to call not on me but on my friend, he could not but awaken my
 own fear of him. But I was determined: I had already resolved not
 to yield to death myself, nor would I allow him to have Enkidu.
     I did whatever seemed useful. Perhaps it was the presence of the
 drum in the palace that was afflicting him, I thought, by carrying
 some taint of the nether world. I did not know, but I would not
 take the chance. The drum was hateful to me now. I ordered priests
 to take it outside the city walls and burn it, using such rites as will
 dispel those spirits. Greatly did I lament its loss, but I would not
 keep it by me if it made Enkidu ill. So the drum was burned. Yet
 Enkidu did not recover.
     The healers came, the most skilled diviners and exorcists in the
 city. The first who viewed him was old Namennaduma, the royal
 baru-priest, the great diviner. His consultation was lengthy; for sev-
 eral hours he studied Enkidu, consulting the omens so that he could
 make a preliminary diagnosis and prognosis. Then he summoned
 me to the sickroom and said, "There is great danger."
     "Drive it away, seer, or you will find yourself in danger even
 greater," I said.
    Namennaduma must have heard such threats before: my harsh
words did not seem to trouble him. Calmly he replied, "We will
treat him. But we must know more. Tonight we will consult the
stars, and tomorrow we will do the divination by sheep's-liver. And
then the treatment can begin."
  "Why wait so long? Do your divining today!"
    "Today is not auspicious," the baru-priest said. "It is an unlucky
time of the month, and the moon is unfavorable." I could not argue
with that. So off he went to study the stars, and into the room came
the azu, the water-knower, the man of medicines. This doctor touched
his hand to Enkidu's breast and to his cheek, and nodded and scowled,
and took certain powders from his pouch. Then he said to me, as
though I were some sort ofazu myself, "We will give him the powder
of anadishsha and the ground seeds of duashbur, mixed into beer
and water. That will cool the fever. And for his pain, the lees of the
dried vine and the oil of the pine tree, made into a poultice. And to
help him sleep, the powdered seeds of nigmi, and an extract of the
roots and trunk of arina, combined with myrrh and thyme, in beer."
    Hope made my breath come short. "And will he be healed, then?"
I asked.
    With some irritation the water-knower replied, "He will be in less
pain, and his fever will relent. Healing must come afterward, if it
comes at all."
  That night Enkidu slept only a little, and I none at all.
    In the morning Namennaduma returned. His face was grim, but
he refused to speak of what he had learned in the stars, and when I
commanded him to tell me he simply peered at me as if I were a
madman. "It is not a simple prognosis," he said, and shrugged. "We
must do the liver-divination now."
    A statue of the healing-god Ninib, son of Enlil, was brought into
the room. A small white sheep was tethered in front of it. I stared
at that little sad-eyed animal as though it held the power of life and
death over Enkidu itself. Namennaduma performed prayers and pu-
rifications and libations, and slaughtered the sheep. Then with brisk
swift strokes he cut open its belly and drew forth the steaming liver,
which he examined with the skill of his sixty years of this art. He
studied the position it had held within the belly of the sheep--"the
palace of the liver," he called it--and then he pored over the liver
itself, its lobes and veins, its curves and indentations, its little fin-
gerlike projections. At length he looked up at me and said, "The
shanu is double and so is the niru. That is an evil omen, king."
  "Find a better one," I said.
  "See, king, this: there is a lump of flesh at the bottom of the na."
  I felt my anger rising. "So? What of it?"
     Namennaduma grew uneasy. He sensed the stirring and heating
 of my wrath, and knew what it could mean for him. But if I had
 hoped to frighten him into fnding an answer that would comfort
 me, I did not succeed. Straightaway he replied, "It means that a curse
 lies on the sick one. He will die."
     His voice fell upon my ears like mallets. Now I was enraged.
 There was thunder in my brain. I came close to striking him. "We
 will all die!" I roared. "But not yet, not so soon! A curse on you,
 for your foul omens! Look again, baru-priest! Find the true truth!"
   "Shall I deceive you with the words you prefer to hear, then?"
   He delivered those blunt words in so quiet and unflinching a tone
   that my fury at once went from me: I realized I was in the presence
   of a man of strength and majesty, who would not bend the truth of
   his art even if it were to cost him his life. I brought myself into check
   and when I could speak in a normal voice again I said, "The truth
   is what I want. I have no liking for the truth you offer me: but at
   the least I admire the way you tell it. You are a man of honor,
   Namennaduma."
     "I am an old man. If I anger you and you slay me, what is that
 to me? But I will not lie to please you."
    "Are all the omens bad?" I asked, speaking softly, cajolingly,
almost begging him.
    "They are not good. But he is a man of immense strength. That
may yet save him, if we follow the right procedures. I promise
nothing: but there is a chance. It is a very small chance, king."
  "Do what can be done. Save him."
    The baru-priest laid his hand gently on my arm. "You
understand it is forbidden to physicians to treat one whose case is
hopeless. That is a defiance of the gods: we may not do it."
    "I'm aware of that. But you have just said there is a chance to
save him."
    "A very small one. Another diviner might say the case is hopeless,
and refuse to continue. I tell you this, king, because I want you to
remember that there are perils in going against the wishes of the
gods."
    With an impatient sigh I said, "So there are. Now call in the
exorcist and the water-knower, and set them to the task of healing
my brother!"
  And so they went to their work.
    An army of healers surrounded Enkidu's bed. Some busied them-
selves with sacrifices and libations, pouring out milk, beer, wine,
bread, fruit, enough to feed a legion of gods, and killing any number
of lambs and goats and suckling pigs. While that was going on the
ashiptu, the exorcist, began his incantations. "Seven are they, seven
are they, in the Ocean Deep seven are they," he chanted. "Ashakku
unto the man, bringing fever. Namtaru unto the man, bringing
disease. The evil spirit Utukku unto the man, against his neck. The
evil demon Alu unto the man, against his breast. The evil ghost
Ekimmu unto the man, against his belly. The evil devil Gallu unto
the man, against his hand. The evil god Ilu unto the man, against
his foot. Seven are they; evil are they. These seven together have
seized upon him: they devour his body like a consuming fire. Against
them I will conjure."
    As he chanted, I paced the room, counting my steps a thousand
times from wall to wall. I felt the god closing his fist on Enkidu: it
was an agony for me. He lay with clouded eyes and thickened breath,
scarcely seeming to understand what was taking place. The rituals
proceeded for hours. When the healers left, I remained by the beside.
"Brother?" I murmured. "Brother, do you hear me?" He heard noth-
ing. "The gods have chosen to spare my life, but you are the price
I must pay! Is that it? Is that it? Ah, it is too much, Enkidu!" He
said nothing. I began to speak the words of the great lamentation
over him, slowly, haltingly, but I got no more than a little way. It
was too soon to speak those words for Enkidu: I could not do it.
"Brother, will you go from me?" I asked. "Will I ever see you again?"
He did not hear me; he was lost in a fevered dream.
    During the night he awakened and began to speak. His voice was
clear and his mind seemed clear, but he showed no sign of knowing
that I was there. He spoke of that time he had hurt his hand in the
forest of cedars, in order to spare the beautiful gate; and he said aloud
that if he had known then that any such affliction as this would come
upon him as a result, he would have raised his axe and split that gate
like a curtain of reeds. Then he spoke bitterly of the trapper Ku-
ninda, who had discovered him on the steppe. "I call curses down
on him, for putting me in the hands of the city people!" Enkidu
cried, in a hoarse crazed way that frightened me. "Let him lose all
his wealth! Let the beasts he would trap escape from his snares! Let
him be denied the joy of his heart!" He was silent a time, calmer,
and I thought he had returned to sleep. But suddenly he sat up and
raved again, this time speaking of the sacred harlot Abisimti: "I curse
the woman too!" He had been wild and simple, he said, and she had
forced him to see things as men see them. He had not felt sorrow,
or loneliness, or the fear of death, until she had caused him to un-
derstand that such things existed. Even the joy she had brought him
was tainted, said Enkidu: for now that he was dying he felt a stabbing
pain at the thought of the loss of that joy. But for her he would have
remained ignorant and innocent. Bitterly he said, "Let this be her
doom for all time to come: she will wander the streets forever! Let
her stand in the shadow of the wall! Let drunken men strike her and
use her foully!" He rolled over toward the wall, coughing, growling,
muttering. Then once more he subsided.
    I waited, fearful that the next he would curse would be Gilgamesh.
I dreaded that, even if his mind was in disarray. But he did not curse
me. When next he opened his eyes he looked straight at me and said,
in his normal voice, "Why, brother, is it the middle of the night?"
  "I think it is."
  "The fever is easing, perhaps. Have I been dreaming?"
    "Dreaming, yes, and raving, and talking aloud. But the medicines
must be having their effect."
  "Raving? What sort of things have I said?"
    I told him that he had spoken of the gate at which he had injured
himself, and of the trapper, and of the harlot Abisimti, and that he
had cursed them all, for leading him to this pass.
      He nodded. His brow darkened. For a troubled moment he did
not speak. Then he said, "And did I curse you too, brother?"
  Shaking my head I answered, "No. Not me."
    His relief was immense. "Ah. Ah. How afraid I was that I might
have done it!"
  "You did not."
    "But if I had, it would have been the fever speaking, not Enkidu.
You know that."
  "Yes. I know that."
    He smiled. "I have been too harsh, brother. It was not the gate's
fault that I hurt 'myself. Nor Ku-ninda's, that I was snared. Nor
Abisimti's. Is it possible to call back curses, do you think?"  "I think it can be done, brother."
    "Then I call back mine. If it were not for the trapper and the
woman, I would never have known you. I'd not have learned to eat
bread fit for gods, and drink the wine of kings. I'd not have been
clothed with noble garments, and had glorious Gilgamesh for my
brother. So let the trapper prosper. Yes, and the woman, why, let
no man scorn her. Let kings and princes and nobles love her, and
heap up carnelian and lapis and gold for her, and forsake their wives
for her. Let her enter into the presence of the gods. There! I call back
my curses!" He looked at me strangely and in a different voice said,
"Gilgamesh, am I going to die soon?"
    "You will not. The healers are doing their work on you. A little
while longer, and you will be your old self again."
    "Ah. Ah. How good it will be to rise from this bed, and run and
hunt beside you, brother! A little while longer, you say?"
    "Just a little while." What else could I say? Why not let him have
an hour of peace amid his pain? And hope was rising in me for his
return to health. "Sleep now, Enkidu. Rest. Rest."
    He nodded and closed his eyes. I watched him nearly until dawn,
when I fell asleep myself. I was awakened by the healers returning,
bringing beasts for the morning sacrifices. Quickly I looked toward
Enkidu. He had not sustained the night's recovery. He seemed fe-
verish again, and wandering in delirium. But I suppose there will be
many relapses, I told myself, before this thing is lifted from him.
    That day they did the divination by oil-bubble and water, gath-
ering around in a little circle to observe the patterns the oil made as
it floated in the cup. "Look," said one, "the oil sinks and rises again!"
And another said, "It moves in an easterly direction. It disperses and
covers the cup." I did not trouble to ask what these omens meant.
I had become certain of Enkidu's restoration.
    They performed the incantation of Eridu on him. The priests
fashioned a figure of Enkidu out of dough, and sprinkled the water
of the incantation on it: water the life-giver, water the all-cleansing.
By prayer and ritual they drew a demon from him into a pot of
water, which they broke, spilling the demon into the fireplace. They
took another demon out in a piece of string, which they tied in knots.
They peeled an onion, throwing the peels one by one into the fire,
demon after demon. There were many more such spells.
    Meanwhile the physician went about his work also, setting out
his potions of cassia and myrtle and asafoetida and thyme, his bark
of willow and fig and pear, his ground turtle-shell and powdered
snake-skin, and the rest. Both salt and saltpeter figured in his healing
draughts, and beer and wine, and honey, and milk. I noticed the
exorcists looking sourly toward the doctor as he mixed his medicines,
and he at them: no doubt there is some rivalry between them, each
thinking that he alone is the true worker of the cure. But I know
that one is useless without the other. The medicines ease pain and
make swellings go down and soothe the chilled brow, but unless the
demons be driven out as well, what good are the potions? It is the
demons who bring the sickness in the first place.
    Because I knew that the illness of Enkidu came by decree of the
gods, to punish us for our pride in killing Huwawa and destroying
the Bull of Heaven, I felt I should take the medicines too. Perhaps
the same disease lurked in me as in Enkidu, though I had been spared
its effects by divine command; and perhaps Enkidu would not be
rid of his affliction until I too had been purified. So whatever potion
Enkidu drank I swallowed also, and foul-tasting stuff it was, most
of it. I gagged and choked and retched over it, but I drank it all
down, though often it left me dizzy the better part of an hour af-
terward. Did I achieve anything by doing that? Who knows? The
ways of the gods are beyond our comprehension. The thoughts of
a god are like deep waters: who can fathom them?
    Some days Enkidu seemed stronger. Some days he seemed weaker.
For three days running he lay with his eyes closed, moaning and
making no sense. Then he awakened and sent for me. He looked
pale and strange. The fever had ravaged his flesh: he was hollow-
cheeked and his skin hung loosely on his frame. He stared at me.
His eyes were dark glowing stars ablaze in the caverns of his face.
Suddenly I saw the unmistakable hand of death resting on his shoul-
der, and I wanted to weep.
      I felt utterly helpless. I the son of divine Lugalbanda, I the king,
I the hero, I the god: for all my power, helpless. Helpless.
  He said, "I dreamed again last night, Gilgamesh."
  "Tell me."
    His voice was calm. He spoke as though he were twelve thousand
leagues away. "I heard the heavens moan," he said, "and I heard the
earth respond. I stood alone and there was an awful being before
me. His face was as dark as that of the black bird of the storm, and
his talons were the talons of an eagle. He seized me and held me fast
in his claws: I was crushed up against him, and I was smothering.
Then he changed me, brother, he turned my arms to wings covered
with feathers like a bird's. He looked at me, and led me away, down
to the House of Darkness, down to the dwelling of Ereshkigal the
queen of hell: along the road from which there is no way back, down
to the house which no one leaves. He took me into that dark place
where the dwellers sit in darkness, and have dust for their bread and
clay for their meat."
  I stared at him. I could say nothing.
    "I saw the dead ones. They are clad like birds, with wings for
garments. They see no light, they dwell in darkness. I went into the
House of Dust and and I saw the kings of the earth, Gilgamesh, the
masters, the high rulers, and they were without their crowns. They
were waiting on the demons like servants, bringing them baked
meats, pouring cool water from the waterskins. I saw the priests and
priestesses, the seers, the chanters, all the holy ones: what good had
their holiness done them? They were servants." His eyes were hard
and glittering, like gleaming bits of obsidian. "Do you know who
I saw? I saw Etana of Kish, who flew in heaven: there he was, down
below! I saw gods there: they had horns on their crowns, they were
preceded by thunder as they walked. And I saw Ereshkigal the queen
of hell, and her recorder Belit-seri, who knelt down before her,
marking the tally of the dead on a tablet. When she saw me she lifted
her head and said, "Who has brought this one here?" Then I awoke,
and I felt like a man who wanders alone in a terrible wasteland, or
like one who has been arrested and seized and whose heart pounds
with fright. O brother, brother, let some god come to your gate,
and strike out my name and write his own in its place!"
    I was all pain, everywhere in my soul, and I think in my breast
also, as I listened to this. I said, "I will pray to the great gods for
you. It is a dire dream."
  "I will die soon, Gilgamesh. You will be alone again."
    What could I say? What could I do? Sorrow froze me. Alone again,
yes. I had not forgotten those days of bleakness before the coming
of my friend and brother. Alone again, as I had been before. Those
words were like a knell to all my joy. I was chilled; I had no strength.
    He said, "How strange it will be for you, brother. You will journey
here and you will journey there, and the time will come when you
turn to me to say, Enkidu, do you see the elephant in the marsh,
Enkidu, shall we scale that city's walls? And I will not answer you.
I will not be beside you. You will have to do those things without me."

There was a hand at my throat. "It will be very strange, yes."
He sat up a little way and turned his head toward me. "Your eyes
look different today. Are you crying? I don't think I've ever seen
you cry before, brother." He smiled. "I feel very little pain now."
    I nodded. I knew why that was. Sorrow bent me like a weight of
stone.
    Then the smile faded and in a harsh somber voice he said, "Do
you know what I regret most, brother, apart from leaving you to
be alone? I regret that because of the curse of the great goddess I
must die in this shameful way, in my bed, wasting slowly away.
The man who falls in battle dies a happy death: but I must die in shame."
    That did not matter to me as it did to him. The thing that I
struggled with then had nothing to do with such delicate matters as
shame and pride. I was already bereaved while he still lived; I suffered
his loss. It made no difference to me how or where that loss had
been inflicted.
  "Death is death, however it may come," I said, shrugging.
  "I would have had it come in a different way," said Enkidu.
    I could say nothing. He was in the grip of death and we both
knew it, and words would not alter anything now. The baru-priest
Namennaduma had known it from the first, and had tried to tell me,
but in my blindness I would not see the truth. Enkidu's death had
come to him; and Gilgamesh the king was helpless against it.

HE LINGERED eleven days more. His suffering increased each day,
until I could barely bring myself to look upon him. But I stayed by
his side until the end.
    At dawn on the twelfth day I saw his life leave him. At the last
moment it seemed to me in the darkness that there was a faint red
haze about him; the haze rose and drifted away, and all was dark.
That was how I knew he was dead. I sat in silence, feeling the solitude
come rolling in upon me. At first I did not weep, though I remember
thinking that the wild ass and the gazelle must be weeping, now.
All the wild creatures of the steppes were mourning Enkidu, I thought:
even the bear, even the hyena, even the panther. The paths in the
forests where he used to dwell would weep for him. The rivers, the
streams, the hills.
    I reached out and touched him. Was he growing cold already? I
could not tell. He seemed merely to be sleeping, but I knew this was
not sleep. The fevers that had burned through him had left their
mark on his features in these twelve days, making him gaunt and
shrunken; but now he looked almost like his old self, calm, his face
at ease. I put my hand to his heart. I could not feel it beating. I rose
and drew the linen bedcloth over him, tenderly, as a husband might
veil his bride. But I knew that this was no veil, it was a shroud. And
then I wept. The tears came slowly at first, tears being very odd to
me: I made a little sniveling sound, I felt a warmth at the corners of
my eyes, my lips clamped themselves tight together. After a moment
of this it was easier. Some dam within me broke, and my grief came
freely. I paced back and forth before the couch like a lioness who
has been deprived of her cubs. I tore at my hair. I ripped at my fine
robes and flung them down as though they were unclean. I raged,
I stormed, I roared. No one dared approach me. I was left alone
with my terrible grief. I stayed beside the body all that day, and
another, and another after that, until I saw that the servants of Er-
eshkigal were claiming him. I knew then that I had to give him up
for burial.
    Therefore I gathered myself together. There was much that I needed
to do.
    The parting-ritual, first. I went to the cabinet where such things
are kept and brought forth a table made from elammaqu-wood, upon
which I set a bowl oflapis and a bowl of carnelian. Into one I poured
curds, into the other I poured honey; and I carried the table to the
terrace of Utu and put it out into the sunlight as an offering. I said
the proper words. When I spoke the great lamentation now it was
without faltering.
    Then I called the elders of Uruk to me. They knew, of course,
what had happened, and they wore the colors of mourning on their
arms. They looked somber, but it was only on account of my loss,
not for any loss of their own: Enkidu had meant nothing to them.
That angered me some, that they had not perceived Enkidu's virtues
as I had perceived them. But they were only ordinary men: how
could they have known, how could they have understood anything.
They were ill at ease, seeing how great my grief was. They did not
expect that of me, precisely because I was not an ordinary man. They
had thought of me as a being beyond mere mortal things like grief:
a god dwelling among them, or some such thing. Probably I had
done much to foster that belief. But now my eyes were rimmed with
red, my face was pale and swollen. They could not comprehend such
a show of humanity in me. Gilgamesh the king, Gilgamesh the god--
well, yes, but I was also Gilgamesh the man. I had suffered greatly
in the splendid isolation of my kingship, though no one about me
had realized that I suffered; and then I had found a friend; and now
that friend had been stolen from me by the demons. Therefore I
wept. What did they expect?
    I said, "I weep for my friend Enkidu. He was the axe at my side,
the dagger in my belt, the shield I held before me. He was my brother.
The loss is great. The pain cuts deep."

  "All Uruk mourns your brother," they told me. "The warriors
weep. The people in the streets weep. The ploughmen and the har-
vesters weep, Gilgamesh." But their words rang hollow to me. It
was the old story: they were telling me what they thought I wanted
to hear.
    "We will bury him as though he had been a king," I said, so they
would better comprehend what Enkidu had been.
    They looked startled at that, thinking perhaps that I might have
it in mind to send my household staff, or even a few of the elders
themselves, into the grave to keep Enkidu company. But I had no
such thought. I understood death better now than I had on that day
when the household of Lugalbanda had gone one by one under the
earth into his tomb; I saw no merit in causing other brothers to weep,
and sons and wives, for Enkidu's sake. So I told them only to prepare
for a ceremony of great splendor.
    I called out the finest of the city's craftsmen, the copper-
smiths, the goldsmiths, the lapidaries. I ordered them to make a
statue of my friend--the body of gold, the breast of lapis. I had the
grave-makers dig a shaft in the open place beside the White Platform
and line its walls with bricks of baked clay. I gathered together
Enkidu's weapons and the skins of the animals he had slain, to be
buried with him; and also I provided rich treasure to be put beside
him, cups and rings and alabaster goblets and jewels and such.
    I went to each temple in turn and formally asked the high priest
to take part in the burial of Enkidu. The one temple that I did not
visit was the one that I had built for the goddess. In truth it was
proper and necessary for Inanna to be present at the funeral of any
great man of Uruk; but I did not want her there. I held her responsible
for Enkidu's death: I was certain she had called his doom down upon
him with her curses, in her anger at my overshadowing her power
in the city. I would not have her at the funeral of the friend she had
ripped from me; I would not give her the chance to gloat over the
great wound she had inflicted on me. Let her stay huddled in her
temple, I thought. No one but her handmaidens had seen her since
the day of the loosing of the Bull of Heaven. That was how I preferred
it to be.
    But it was not how she preferred it to be. On the day of the funeral
I led the march from the palace to the grave-shaft, weeping all the
while, and stood beside the priests and my mother as we made the
sacrifices of oxen and goats and poured out the libations of milk and
honey. The hunter Ku-ninda was with me; the sacred harlot Abisimti
was with me also. They had known Enkidu even longer than I, and
they mourned him nearly as deeply. Abisimti's eyes were reddened
with weeping, her garments were torn; Ku-ninda, stark and silent,
stood with clenched fists and lips clamped tight, holding back fierce
sorrow. I had them both aid me in performing the rites. Just as we
were coming to the point in the service where the pure cool water
is poured as a refreshment for the dead man as he goes to the House
of Dust and Darkness, there was a stirring behind me, and I turned
and saw Inanna amidst a little group of her priestesses.
    She looked more like hell's queen than heaven's. Her face was
painted ghostly white, and her eyelids and even her lips were black-
ened 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 laugh-
ter 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.

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, Gil-
 gamesh, 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.t 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.
    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 Gil-
gamesh 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. IfI 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 afi~aid, sounded strange to me even as I said them: there
was that much of Gilgamesh still alive within me. I am a~aid. 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 In-
anna'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.

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 chil-
dren were born to those who had lost theirs. Once more the world
teemed with people, and our noise went up to heaven like the bel-
lowing 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 de-
struction 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 all
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.
    The launching was a difficult one: they had to shift the ballast
about until the ship sat deep in the water. Then the king loaded all
his gold and all his silver into her and put on board all the people
of his household and all his craftsmen, and also animals of every
kind, bringing them two by two, both the tame beasts of the pastures
and the wild creatures of the field. The hour of the downpour would
soon be at hand, he knew.
    The sky darkened and the wind began to blow. Ziusudra went
on board the ship himself and battened down her hatches. At dawn
a black cloud appeared on the horizon; there was thunder, and a
terrible wind. The gods rose up against the world, and lightning
flashed: the torches of the gods, setting the world ablaze with their
flashing. Tempests roared, and the rains came sweeping down. And
the Land was shattered like a pot that has been tossed against a wall.
    All day long the storm-winds blew out of the south, growing
more terrible the longer they raged. The flood-waters gathered their
force and fell on the Land like a conquering army. There was no
daylight; no one could see anything; the crests of the mountains were
submerged. The gods themselves became fearful of the deluge and
shrank back, ascending into the loftiest heaven, the heaven of the
Sky-father. There they cowered like dogs, crouching against the
outer bulwark. Inanna the Queen of Heaven wept and cried out like
a woman in childbirth to see her people tumbling into the sea. The
gods wept with her. Humbled and frightened by the forces they had
let loose, they sat bowed and trembling, and they wept.
    Six days and six nights the wind blew and the tempest and the
rain swept the land. On the seventh day the storm abated: the flood-
waters no longer rose, the turbulent sea became still. Ziusudra opened
the hatch of his ship and came out on deck. What he beheld struck
him to his knees with terror. All was still. But he could see no land,
only water stretching in every direction to the horizon. In awe and
fear he covered his head and wept, for he knew that all mankind had
returned to clay except those he had saved aboard his ship, and he
saw that the world and everything that was in it had perished.
    He sailed on and on in that great expanse of sea, seeking a coast;
and in time he saw the dark massive slopes of Mount Nisir standing
above the water. He went toward it; and there the ship came to rest.
She held fast and could not budge. Three days, four days, five days,
six, the ship rested against the side of the mountain. On the seventh,
Ziusudra set free a dove; but she found no resting place, and returned.
He loosed a swallow; but the swallow had nowhere to alight, and
she too came back. Then Ziusudra let a raven loose. The bird flew
high and far, and saw that the waters had begun to retreat: he
flew about in a wide circle, he found something to eat, he cawed,
flew off, and did not return to the ship. Then Ziusudra opened all
the hatches to the four winds and the sunlight. He went out onto
mountain, and poured a libation, and set out seven holy vessels and
seven more, and he burned cane and cedarwood and myrtle to the
gods who had spared him. The gods smelled the savor of the sacrifice,
and they came to enjoy it. Inanna was one of those who came, clad
in all the jewels of heaven. And she cried, "Yes, come, O ye gods!
Let all of you come. But let Enlil not come, for he is the one who
brought this deluge on my people!"
    Nevertheless Enlil came. He looked about in fury and demanded
to know how it had come to pass that some human souls had escaped
destruction. "You should ask that of Enki," said Ninurta, the war-
rior, the god of wells and canals. And Enki stepped forward, and
said boldly to Enlil, "It was a senseless thing to bring on this deluge.
In your wrath you destroyed the sinner and the innocent alike. It
was too much. It was far too much. If you had sent a wolf to punish
the evil ones, or a lion, or even another famine, or a pestilence--
yes, that might have been sufficient. But not this terrible flood! Now
mankind is gone, Enlil, and all the world is drowned. Only this ship
and its people survive. And that has happened only because Ziusudra
the wise king saw the plans of the gods in a dream, and took action
to save himself and his people. Go to him, Enlil. Speak with him.
Forgive him. Show him your love."
    Enlil's heart was moved by compassion. He had seen the devas-
tation worked by the flood, and sorrow overwhelmed him. So he
went on board the ship of Ziusudra. He took the king by one hand
and the king's wife by the other, and drew them to his side, and
touched their foreheads to bless them. And Enlil said, "You have
been mortal, but you are mortal no longer. Henceforth you shall be
like gods, and live far away from mankind, at the mouth of the
rivers, in the golden land of Dilmun."
    Thus were Ziusudra and his wife rewarded. There in the land of
Dilmun they live to this day, eternal, unfiying, those two by whose
faith and perseverance the world was reborn in the days when Enlil
sent the Flood to scour mankind to destruction.
    Such was the tale I heard from the harper Ur-Kununna, when I
was a child in the palace of Lugalbanda.

I WANDERED on, in misery and madness; but now my wandering
had a purpose, mad and miserable though it might be. I could not
tell you how many months it was I marched, nor across what steppes
and valleys and plains. Sometimes the sun hung before me like a
vast angry eye of white fire, sending up shimmering heat-waves that
dizzied me as I plodded toward it; and sometimes the sun was pale
and low on the horizon behind me, or to my left. I could not tell
you which directions those were. I found rivers and swam them; I
doubt that they were either of the Two Rivers of the Land. I crossed
swamps and places where the moist sand was like muck beneath me.
I crossed dunes and dry wastes. I made my way through thickets of
thorny canes that slashed me like vengeful enemies. I fed on the flesh
of hares and boars and beavers and gazelles, and where there were
none of those I ate the meat of lions and jackals and wolves, and
when I found no animals of any kind I ate roots and nuts and berries;
and where there was nothing at all to eat, I ate nothing at all, and it
did not matter to me. Divine strength was in me. Divine purpose
was upon me.
    I came in time to a mountain that I knew must be the one called
Mashu, which eyery da'y keeps watch over the rising and the setting
of the sun. I knew it to be Mashu because its twin summits reached
to the vault of heaven and its breasts reached down to the gates of
the nether world. There is only one mountain like that on the earth.
They say that scorpion-men guard its gate, creatures that are half
man and half monster, with arching tails of many joints that hold a
fatal sting. So fearsome are these scorpion-men, so it is said, that the
radiance of their eyes is terrifying; a splendor comes from them that
gleams like fire in the cliffs; their glance alone strikes death. Perhaps
it is so. I saw no scorpion-men when I made my ascent of Mashu.
Or rather, I encountered some poor sad things that were monstrous
enough, though far from terrifying, and it may be that others, hearing
of them at second or third report, have construed them into frightful
monsters. It is often that way with travelers' tales, I suspect.
    But I will not deny that I felt a tremor of fear when I met the first
of these creatures as I came up the middle of Mashu to the flattened
place that lies between the two peaks. It must have been watching
me some time before I spied it, standing on high ground well above
me, its arms folded calmly.
    By Enlil, it was strange to behold! I suppose it was more a man
than anything else, but its skin was dark and hard and horny where
I could see it, much like the crust of some scuttling sea-creature, or,
yes, like the hard covering of a scorpion. I came at once to a halt
when I saw it, remembering what I had heard of the guardians of
this mountain and their lethal gaze. I flung my arm quickly across
my eyes and looked down. My heart leaped in dismay.
    In a language much like that of the desert folk, the scorpion-
creature said, "You have nothing to fear from me, stranger. 'We get
few enough visitors here: it would be a pity to murder them."
    Those words steadied me. I grew calm, and I lowered my arm
and stared at the creature unafraid. "Is this the mountain called Ma-
shu?" I asked.  "It is."
  "Then I am very far from home indeed."
  "Where is your home, and why have you left it?"
    "I am of Uruk the city," I replied, "and Gilgamesh is my name.
And I have left my home because I seek something that cannot be
found there."
  "Gilgamesh? Is that not the king's name, in Uruk?"
  "How do you know that, in these far-off mountains?"
    "Ah, my friend, everyone knows Gilgamesh the king, who is two
parts a god and one part mortal! Is there a happier man on earth than
he?"
  "I think there must be," I said. Slowly I walked up the rock-
strewn path until I stood on a level with the scorpion-creature. I said
in a quiet way, "You should know that I am Gilgamesh the king.
Or was, for I have left my kingship a long way behind me." We
studied each other, face to face, neither of us, I suppose, quite know-
ing what to make of the other. My terror of the creature was alto-
gether gone, though the strangeness of its skin awakened shivers in
me. Whether the scorpion-being was part demon, or merely some
pitiful thing deformed at birth, I could not tell you: but its eyes,
staring out from that horror of a face, were sad gentle eyes, and I
have never seen any demon whose eyes were sad and gentle.
    After a time the creature turned, beckoning me to follow, and in
a slow clumsy hobbling way it went around the curve of the hill to
a little hut made of fiat rocks and twisted boughs. There was a second
scorpion-being there, a woman even more hideous than the other,
with thick yellowish skin that rose in jagged crests and ridges like a
heavy armor. Had the scorpion-man somehow managed to find a
mate who shared his affliction? Or was this woman his sister, who
had had the deformity from the same blood? I never learned which.
Perhaps she was mate and sister both: the gods grant that those two
do not engender a race of their sort upon our world! Hideous though
she was, she was kindly, and fell to work at once brewing a sort of
tea of tree-needles and ground nuts to offer me. The hour was late,
the air was thin, the day was growing cold. Stars could be seen
against the dismal gray of the afternoon sky.
    The man-creature said, "This wanderer is Gilgamesh king of Uruk,
whose body is of the flesh of the gods."
    "Ah," she said, as unsurprised as if he had told her, "This is the
goatherd Kish-udul," or "This is the fisherman Ur-shuhadak." She
poured the tea into a crude black clay beaker and handed it to me.
"Even if he is a god, he will want something warm to drink," she said.
    "I am not a god," I told her. "I have a god's blood in me, but I am mortal."
  "Ah," she said.
    The other said, "He has come here seeking something, but he has
not told me what it is."
  The woman shrugged. "He will not find it here, whatever it may
be." And to me she said, "There is nothing here at all. This is a bleak
and empty place."
  "What I seek lies beyond this place."
    Again she shrugged, and sipped her tea in silence. It seemed that
she did not care why I was here, or what I sought. Well, why should
she care? What was Gilgamesh and his pain to her? Here she lived
in this terrible place, in this loathsome body, and if a wandering
sorrowful king came along one cold gray afternoon in search of
mysteries and fantasies, what was that to her? I studied her closely
for a time. Her face was all folds and crevices, monstrous and re-
pellent. But I saw that her eyes were soft and warm within that
hideous shell, tender eyes, a woman's eyes. It was as though she had
been attacked and devoured whole by something ghastly and strange,
and now peered out from within its husk.
    But the other had more curiosity. "What is it you search for,
Gilgamesh?" he asked.
    "In Uruk," I said, "a stranger came to me--Enkidu was his name--
and we fell into a friendship that held us with a bond stronger than
any bond I know, stronger even than the bond between lover and
beloved. He was my friend. He and I endured all manner of hardships
together, and we loved each other dearly."  "And then he died?"
  "You know that too?" I said, startled.
    "I know nothing. But I see your grief like a black cloud about
you."
    "I wept for him day and night. I would not even give him up for
burial, until I saw that it had to be done. Perhaps I thought that if I
wept enough, my friend would come back to life. But he did not.
And since he died my own life has been empty. Since he died I have
wandered in the wilderness like a hunter. No: like a madman. I see
nothing awaiting me but death, and the knowledge of that death
drains my life of all life. Death is my enemy." I looked the scorpion-
man close in the eyes. "I mean to vanquish death!" I cried.
    "We all must die," said the woman in a dull downcast way. "It
comes none too soon."
  Fiercely I said, "For you, maybe!"
    "It comes, whether we want it to or not. I say, better to accept
it than to do battle against it. It is a battle no one can win."
     I shook my head. "You are wrong. How long ago was the Flood?
 Ziusudra still lives!"
     "By special favor of the gods," she said. "He is the only one. That
 will not happen again."
     Her words were cold water in my face. "Are you sure? How can
 you know that?"
     The scorpion-man put out his hand to me. It felt rough as wood
 against my skin. "Gently, gently, friend. You grow too excited; you
 will give yourself a fever. If the gods chose once upon a time to
 spare Ziusudra, what is that to you?"
     "More than a trifle," I said. "Tell me this: How far is it from here
 to the land of Dilmun?"
      "A very great distance, I think. You must go over the crest of the
 mountain, and down the difficult far side to the sea, and then--"
   "Can you show me the way?"
    "I can tell you what I know. But what I know is that no one has
ever reached Dilmun from here, and no one ever will. The far side
of the mountain is the darkest wilderness. You will die of the heat
and thirst. You will tumble into ravines. Or you will be eaten by
beasts. Or you will be lost in the darkness, and starve."
  "Only point out the way to me, and I will find Dilmun."
  "And what then, Gilgamesh?" the scorpion-man asked calmly.
    I said, "I mean to seek out Ziusudra. I have questions to ask him,
about death, about life. He has lived hundreds of years, or perhaps
it is thousands: he must know the secrets of all things. He will tell
me how death may be vanquished."
    Both the creatures looked at me, and their eyes were pitying, as
though I were the monstrosity and not they. But they said nothing.
The woman offered me more tea. The man arose and hobbled to
the back of his hut and brought me a kind of bread made from some
wild seed of the mountain. It tasted like baked sand, but I ate the
whole piece.
    After a long while he said, "No man of woman born has crossed
the wilderness that lies ahead of you, so far as I have ever heard, and
I have lived here a long while. But I wish you well, Gilgamesh. In
the morning I will take you to the crest and show you the way; and
may the gods guide you in safety toward the sea."
  He sounded as though he were talking to a child who against all
reason must have his way. There was sadness in his voice, and some
anger also, and resignation. It was clear that he felt I would only
come to grief. Well, that was a reasonable thing to believe; and he
had seen what lay beyond the mountain pass and I had not. It did
not matter. I had no dread of coming to grief, for I had come to
grief already, and it was my purpose now to move onward into the
land that lies beyond grief. For that I must reach Dilmun, and speak
with ancient Ziusudra, and if I must make that journey in sorrow
and pain, in peril, in cold or in heat, sighing or weeping, so be it. I
slept that night on the floor of the scorpion-creatures' hut, listening
to the rasping dry scratchy sounds of their breathing. When dawn
came they fed me, tea again and cakes of sandy meal, and as the sun
burst upon us between the peaks of Mashu the scorpion-man said,
"Come. I will show you the way." Together we clambered to the
crest of the pass. I looked down into a bowl of tumbled jagged rocks
the color of baked bricks, stretching downward as far as I could see.
To the right and to the left lay wilderness: small twisted snag-armed
trees in the higher reaches, a dense black forest farther down. It
looked like a place from which all presence of the gods had been
withdrawn.
  "Are there wild beasts?" I asked.
  "Lizards. Goats with long horns. Some lions, not many."
  "And are there demons?"
  "It would not surprise me."
    "I have encountered their kind before," I said. "Perhaps they will
prefer not to trouble me, since they know I will trouble them if they do."
  "Perhaps," said the scorpion-man.
  "Are there streams? Springs?"
      "Very few, until you reach the lower forest. I think there must
be water there, since the trees grow so thick."
  "You have not been that far down?"
  "No," he said. "Never. No one has been."
    "That will not be true much longer," I said, and took my leave
of him with warm thanks for his kindnesses. He nodded but did not
offer me an embrace. He was still standing at the crest of the pass
long after I began my descent; it must have been hours later when
I looked up, and saw his misshapen monstrous form outlined against
the sky. Nor did he cease watching me after that. I caught sight of
him twice more as I made my winding way downward, and then
the crest was lost to my view.

IT WAS a journey that held few delights and many challenges. I do
not remember it fondly. For days I was descending the southern face
of the mountain, and the heat was intense: the sun, as it climbed,
beat against me like a gong that would not be silent. I thought the
force of it would blind and deafen me both. The nights were bitter
cold, with howling knife-keen winds. The rocks were sharp-edged
and loose, and when I stepped on them the wrong way they slid,
sending clouds of dry red dust up into my nostrils. Twice I injured
my legs in the scramble; more than twice I cut myself by falling; I
was constantly plagued by thirst; and furious clouds of stinging in-
sects hovered about my face all the way down the slope, seeking my
eyes. For food I had none but the lizards that I caught as they lay
sleeping in the sun and the long-legged hopping insects that abounded
everywhere. For water I chewed the twigs of the sad gnarled little
plants, though their sap burned my mouth. At least I saw no demons.
I saw some lions, as dusty and woebegone as I was myself; but they
kept far away. I wondered often if I would live to see the end of the
descent, and more than once I was certain I would not.
    Yet it often happens that that which is held forth to one as utterly
impossible turns out to be no more than extremely difficult, or even
merely inconvenient, in the actuality. That was the case here. I will
not pretend it was an easy descent: it may be that no man other than
I could have accomplished it, excepting only Enkidu. But it proved
to be altogether possible to achieve. I will say this much, that I would
not care to attempt it again.
    Then the fearful passage was behind me. When I was done with
 y descent of Mashu I found myself entering a dry high tableland
 where only small thorny plants grew: not a pretty place, but one, at
 any rate, that did not tax my strength to travel through it. I was
 many days in crossing it. I walked in the patient plodding way of a
 mule, or an ox in the yoke.
     But as I made my way onward, the quality of the land began
 slowly to change. The light became less harsh; the soil, which had
 been red and barren, grew darker and seemed more fertile. A warm
 tender wind that carried moisture came to me out of the south. I
 passed through a vale so narrow that I could almost touch both its
 sides with my shoulders, and when I came out of it I emerged into
 a misty country of soft air and gentle sunlight, where a sy~eet shining
 dew fell into the valleys from the hills ahead.
    How good that felt, when the dew wrapped itself around me and
bathed my parched dusty skin! It might almost have been the garden
of the gods, that place. Flowers bloomed everywhere, with a fra-
grance like none I had known before. There was pale green grass,
kind against my legs. The air shimmered as though it were silver. I
saw the land unfolding before me like a great golden fan, wide and
fiat with green hills at the rim and a glittering sea somewhere farther
onward. I could not say how long it would take me to reach that
sea, but I knew that I would get there, and that I would find the
blessed land of Dilmun upon its farther shore.
    Still bruised and stiff from my long descent, wild-eyed, clad only
in a lion's tattered and cracking hide, I walked in wonder through
this land of beauty. It seemed to me that the fruits that hung heavy
on the vines were fruits of carnelian, and that the leaves of the plants
were lapis lazuli, with sweet lush fruit nestling among them. Wher-
ever I looked I thought I saw living jewels: agate and coral, onyx,
topaz.
    As I walked amidst this splendor I felt my injuries beginning to
heal. I was covered all over by the festering bites of the stinging
insects and the wounds I had received from the sliding tumbling
rocks; my hair and beard were filthy tangles with sores beneath them;
my tongue was swollen from thirst: but I began to heal. I found a
cool lagoon of pure blue water, and drank and cleansed myself, and
rested a long while, listening to the droning of bees that never thought
to sting me. Their sound was like a loving music. White birds with
legs like stilts paused in their foraging to look at me, and it seemed
almost that they smiled.
    I was at peace. It was a long time since I had known peace of any
sort; and I do not think that I had ever known peace of the sort I
felt just then. There was a joy and a silence about this land that
brought me to rest, as I lay by the side of that cool lagoon. I felt no
urgent need to move onward, nor any to go back to my city of Uruk:
I was content where I was. I wonder now if I had ever before known
a time when I was content to be where I was; but I did not ask the
question then, feeling no need for answers. A man truly at peace
does not ask himself questions of that kind. But peace and joy are
not native to my spirit, I think; I am not accustomed to spending
my time in their company. For as I lay there I thought of Enkidu,
who knew nothing of this wondrous place. "Do you see, brother?"
I wanted to say to him. "The vines bear jewels for fruit, and the
birds walk on stilts, and the air is sweet as young wine! Have you
ever seen a place so beautiful, brother? In all your wanderings in the
forest, have you ever seen a place like this?"
    ! could say it, but he would not hear me, and a terrible sadness
came upon me in the midst of all my joy and peace. I would have
wept, but I was beyond all weeping; and so I could not rid myself
of my sadness.
    Despair returned to my heart. I could not find my way back to
that moment of peace. This place was beautiful, yes, but I was alone
and could never forget that; and every breath I drew brought me
only that much closer to my end. So once more I was enveloped in
grief and brooding, which had come to seem my natural state.
    Then in my sorrow I looked up toward the sun and saw Utu the
bright god looking down at me. I sent him half a prayer, just the
smallest of a request for some solace. And I thought I heard him say,
"Do you think there is any hope of that? How far you have traveled,
Gilgamesh! And for what? For what? You will never find the life
for which you search."
  "I mean to find it, great one," I told the god.
  "Ah, Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh, how foolish you are!"
    I tried to look straight into the heart of the god, but I could not.
So I turned and looked at him shining on the breast of the lagoon,
and to the god in the pool I said, "Hear me, Utu! Have I marched
and roved all through the wilderness for nothing? Am I simply to
lie down now in the heart of the earth and sleep for all the years to
come? Let it not be so! Spare me from that long darkness, Utu! Let
my eyes continue to see the sun until I have had my fill of it!"
    I think he must have heard my prayer. But I cannot tell you what
reply he made to me, for I heard none; and after some little time a
cloud passed across the face of the sun, and I no longer felt the
presence of Utu close by me. I rose then and wrapped my tattered
lion-skin about me, and readied myself to move on. For all the beauty
of this place I could not regain that sense of joy that I had known
for a while here. But the despair had passed from me also. I was
calm. Perhaps I felt nothing at all. That is not peace; but it is better
than despair.
    I went onward, feeling nothing, thinking nothing; and in a few
days more the air brought me a new taste, sharp and odd, like the
taste of metal on the tongue. It was the tang of salt; it was the tang
of the sea. My long pilgrimage thus was coming near its end. From
that taste of salt in the air, I knew that I must be approaching the
shore of the land that lies opposite the blessed isle of Dilmun, where
ever-living Ziusudra dwells. Of that I had no doubt.

I CAME into the city that lies upon the coast opposite Dilmun
looking like a wild man, like a second Enkidu. It is not truly a city,
I suppose; it is not a tenth the size of Uruk, it is nowhere near as
large even as Nippur or Shuruppak. It is only a small seaside town,
a village, rather; a place where fishermen live, and those who repair
the nets of fishermen. But to me it seemed like a city, for I had been
in the wilderness so long.
    In truth it was a pitiful place. Its streets were unpaved, its gardens
were sparse and ill-tended, the salt of the air was devouring the
brickwork of its buildings. I saw what may have been a temple; at
any rate it was raised on a little platform. But it was a small and
shabby structure and I could not tell you the name of the god to
which it was devoted. I doubt that it was any god of ours. The people
here were slim and dark-skinned, and they went practically naked
except for a strip of white cloth around their waists. As well they
might, for it was as hot here as it is in the Land in the depths of
summer; but the season here was not summer yet. A tawdry town;
still, to me it was a city. I trudged through it, looking for lodging
and someone who could tell me where I might hire a ferryman to
take me to Dilmun.
    I think any stranger would have stirred excitement in that sleepy
village. Few travelers are apt to seek it for its splendor. Visitors of any
sort must be rarities. But certainly it was bound to cause some buzzing
when a man of giant size came marching through the shabby streets,
wild-eyed and gaunt, clad in the skin of a lion, leaning on a great pointed
staff. Some little children saw me first--they ran off in fright--and
then a few older boys, and then one by one the townsfolk came to stare
and point. I heard them whispering. They spoke a version of that lan-
guage which the desert tribes speak, and which is spoken in many places
on the borders of the Land. The way they used it here was not much
like the way it is spoken by the people of the desert race who have come
to live in the cities of the Land; but I could understand it well enough.
Some of them thought I was a demon, and some a shipwrecked pirate,
and some a brigand. I said to them, "Is there a place where I can buy
food and drink here, and a bed for the night?" They broke into laughter
at my words-- a nervous laughter, perhaps, or perhaps it was only that
my accent was so barbarous. But then one woman pointed down a
crooked muddy street to a little white-walled building, prettier and less
ramshackle than any other in the vicinity. The breeze brought me a
whiffofale from it: a sailors' tavern, I realized.
    I went to it. As I neared its gate, a woman appeared and looked
out at me. She was tall and comely, with shrewd straightforward
eyes and a strong body: her shoulders were almost as broad as a
man's. For a moment she stared at me as if I were a wolf come to
her door; and then with great force she slammed the gate in my face.
I heard a bolt being thrust home within.
  "Wait, what is this?" I cried. "All I seek is a night's lodging!"
  "You may not have it here," she called from the far side.
    "Is that the hospitality of this place? What did you see that fright-
ened you so? Come, woman, I will do you no harm!"
    There was silence. Then she said, "It is your face that is frightening.
It is the face of a murderer, I think."
    "A murderer? No, woman, no murderer, only a tired wayfarer!
Open up! Open!" And in my weariness a terrible anger came over
me. I lifted my staff and said, "Open, or I'll smash the door! I'll
break down the gale!" I pounded once, and once again, and I heard
the wood creak. It would not have been a heavy task for me to shatter
it. I pounded a third time, and then I heard the bolt sliding.
    The door opened and she stood before me, looking not at all
terrified. Her jaw was set, her arms were folded over her breasts.
There was anger in her eyes to equal my own. Sharply she said, "Do
you know what the price of a new door would be? By what right
do you stand there hammering?"
  "I seek lodging, and these people tell me this is a tavern."
"So it is. But I am not required to take in every wandering rogue
who comes along."
  "You do me an injustice. I am no rogue, woman."
  "Then why do you have the face of one?"
    I told her that was an injustice too: I had come a long way, and
the journey had left its mark on me, but I was no rogue. I took some
pieces of silver from the pouch at my waist and showed them to her.
"If you will not let me sleep here this night, then will you at least
sell me a mug of ale?" I asked.
  "Come you in," she said grudgingly.
    I stepped inside. She closed the door behind me. The place was
cool and dark; I was glad to be in it. I held one of my silver pieces
out toward her, but she brushed it aside, saying as she drew me my
ale, "Later, later. I am not as greedy for your silver as you seem to
think. Who are you, traveler? Where do you come from?"
    I had thought I would invent a name for myself; but suddenly
there seemed no reason to do that. "I am Gilgamesh," I said, and
waited for her to laugh in my face, as one might do if I had said, "I
am Enlil," or "I am An the Sky-father." But she did not laugh. She
looked at me long and close, frowning. I felt the presence of her,
strong and warm and good. I said after a moment, "Do you know of me?"
  "Everyone knows the name of Gilgamesh."
  "And is Gilgamesh a murderer?"
  "He is king in Uruk. Kings have bloody hands."
    "I slew the demon in the forest, yes. I slew the Bull of Heaven,
when the goddess set him loose to rage in my city. I have taken
other lives when the need was there, but always only when it was
needful. Yet you closed your door to me as if I were a common
highwayman. I am not that."
    "Ah, but are you Gilgamesh? You ask me to believe a great deal, traveler!"
  "Why do you doubt me?" I asked.
    Slowly she said, "If you are indeed Gilgamesh of Uruk--and by
your size, by a certain majesty that I see about you, I suppose that
it could be that you are--why is it that your cheeks are so wasted,
that your face is so sunken, that your features are so worn by heat
and cold and wind? Is that the style of a king? And your clothes are
filthy rags. Do kings dress that way?"
    "I have been a long while in the wilderness," I replied. "Into Elam,
and north to the land called Uri, and to the deserts, and over the
mountain known as Mashu, and many other places besides. If I look
weatherbeaten and worn, there is good reason for it. But I am Gilgamesh."
    She shook her head. "Gilgamesh is a king. Kings own the world;
they live in joy. You are a man with woe in your belly and grief in
your heart. It is not difficult to see that."
    "I am Gilgamesh," I said. And because there was warmth and
strength in her, I told her why I had gone wandering. Over one mug
of ale and another I spoke of Enkidu, my brother, my friend whom
I had loved so dearly, he who had chased the wild ass of the hills,
the panther of the steppe. I told her how we had lived side by side,
how we had hunted together and wrestled together and feasted to-
gether, how we had had many grand exploits together; I told her
how he had fallen ill, and how he had died; I told her how I had
mourned him. "His death lies heavy on me," I said. "It was the most
aching of losses. How can I be at peace? My friend who I loved has
turned to clay!"
      "Your friend is dead. You have mourned him; now forget him.
No one grieves as you have grieved."  "You do not understand."
  "Then tell me," she said, and gave me still another ale.
    I drew a deep draught of the sweet foaming stuffbefore speaking.
"His death puts me into fear of my own dying. And so, fearing
death, I roam from land to land."  "We all must die, Gilgamesh."
    "So I hear, over ~/nd over: from the scorpion-woman in the moun-
tain, from Utu on high, now from you. Is it so? That I must lay me
down like Enkidu, never to rise forever and ever?"  "It is the way," she said calmly.
    I felt hot fury rising. How many times I had heard that! It is the
way, it is the way, it is the way--the words were coming to sound
like the bleating of sheep in my ears. Was I the only one who dis-
dained the sovereignty of death?

  "No!" I shouted. "I will not accept that! I will go on and on through
all the world, if I must, until I learn how I can escape death's hand."
    The tavern-woman came to me and stood looking down at me.
She let her hand rest lightly on my arm. Once again I felt the strength
of her, and the tenderness within that strength. There was goodness-
presence about this woman; she had the mother-force within her.
Softly she said, "Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh, where are you running?
You never will find this eternal life that you seek. Can you ever
come to understand that? When the gods created mankind, they
created death also. Death they allotted to us, and life they kept for
themselves."
  "No," I murmured. "No. No."
    "It is the way. Forget your quest. Live well, instead, while you
live. Let your belly be full. Be merry, day and night: dance and sing,
feast and rejoice. Put aside these tatters and let your garments be
clean and fresh. Wash your hair, bathe your body, be always fresh
and clean and pure. Cherish the little one holding your hand, cherish
the wife who delights in your embrace. This too is the way, Gil-
gamesh. And it is the only way: live joyously while you have life.
Stop your brooding; stop your seeking."  "I cannot rest," I said.
    "Tonight you will rest." She drew me to my feet. She was so tall
that she came almost to my breast. "I am Siduri," she said. "I live
quietly by the sea, and sometimes strangers come to my tavern, but
not often. When they come I treat them with courtesy, for what is
my task on earth, if it is not to look after the comfort of wayfarers?
Come with me, Gilgamesh." She bathed me then, and washed and
trimmed my hair and beard; and she made for me a meal of barley
and stewed meat, and instead of ale we drank a fine wine of a clear
golden hue. Then she laid me down on her couch and rubbed me
and stroked me until all the weariness had gone from my body; and
I spent the night clasped in her arms. No one had held me that way
since I was a baby. Her breath was warm and her breasts were full
and her skin was smooth. I lost myself in her. It is good sometimes
to lose one's self that way; but one can never remain lost for long,
so it seems. Before dawn I was awake, and restless, even with Siduri
beside me. I told her that I must go; and again she said, gently, half
reprovingly, "Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh, where are you running?"
  "I mean to go to Dilmun, and speak with Ziusudra."
  "He cannot help you."
  "Nevertheless, I will go."
  "The crossing is toilsome," she said.
  "Undoubtedly it is. Tell me how I may get there."
    "Why do you think you will find Ziusudra, even if you reach Dilmun?"
    I answered her, "Because I am Gilgamesh the king. He will see
me. And he will help me."
  "Ziusudra does not exist," said Siduri.
    With a harsh laugh I said, "Am I to believe that? The gods them-
selves rewarded him with unending life and sent him to dwell in
Dilmun. This much I know. Why do you try to discourage me,
Siduri?"
    "How stubborn you are!" She made a purring sound, and moved
closer to me. "Stay here with me, Gilgamesh! Live by the sea, live
quietly, grow old in peace!"
    I smiled. I caressed her cheeks and the deep bowls of her breasts.
But then I said, "Tell me how to reach Dilmun."
    She sighed. After a moment she replied, "There is a boatman,
Sursunabu by name, who serves Ziusudra and the priests of Ziusudra.
He comes each month to the mainland to purchase certain supplies.
I think he will be here in a day or two. When he comes, I will ask
him to take you back with him to Dilmun. Perhaps he will."  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, Gil-
gamesh! The boatman Sursunabu has come from Dilmun. Up, dress
yourself, come with me to the harbor, if you would seek passage with him."


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 paradiseindeed. 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 Dil-
mun, 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
fiat 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 mer-
 chants 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 ap-
 proached, 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, knockilag 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 col-
umns. 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 beck-
oned 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.

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 ad-
mitted 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 ! 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 stuffone 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 fiat, 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 long at the
temple and came out to say that Enlil had visited him and had com-
manded 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 Mes-
annepadda'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 himself2. 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.
    But I held my seat. I had business in these islands with Ziusudra;
I had come a long way to do what [ had to do here; I could not leave
just yet, no matter what responsibilities called me to Uruk. Or so
it seemed to me just then. Perhaps I was wrong about that; quite
certainly I was wrong about that. But I think it is just as well that I
did as I did. Had I chosen at that moment to return to my city I
would never have gained the most important wisdom that I possess.
    I slept not at all that night. Nor did I rest well in the days that
followed. I thought of very little but the arrogance of Meskiagnunna,
prancing about in Nippur's sacred precincts as though he were its
king. But I stayed in Dilmun. And on the fifth day, or perhaps it
was the sixth, the boatman Sursunabu reappeared and said to me in
his usual cheerless manner, "You are to come with me to the isle
where Ziusudra dwells."

THE ISLAND was low and flat and sandy, and--unlike high-walled
Dilmun--completely undefended. Anyone might have beached his
boat there and walked straight into the house of Ziusudra. At least
the island had no defenses of the conventional sort; but when Sur-
sunabu pulled his little craft onto the shore I noticed that along the
beach were three rows of small stone columns of the sort I had so
wantonly smashed in my foolish anger. I asked him what those were
and he said that they were Enlil's tokens to Ziusudra, given at the
time of the Flood. They protected the island from enemies: no one
would dare trespass where such tokens were erected. Whenever Sur-
sunabu journeyed to Dilmun or the mainland he always took some
of them with him and set them up beside his boat to guard him. I
felt even more ashamed then at the way I had scattered and broken
those things like a wild bull mad with wrath. But evidently I had
been forgiven, since Ziusudra was willing to have me come.
    I saw what seemed to be a temple near the center of the island, a
long low building with white walls that were brilliant in the hot
sunlight. The hairs rose upon the back of my neck as I looked toward
it: it came to me that within that building, just a few hundred paces
from me, must be the ancient Ziusudra, the survivor of the flood,
he who had walked with Enki and Enlil so long ago. The air was
still; a great silence prevailed here. There were twelve or fourteen
lesser buildings about the main structure, and some little farm-plots.
That was all. Sursunabu conducted me to one of the outbuildings,
a small square house of a single room, entirely without furnishings,
and left me there. "They will come for you," he said.
  It is a time out of time, when one is on the island of Ziusudra. I
cannot tell you how long I sat there alone, whether it was one day
or three, or five.
    At first I was fretful and even angry. I thought of walking to the
central house and searching the patriarch out; but I knew that that
was absurd and would be damaging to my purposes. I paced my
empty room, walking from corner to corner. I listened to the noise
and buzzing of my own brain, that unceasing sputtering inner chatter.
I peered at the sea, dazzling my eyes in the fiery track of sunlight
that blazed across its breast. I thought of Meskiagnunna king of Ur
and all that he was attempting to do. I thought oflnanna, who surely
was scheming in Uruk against me. I thought of my son the babe
Ur-lugal, and wondered if he would ever be king. I thought of this,
I thought of that. The hours passed, and no one came to me. And
gradually I felt the great silence of the place seeping into my soul: I
was beginning to grow calm. It was a wonderful thing. The noise
and buzzing within my mind subsided, though it did not entirely
die away; and after a while I was as still within as everything was
without. At that moment it did not matter to me what Meskiagnunna
might be doing, or Inanna, or Ur-lugal. It did not matter if they left
me sitting in this place twelve days, or twelve years, or twelve
hundred. It was a time out of time. But then I passed beyond that
wondrous calm, and grew angry again, and impatient. How long
would I be left like this? Did they not know that I was Gilgamesh
king of Uruk? Urgent business awaited me at home! Meskiagnunna,
king of Ur--Inanna--the needs of my people--Meskiagnunna--
the care of the canals--would I be home in time for the ceremony
of the lighting of the pipe?rathe pageant of the statue of An?m
Meskiagnunna~Ziusudra--Inanna--ah, the babble, the chatter of
the mind!
    And then at last they came for me, when I had made myself as
frantic as a baited hound.
    There were two of them. First came a slender solemn girl with a
dancer's supple body, who I think could not have been more than
fifteen or sixteen years old: she would have been pretty, if she smiled.
She wore a simple robe of white cotton, and no ornament, and carried
a staff of black wood carved with inscriptions of a mysterious kind.
For a long moment she stood at the threshold of my door, regarding
me in an unhurried way. Then she said, "If you are Gilgamesh of
Uruk, come forth."
  "I am Gilgamesh," I said.
    Just outside, a tall fierce-eyed dark-skinned old man, all planes
and angles, was waiting. He too wore a cotton robe and carried a
black staff, and he looked as though the sun had baked all the flesh
from his bones. I could not tell how old he was, but he seemed of
great age, and a surge of wild excitement went through me. Trem-
bling, I said, stammering, "Can it be true? Do I behold Ziusudra?"
    He laughed a little. "Hardly. But you will meet the Ziusudra at
the proper time, Gilgamesh. I am the priest Lu-Ninmarka; this is
Dabbatum. Come with us."
    That was strange, what he had said: the Ziusudra. But I knew I
ought not ask him to explain. They would offer me such explanations
as they cared to when they cared to do it, and otherwise would offer
me none at all. Of that I was sure.
    They led me to a house of fair size close by the main temple,
where I was given a white robe like theirs, and a meal of lentils and
figs. I scarcely touched it; I had not eaten in so long, I suppose, that
my stomach had forgotten the meaning of hunger. While I was there
others of that priesthood came and went in the house to take their
midday meals, and they glanced at me only casually, without speak-
ing. Many of them seemed very old, though all were sinewy, sturdy,
full of vitality. After they ate they prayed at a low altar that bore no
image, and went out to work in the fields. Which is what I did also
when Lu-Ninmarka and Dabbatum were done with their meal; they
beckoned to me and led me outside, and put me to toil.
    How good that felt, working on my knees under the hot sun!
Perhaps they thought they were testing me, seeing whether a king
would do the labor of a slave; but if that was so they did not un-
derstand that some kings take pleasure in the work of the hands. It
was the season of planting barley. They had ploughed the land already
in strips eight furrows wide, and they had dropped their seed two
fingers deep. Now I came along behind the plough, clearing the field
of clods, leveling the soil with my hands so that the barley when it
sprouted would not have to struggle against hills or valleys. You
may say it was a task that called for no great skill, and you would
be right; nevertheless I had pleasure from it.
    Afterward I returned to the dining-house. Another old man--
ancient, even, withered and parched--entered as I did, and once
again my heart leaped at the sight of him: was this one at last the
Ziusudra? But one of the others hailed him by the name of Hasi-
danum; he was simply one of the priests. This old man made a
libation of oil and lit three lamps, and knelt over them for a time
murmuring prayers in a voice too faint and feathery for me to hear.
Then he sprinkled some of his oil on me. "It is to cleanse you," the
girl Dabbatum whispered at my side. "You have the pollution of
the world still upon you."
    For the evening meal it was lentils again and fruit and a porridge
of onions and barley. We drank the milk of goats. They used no
beer here, nor wine, and ate no meat. The work of the afternoon
had awakened hunger in me, and also thirst, and I lamented the lack
of meat and drink. But they did not use them; I did not taste them
again until I had left the island.
    So it went for some days. I cannot say how many. It is a time out
of time, on the island of the Ziusudra. I worked in the sun, I ate my
simple meals, I watched the priests and priestesses at their devotions,
I waited to see what would happen next. I think I ceased to care
about Meskiagnunna, about Inanna, about Ur, about Nippur, about
Uruk itself. That great calmness of the island returned to me, and
this time it remained.
    Every second day they went to the main temple for their high
rites and ceremonials. Since [ was only a novice I could not take part
in these, but they let me kneel beside them while they chanted their
texts. The temple was a huge lofty-vaulted room devoid of all im-
ages, with a gleaming floor of black stone and a red ceiling of cedar
timbers. When first I entered I expected the patriarch to be there,
but he was not, which caused me sharp disappointment. But I taught
myself to curb my impatience: I thought perhaps they would not
admit me to the presence of the Ziusudra while I seemed too eager
for his blessing.
    I listened to their rituals without at first understanding much of
what was being said, since the language they used was a strangely
old-fashioned one. It was plainly the language of the Land, but I
think they must have been speaking it the way people spoke before
the Flood. But after a while I saw how the words were fitted together
That was all. No Land-engulfing sea, no ship of six decks, no dove,
 no swallow, no raven. I could not believe it. Such a simple story?
 It is not the way of priests to make stories simpler in the retelling.
 But what these priests were saying was that there had never been an
 all-destroying Flood, but only some heavy rains and some difficult times.
     And if that were so, what of the rest of the story, the coming of
 Enlil to speak with Ziusudra and his wife, the great god taking them
 by the hand and saying, "You have been mortal, but you are mortal no
 longer. Henceforth you shall be like gods, and live far away fi'om mankind,
 at the mouth of the rivers, in the golden land of Dilmun"--was that too
 a fable? And had I come halfway across the world for the sake of a
 mere fable? Ziusudra does not exist, the tavern-keeper Siduri had said.
 Was it so? How big a fool had I made of myself, in undertaking this
 quest? Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh, where are you running? You never will find
 this eternal life that you seek.
  Despair overcame me. I was lost in confusion and shame.
    It was then that the old priest Lu-Ninmarka rested his hand on
my shoulder and said, "Rise, Gilgamesh, bathe yourself, put on a
fresh robe. The Ziusudra wishes to see you this day."
    When I had made my preparations he took me to the main temple.
I found myself to be strangely calm; or perhaps it was not so strange.
The spell of the island was upon me. We entered the great room of
the cedar beams and black stone floor and went to its rear; Lu-
Ninmarka touched his hand to a place in the wall and it swung back
as though by sorcery, revealing a passage that curved away into
darkness. "Come," he said. He had neither a lamp nor a torch. We
went forward, and at once I felt a damp clinging mist rising out of
the earth, carrying a faint scent of salt. It is the water of the great
abyss, I thought, that must climb the roots of the island and discharge
itself into this tunnel. Lu-Ninmarka moved confidently in the dark-
ness and I was hard pressed to keep up with him. I did not allow
myself the ease of feeling my way with my hands, but walked stead-
fastly although I could see nothing. How far we went, how deep
beneath the skin of the island, I cannot say. Perhaps we were only
moving in circles, round and round the great central room following
the coils of a vast maze. But after some long time we came to a halt
in the darkness. Ahead of me I saw the faintest of amber gleams, as
gentle and dim as the brief flickers of light which come from the
glow-fires that sparkle in the summer night. Dim as it was, it startled
my eyes; but a moment later I was able to see, after a fashion. I stood
at the threshold of a small round room with earthen walls, illuminated
by a single oil lamp mounted in a high sconce. Incense sputtered in
a porphyry dish on the floor; and at the center of the room, sitting
upright and straight on a wooden stool, was the oldest man I had
ever seen. I had thought the priest Hasidanum was ancient; this one
could easily have been Hasidanum's father. I felt awe like a choking
hand at my throat. I who had walked with gods and fought with
demons was stunned at the sight of the Ziusudra.
    His face was like a mask: his eyes were white and sightless, his
mouth was a dark empty slit. He was altogether without hair, devoid
even of eyebrows. His cheeks were soft, his face was round. The
other old men fff this island had a gaunt, lean, sun-dried look about
them, sharp edges everywhere; but the Ziusudra had passed beyond
that gauntness and was smooth and pink and full-fleshed like a baby.
His blind eyes were trained upon me. He smiled and said, in a voice
that was deep and resonant, but hollow somewhere at the core, "At
last you are here, Gilgamesh of Uruk. What a long time you were
in coming?
    I could not say a word. How could I speak to this man whose
forehead had been touched by the hand of Enlil?
    "Sit. Kneel. You are too big; when you stand you rise like a wall
before me."
    I did not understand how he could know my stature, when he
was unable to see: maybe his priests had told him, or possibly he
felt the minute fluctuations of the currents of air in the passageway.
Or perhaps he had the sight beyond sight; I did not know. That last
was most likely. I knelt before him. He nodded and smiled a faraway
smile. He put forth his hand to bless me, and touched it to my cheek.
His touch had a sting; his fingertips were very cold. I thought they
must be leaving white imprints on my skin.  He said, "You draw back. Why?"
  I managed to reply, in a hoarse rusty whisper, "No reason, father."
  "Do you fear me?"
  "No--no!"
    "But you have an aura of fear about you. They tell me you are
 the greatest of heroes, that your strength is without limit, that all
 men hail you as master. What is it that you fear, Gilgamesh?"
     I stared at him in silence. My overwhelming awe was ebbing, but
 still it was hard for me to speak; so I stared. He was still as stone
 except for the expressions of his face. I thought for a moment that
 he might indeed be a statue, some ingenious construction worked
 by ropes by a priest hidden in the floor. After a time I said, "I fear
 that which every man must fear."
  From very far away he asked, "And what is that?"
     "I had a friend, and he was my other self; he fell ill and died. The
 shadow of my own death falls upon me now. It darkens my life. I
 see nothing but that lengthening shadow, father. And it frightens me.

  "Ah, then the hero is afraid of dying?"
  I could not tell if he was mocking me.
     "Not of dying," I said. "Dying is only pain, and I know pain and
 do not fear him much. Pain ends. What I am afraid of is death. I am
 afraid of being cast down into the House of Dust and Darkness,
 where I will have to dwell for all eternity."
     "And where you will no longer be a king, and drink rich wine
 from alabaster vessels? Where no one will sing of your glory, and
 you will lack for all comfort?"
    That was unfair. "No," I said sharply. "Do you think comfort is
so important to me, I who left my city of my free will to roam in
the wilderness? Do you think I am in such great need of wine, or
fine robes, or harpers to sing of my deeds? I like those things: who
would not? But losing them is not what I fear."  "What do you fear, then?"
    "To lose myself. To live in that shadow-life that comes after life,
when we are nothing but sad dusty empty things shuffling our wings
in the 'dust. To cease to perceive; to cease to explore; to cease to
journey; to cease to hope. All those things are Gilgamesh. There will
be no more Gilgamesh, when I go to that dismal place. I have been
on a quest all my life, father: I cannot bear that that quest will end."
  "But all things end."
  "Do they?" I asked.
    He looked close at me as though he must surely be seeing into
my soul with his milky sightless eyes and said, "When we build a
house, do we expect it to stand forever? When we sign a contract,
do we think it is binding for all time to come? When the river floods,
do the waters not recede? Nothing is permanent. The dragonfly lives
in a shell when it is young; then it comes forth, and it beholds the
sun a little while; and then it is gone. So it is with mankind. The
master and the servant both have their little moment, their glance at
the sun. It is the way."
  Those words again! They made me despair.
  "It is the way.t'' I cried. "You tell me that too, father?"
"Can it be otherwise? The same destiny is decreed for us all."
Before I knew what I was saying I replied, "Even for you, father?"
It was a crass and foolish remark, and my cheeks blazed as I said
it. But he was unperturbed. "Let us talk of me some other time,"
said the Ziusudra calmly. "Today we talk of you. I think this of you,
Gilgamesh of Uruk: that you are not frightened of death so much
as you are angry at having to die."
    "It is the same thing," I said. "Call it fear, call it anger--I see no
difference. What I see is that the world is full of joy and wonder,
and I have no wish to leave it. But soon I must."  "Not soon, Gilgamesh."
  "Why, do you know the number of my days?"
    "I? No, not at all: I would not deceive you on that score. But you
are still young. You are very strong. You have many years ahead of you."
      "However many they be, they are too few. For their number is
set and limited, father."  "Which angers you."
  "Which distresses me greatly," I said.
  "And in your distress you have come to me."
  "I have."
  "Do you come seeking life from me, or wisdom?"
    "I can conceal nothing from you. I come seeking life, father.
Wisdom is another matter. I hope time will bring it; but what I must
have is time."
    "And you think that by coming here you may win more time for yourself?."
  "So I hope, yes."
    "Then may the gods grant you all that you seek," the Ziusudra
said. There was a long silence. His head sank forward on his breast
and he seemed lost in brooding: he frowned, he pursed his lips, he
sighed. I felt that I had wearied him; I dared not speak. The moment
was endless. Come, I thought, reach out to me, give me your bless-
ing, teach me the secret of your eternal life. But still he sighed, still
he frowned.
    Then he lifted his head and peered at me with such intensity that
I could not believe he was blind. He smiled. Softly he said, "We
must speak of these things again, Gilgamesh. I will send for you
another day." And he made the smallest of gestures: it was a dis-
missal. I felt an invisible curtain descend between us. Although the
Ziusudra still sat before me, unmoving, he was not there. Lu-Nin-
marka, who had waited all this while by my side, came forward and
touched me by the elbow. I rose; I offered a salute; I took my leave.
I followed Lu-Ninmarka through the dark maze to the upper world
like one who walks in sleep.

I WORKED in the fields and I went to the temple to hear them
telling and retelling their tale of the Flood, and I took my meals of
lentils and goat milk, and one day flowed into the next. I wondered
vaguely about events in the world beyond the shores of this island,
but I gave no thought to departing. Occasionally I saw the streets
of Uruk in my mind, or the face of my wife or my son, or some
man of the court: but they seemed like scenes out of a dream. Once
I imagined I saw Enkidu before me, and I smiled at him but I did
not go toward him. Another time Inanna slipped into my dreams,
radiant, magnificent, more beautiful than she had ever seemed: seeing
her, I felt no hatred for her scheming, only some mild regret that
such beauty had been in my arms once and no longer could be mine.
So the days' went by. Uruk and all its concerns had drifted away
from me. And in the ripeness of time I found myself in that winding
passageway once again, descending to the lair of the Ziusudra.
    He sat as he had sat before, staunchly erect on his little wickerwork
stool as though it were a throne. I felt the power of him. It surrounded
him like a wall. In his own way he was a king; he was almost a god.
It seemed to me that he dwelled on some plane beyond my under-
standing; I wanted instinctively to kneel before him the moment I
came into his presence. I think I have never known another man
who aroused such awe in me.
    As soon as I entered he began to speak; but I could not make sense
of what he was saying. Words rose from him as a column of thick
smoke rises from a fire of green wood; and the words were as im-
penetrable as the smoke, so that I was unable to see through the
sound to the meaning. His voice circled round and round me. He
spoke the language of the Land, or so I believed, and his words were
calm and self-assured, as though he were presenting some closely
reasoned argument; but no word followed upon the last in any man-
ner I could comprehend. I knelt and stared. Then out of the murky
flow I began to perceive a glimmer of understanding, as one sees
sparks flying upward within the smoke. He was speaking, so it
seemed, of the time the gods had sent the Flood as a punishment
upon mankind and he had led his people to the high ground to wait
the waters out. But I was not sure. There were moments when I
thought he might be talking about the proper design of chariots, or
about the places one goes to find deposits of rock-salt in the desert,
or other such things far removed from the table of the Flood. I was
lost in the tangled skein of his discourse; I was altogether baffled.
    Then he said suddenly with perfect clarity, "There is no death, if
only we do the tasks the gods appoint for us. Do you understand
me? There is no death."
  He turned toward me, and seemed to be waiting.
    I said, "And so it was your task to resettle the Land when the
waters receded; and for that the gods spared you from death. Then
what is my task, Ziusudra? You know that I also would be spared
from death."
  "I know that."
    "But the Flood will not come again. What shall I do? I would
build a ship like yours, if there were need. But there is no need for one."
    "Do you think there was a ship, Gilgamesh? Do you think there
was a Flood?"
    By the faint flickering light of his little lamp I tried and failed to
read the mysteries of his face. His mind was too agile for me; he
danced away from my comprehension. I was losing hope that he
would help me find what I sought. "I have heard what they say in
the temple here," I said. "But what am I to make of it? They tell a
different tale in the Land."
    "Trust it as we tell it. The rains came; in Shuruppak the king
gathered his people, and they put provisions aside and carried them
to the high ground, and remained there until the fury of the storm
was spent. Then they returned to the Land and rebuilt all that had
been destroyed. That is what happened, those many hundreds of
 years ago. All the rest is fable."
     "Including," I said, "the part where Enlil came to you and blessed
 you and sent you to Dilmun to live forever?"
     He shook his head. "The king of Shuruppak fled to Dilmun in
 despair. He went there when he saw that it was folly to have saved
 mankind, since all the old evils still thrived. He left the Land; he
 gave up his realm; he sought virtue and purity on this island. That
 is as it was, Gilgamesh. All the rest is fable."
     "The tale has it that the gods gave you eternal life. Was that only
 a fable too? There is eternal life here, so it would seem."
 "There is no death," said the Ziusudra. "Have I not told you that?"
 "You have told me, yes. We must do the tasks the gods decree
 for us, and then there is no death. But I ask you again: What is my
 task, Ziusudra? How am I to know it? What secret must I learn?"
   "Why do you think there is a secret?"
    "There must be. You have lived so long. You saw the Flood: that
was ten lifetimes ago, or twenty; and yet you still sit here. All about
you are men and women who seem as ageless as you. How old is
Lu-Ninmarka? How old is Hasidanum?" I looked at the Ziusudra
long and earnestly. My hands were trembling, and I felt within
myself the first beginnings of the god-aura, the buzzing, the crackling
and hissing, all those strange things that come upon me in the times
when I am most coiled upon myself with need. "Tell me, father,
how I too can defeat death! The gods in assembly conferred life on
you: who will call them into assembly for me?"
  "You are the only one who can do that," said the Ziusudra.
  I could barely draw breath. "How? How?"
    He replied in the most offhand manner, "First show me that you
can master sleep, and then we will see about a mastery of death.
You can slay lions, c greatest of heroes; can you slay sleep? I invite
you to a test, a trial. Sit here beside me for six days and seven nights
without sleeping; and then perhaps you may find the life you seek."
  "Is that the path, then?"
  "It is the path to the path."
    The buzzing in my soul subsided. A new calmness came over me.
He meant to guide me after all.
  "I will attempt it," I said.
   The test was severe indeed: six days, seven nights! How could
 any such thing be done by mortal man? But I was confident. I was
 more than mortal; so had I believed since my boyhood, with good
 reason. I had slain lions and even demons; I could slay sleep also.
 Had I not gone day after day with no more than an hour or two of
 sleep in the seasons of war? Had I not marched through the wilderness
 by night and by day as though sleep were no need of mine? I would
 do it. I was sure of that. I had the strength; I had the zeal. I crouched
 on my haunches next to him and fixed my eyes on his pink smooth
 serene face, and set myself to the task.
     And to my shame sleep came upon me in a moment, like a whirl-
 wind. But I did not know that I slept.
    My eyes were closed, my breath came thickly; as I say, it had
happened in a moment. I thought I was awake and that I sat staring
at the Ziusudra; but I slept, and I dreamed. In my dream I saw
Ziusudra and his wife, who was as old as he; and he pointed to me
and said to her, "Behold this hero, the strong man who seeks eternal
life! Sleep came upon him like a whirlwind."
    "Touch him," she said. "Wake him. Let him return in peace to
his own land, through the gate by which he left."
    "No," said Ziusudra in my dream. "I will let him sleep. But while
he sleeps, wife, bake a loaf of bread each day, and set it here by his
head. And make a mark on the wall to keep count of the days he
sleeps. For mankind is deceitful; and when he wakes he will try to
deceive us."
    So she baked bread and marked markings on the wall each day,
and I dreamed that I slept on, day after day, thinking I was awake.
They watched over me and smiled at my folly; and then at last
Ziusudra touched me and I awakened. But this too was still in my
dream. "Why do you touch me?" I asked, and he replied, "To awaken
you." I looked at him in surprise and told him hotly that I had not
slept, that only a moment had passed since I had crouched down
beside him and my eyes had not closed for so much as a moment of
that moment. He laughed, and gently he said that his wife had baked
bread each day while I slept and had set the loaves before me. "Go,
Gilgamesh: count them, and see how many days you have slept!" I
looked at the loaves. There were seven of them: the first was like a
brick, the second was nearly as stale, the third was soggy. The fourth
had gone white about the crust with mildew; the fifth was covered
with mold. Only the sixth loaf was still fresh. I saw the seventh
baking over the coals. He showed me the markings on the walls,
and there were seven, one for each day. So I knew that I had fallen
asleep despite myself; and I understood that I had failed in my un-
dertaking. I was unworthy. I would never be able to find my way
along the path to eternal life. Despair engulfed me. I felt death coming
upon me like a thief in the night, entering my bedchamber, seizing
my limbs in his cold grasp. And I gave a great groan and awakened;
for all this was still in my dream.
    I looked to the Ziusudra and I put my hand to my head as if to
free it from a shroud. I was lost in my confusions. To sleep, believing
I was awake, and to dream, and to wake within my dream, and then
to awaken in truth--and still not to know whether I dreamed or
waked, even now--ah, I was lost, I was lost!
    I pressed the tips of my fingers uncertainly to my eyes. "Am I
awake?" I asked.
  "I think you are."
  "But I slept?"
  "You slept, yes."
  "Did I sleep long?"
    He shrugged. "Perhaps an hour. Perhaps a day." He made it seem
as if to him the one was the same as the other.
    "I dreamed I slept six days and seven nights, and you and your
wife watched over me, and each day she baked bread; and then you
awakened me and I denied that I had slept, but I saw the seven loaves
before me. And when I saw them I felt death take hold of me, and
I cried out."
    "I heard your cry," said the Ziusudra. "It was a moment ago, just
before you awakened."
  "So I am awake now," I said, still unsure.
    "You are awake, Gilgamesh. But first you slept. You were not
aware of it: but sleep came upon you in the first moment of your
test."
    "Then I have failed," I said in a hollow voice. "I am doomed to
die. There is no hope for me. Wherever I set my foot, there I find
death--even here!"
    He smiled a tender loving smile, as one might give a babe. "Did
 you think our mysteries could save you from death? They cannot
  even save me. Do you see that? These rites we observe: they cannot
  even save me."
   "It is the tale they tell, that you are exempt from dying."
      "It is the tale, yes. But it is not the tale we tell here. When did I
  say that I was exempt from dying? Tell me when I spoke those
  words, Gilgamesh."
       I looked at him, bewildered. "There is no death, you said. Only
  do your task, and then there is no death. You said that."
    "So I did. But you failed to take my meaning."
    "I took the meaning that I thought was there."
       "So you did. It was the easy meaning; it was the meaning you
  hoped to find; but it was not the true meaning." Again the tender
  smile, so sad, so loving. Gently, he said, "We have made our pact
  with death here. We know his ways, and he knows our ways; and
  we have our mysteries, and our mysteries defend us for a time from
  death. But only for a time. Poor Gilgamesh, you have come so far
  for so little!"
     Understanding flooded me. I felt my skin prickling; I shivered
 with the chill of perception as the truth made itself manifest. I caught
 my breath sharply. There was a question I must ask now; but I did
 not know if I dared to ask it, and I did not think I would have an
 answer from him. Nevertheless after a moment I said, "Tell me this.
 You are the Ziusudra: but are you Ziusudra of Shuruppak?"
     He answered without hesitation. And what he told me was that
 which I had already come to comprehend.
   "Ziusudra of Shuruppak is long since dead," he said.
     "The one that led his people to the high ground when the rains came?"
   "Dead, long ago."
   "And the Ziusudra who came after him?"
     "Dead, also. I will not tell you how many of that name have sat
 in this chamber; but I am not the third, nor the fourth, nor even the
 fifth. We die, and another comes to take the place and the title; and
 so we continue in the observance of our mysteries. I am very old,
 but I will not sit here forever. Perhaps Lu-Ninmarka will be the
 Ziusudra after me, or perhaps someone else. Perhaps even you, Gilgamesh."
  "No," I said. "It will not be me, I think."
  "What will you do now?"
    "Return to Uruk. Resume my throne. Live out my days to their
allotted number."
    "You know that you may remain with us if you wish, and take
part in our rites, and receive training in our skills."
      "And learn from you how to keep death at bay--though not to
defeat him altogether. For that is impossible."  "Yes."
    "But if I give myself to you, I can never again leave this island.
Is that so?"
  "You will not want to, if you become one of us."
    "In what way would that be different from death?" I asked. "I
would lose all the world, and have only a small sandy island in
exchange for it. To dwell in a small room, and work in these fields,
and say prayers at night, and eat only certain foods--to live like a
prisoner on an isle so little I can walk from shore to shore in an hour
or tWO--"
    "You would not be a prisoner. If you remained, you would remain
of your free choice."
  "It is not the life I would choose, father."
  "No," he said. "I did not think you would."
  "I am grateful for the offer."
    "Which will not be withdrawn. You may come to us any time,
Gilgamesh, if so you choose. But I do not think that is what you
will choose." He smiled yet again and held forth his hand; and as he
had done the first time he touched his fingertips to my face for a
blessing. His hand was very cold. His touch had a sting. When Lu-
Ninmarka led me back to the surface, I still felt the places where he
had touched me, like white imprints against my skin.

I MADE ready to leave the little island. By orders of the Ziusudra
I was given a fine new cloak, and a band to place around my head,
and I bathed until I was clean as fresh snow. The boatman Sursunabu
would take me across to Dilmun; there I would arrange for my
journey home. My mood was somber, dark and subdued, and why
should it not have been? The Ziusudra had said it all: I had come so
far for so little. Yet I was not distraught. I had gambled and I had
lost, but the odds had been great. Only a fool will weep when he
asks the impossible of his dice and they do not provide it for him.
    The time was nearly at hand for my departure when the old priest
Lu-Ninmarka came to me and made a little speech, saying, "The
Ziusudra feels deep sorrow that you have undergone such long hard-
ship and have wearied yourself so greatly without attaining any re-
ward. By way of comforting you he has decided to disclose a hidden
thing to you, a secret of the gods. He offers it as a gift, to carry back
to your own country."
  "And what is that?" I asked.
  "Come with me."
    In truth I felt so bleak that I had little yearning for any gift of the
Ziusudra's; I wanted only to get myself away from that place and
take myself swiftly back to Uruk. But I knew it would be mannerless
and uncivil to refuse. So I accompanied the priest to a far part of the
isle where the land stretched into the sea in a long narrow point with
the shape of a knife-blade. On the edge of that point I saw a great
mound of thousands of gray seashells of a strange shape, all gnarled
and rough on one side, smooth and gleaming on the other. Near
them lay the sort of stones that divers use as weights when they go
down into the sea, and some ropes to attach them to their legs.
    "Do you wonder why we have come here?" Lu-Ninmarka said.
He grinned. I think he meant it to be pleasant, but to me it was like
the grinning of a skull, so lean and fleshless was his sharp-featured
face. He picked up one of the gray shells, rested it a moment on the
palm of his hand with its smooth side downward, and tossed it to
the ground. Then he pointed out to sea. "This is the place where the
plant known as Grow-Young-Again is found: there, at the bottom
of the sea."
Frowning, I said, "Grow-Young-Again? What plant is that?"
He looked at me in surprise. "Don't you know it? It is the wonder
of wonders, that plant. From it we make a medicine to cure the most
implacable of illnesses: I mean the ravages of age. It is a medicine
that restores a man to his former strength, that takes the lines from
his face, that makes his hair grow dark once more. And the plant
from which it comes lies in these waters. Do you see the shells here?
They are its leaves. We dive for the plant, we bring it up, we extract
its power, and we discard the rest. From its fruit we make the potion
that preserves us from age. This is the Ziusudra's parting gift to you:
I am to let you have the fruit of Grow-Young-Again to take with
you on your journey."
  "Is it so?" I said, astounded.
  "We would not jest with you, Gilgamesh."
    Awe and amazement silenced me a moment. When I could speak
again I said in a hushed way, "How am I to obtain this miraculous stuff?."
    Lu-Ninmarka waved his hand towards the divers' stones, the ropes,
the sea. He indicated that I should put off my clothing and go down
into the water. I hesitated only a moment. The sea is Enki's domain,
and I had never felt much at ease with that god. It would be a new
thing for me to enter the sea. Well, I thought, in my passage to
Dilmun Enki had done me no harm; and as a boy I had dived into
the river often enough. What was there to fear? The plant Grow-
Young-Again waited for me in that water. I cast my cloak aside; I
tied the heavy stones to my feet; I went stumbling forward to the
edge of the sea.
    How clear the water was, how warm, how gentle! It lapped at
the pink sand of the shore and took on a pink flush itself. I looked
toward Lu-Ninmarka, who urged me onward. It was slow going,
with those stones. The water was shallow; I waded knee-deep for
an endless time. But then at last I came to a place where the sunken
shelf of the land dropped away and what seemed to be the maw of
the great abyss loomed before me. Again I looked back; again Lu-
Ninmarka signaled me onward. I filled my chest with air and cast
myself forward, and the stones drew me down.
    Ah, what joy it was to tumble into those depths! It was like flying,
effortless and serene, but a flying downward, a pure sweet descent.
I was altogether without fear. The color of the sea deepened about
me: it was a rich sapphire now, shot through with strands of sparkling
light from above. As I descended, the fishes came to me and studied
me with great goggling eyes. They were of every hue, yellow banded
with black, scarlet, azure, topaz, emerald, turquoise; they were of
colors I had never seen before, and mixtures of colors that I would
not have believed possible. I could have touched them, they were
so close. They danced beside me with unimaginable grace.
    Down, down, down. I held my arms high above my head and
gave myself up freely to the pull of the abyss. My hair streamed far
out about me; a bubbling flow came from my lips; there was a
thunderous pounding in my breast. My heart was joyous: through
my entire body there flowed the keenest of delights. I could not say
how long it had been since I had known such joy. Not since Enkidu
had gone from me, surely. Ah, Enkidu, Enkidu, if you could have
been there beside me as I made my way into the abyss!
    The water was much cooler here. The shimmering light, far above,
was pale, blue, remote, like moonlight made scant by heavy clouds.
I felt firmness suddenly beneath my feet: I had reached the floor of
this sunken realm. Soft sand below, dark jagged rocks before me.
Where was the plant? Where was Grow-Young-Again? Ah, here,
here! I saw a multitude of it: stony gray leaves clinging to the rocks.
I touched several of them lightly, in wonder, thinking, Is this the
one that will do the magic? Is this the one that will turn back the
years? I pulled one plant loose. That cost me no little pain. The outer
surface of it was sharp and thorny, as though covered with tiny
blades, and it pricked my hands like a rose. I saw a crimson cloud
of my blood rise along my arms. But I had the plant of life and
breath; I clutched it tight; I raised it jubilantly, and I would have
cried out in triumph, if such a thing could have been done in that
silent world. Grow-Young-Again! Yes! Perhaps eternal life could
not be mine, but I would at least have some way of shielding myself
against the bite of time's tooth.
    Rise, now, Gilgamesh! Get you to the sea's surface! My errand
was achieved; and I realized now for the first time that my breath
was all but exhausted.
    I cut myself free of the stones that were tied to my feet and rose
like an arrow through the water, scattering the startled fishes. Bright-
ness enfolded me. I burst through into the air and felt the blessed
warmth of the sun. Laughing, splashing, lurching about, I flung
myself onto the bosom of the sea and it sped me toward the shore.
In moments I reached a place where the water was shallow enough
for me to stand; and I went running onward until I was on dry land
once again.
    I held out my hand toward Lu-Ninmarka, showing him the gray
uncouth thing I held. Blood still ran from the cuts it had made in
my flesh and I felt the salt of the sea stinging in them; but that did
not matter. "Is this it?" I cried. "Is this the right one?"
  "Let me see," he murmured. "Give me your knife."
    He took it from me and deftly slipped the blade of the knife
between the two stony leaves. With a strength I did not think he
had the old priest split the leaves apart and turned them back. Within
I beheld something strange, a pulsing pink furrowed thing as soft
and intricate and mysterious as a woman's most secret inner place.
But that was of no concern to Lu-Ninmarka; he prowled with his
fingers in its folds and crevices and after a moment cried out and
pulled forth something round and smooth and gleaming, the pearl
that is the fruit of the plant Grow-Young-Again.
    "This is what we seek," he said. Carelessly he tossed aside the
stony leaves and the pinkness they contained; a bird swooped down
at once to feed on that tender meat. But he held the pearl cradled in
the palm of his hand, beaming at it as though it were the dearest
child of his bosom. In the warm sunlight it seemed to glow with an
inner radiance; and its color was rich and fine, with a blush of blue
mingled with the creamy pink. He touched it lightly with the tip of
his finger, rolling it about, taking the greatest of delight in it. Then
after a few moments he placed it in my hand and folded my bloodied
fingers about it. "Put it in your pouch," he said, "and keep it as you
would the greatest of your treasures. Carry it with you to Uruk of
the high ramparts, and store it in your strongbox. And when you
feel your years weighing heavy upon you, Gilgamesh, take it out,
grind it to fine powder, mix it with good strong wine, drink it down
in a single draught. That is all. Your eyes will grow clear again, your
breath will come in deep gusts, your strength will be the strength
of the slayer of lions you once had been. That is our gift to you,
Gilgamesh of Uruk."
    I stared at the pearl with wide eyes. "I could have asked for nothing finer."
  "Come, now. The boatman awaits you."

SOUR AND sullen and silent as always, Sursunabu the boatman
took me across in the afternoon to the greater island nearby. Once
more I found lodgings in the main city of Dilmun for a few days,
until I could buy passage aboard a ship bound for the Land. Idly I
wandered about the steep streets, past the open-fronted shops of
brick and timber where the craftsmen in gold and copper and precious
stones plied their skills, and looked down toward the beach and its
ships, and past it to the broad blue sheet of the sea and the little
sandy island. I thought of the Ziusudra who was not Ziusudra, and
of the priests and priestesses who served him in the mysteries of their
cult, and of the true tale they had told of the coming of the Flood,
so different from what is told in the Land; and I thought also of the
stony fruit of the plant Grow-Young-Again which swung in a little
pouch about my neck and blazed against my breastbone like a sphere
of flame. So at last my quest was ending. I was going home; and if
I had not found what ! had come seeking, I had at least attained some
part of it, some means of fending off the fate I abhorred.  So be it. Now to Uruk!
    There was a trading-ship of Meluhha in the port, nearly done with
its business. It would go northward now as far as Eridu and Ur to
sell its goods for the merchandise of the Land; and then when it was
laden it would make its way back down into the Sea of the Rising
Sun and sail off to the distant and mysterious place in the east from
which it had come. This I learned from a merchant of Lagash who
stayed at my hostelry.
    I went down into the port and found the master of the Meluhhan
ship. He was a small and delicate-looking man with skin dark as
ebony and fine proud sharp features; he understood my language
well enough, and said he would carry me as a passenger. I told him
to name his price, and he named it: I judge it was half what his whole
ship was worth. He stared up at me with eyes like polished onyx
and smiled. Was he expecting me to bargain with him? How could
I do that? I am king of Uruk; I cannot bargain. Perhaps he knew
that and took advantage of me. Or perhaps he thought I was just a
great hulking fool, with more silver than wit about me. Well, it was
a steep price; he took from me nearly all my remaining silver. But
it was no great matter. I had been away from the Land far too long;
I would pay that much and more with a glad heart, if only he would
carry me toward my home.
    We made our departure, then. On a day when the sky was as fiat
and hot as an anvil the little dark-skinned men of Meluhha hoisted
their sail and leaped to their oars and we headed out northward into
the sea.
    The cargo was timber of several kinds from their own land, which
they stored in bundles on the deck, and chests that held gold ingots,
ivory combs and figurines, carnelian and lapis lazuli. The captain
said he had made his voyage fifty times and meant to make it fifty
more before he died. I asked him to tell me about the countries that
lie between Meluhha and the Land. I wanted to know the shape of
the coasts, the color of the air, the scent of the blossoms, and a
thousand other things; but he only shrugged and said, "Why is that
of interest? The world is much the same everywhere." I had great
pity for him, hearing that.
    Among these Meluhhans I fel› like a colossus. I have long been
accustomed to the way I tower over the men of the Land, head and
shoulders and breast; but on this voyage my shipmates came scarcely
more than belly-high to me, and scampered about almost as if they
were little apes. By Enlil, I must have seemed a monstrous thing to
them! Yet they showed no fear of me nor any awe; to them I was
merely a barbaric curiosity, I suppose, something that they would
weave into their mariners' tales when they reached their homeland.
"Believe it if you will, we had a passenger between Dilmun and
Eridu, and his stature was like that of an elephant! As stupid as an
elephant, too, and as heavy-footed--we took good care to keep out
of his way, or he might have trampled us flat without so much as
noticing we were there!" In truth, they made me feel like an oaf, so
little and agile were they; but in my defense I will say that the ship
was crafted to fit men of a smaller size than mine. It was hardly my
fault I had to go about in a crouch with my arms at my side, barely
able to move without knocking into something.
    The sun was white-hot and the cloudless sky was merciless. There
was little wind; but so cunning were these seamen that they kept
their vessel moving forward under the merest of breezes. I watched
them in admiration. They worked as if they had a single mind; each
carried out his role in the enterprise without need of command,
laboring quickly and silently in the sweltering heat. If they had asked
me to do some task I would have done it, but they left me by myself.
Did they know I was a king? Did they care? They are an incurious
race, I think; but they work very hard.
    At dusk, when they gathered for their meal, they shyly invited
me to join them. What they ate each night was a stew of meat or
fish so fiery in its flavor that I thought it would burn my lips, and
a soft'of porridge that tasted of soured milk. After eating they sang,
a strange music indeed, the voices roaming and twining to fashion
eerie twanging melodies that coiled like serpents. And so the voyage
went. I was glad to be apart from them, alone inside myself, for I
was weary and had much on my mind. Now and again I touched
the pearl of Grow-Young-Again that hung about my throat; and I
thought often of Uruk and what awaited me there.
    At last I saw the welcome shores of the Land dark against the
horizon. We entered the wide mouth of the joined rivers and went
onward, on and on to the place where the rivers divide. Then there
was the Idigna, making its course off to the right; and there was the
Buranunu, our own great river, branching to the left. I gave thanks
to Enlil. I was not yet home; but the wind that reached my nostrils
was a wind that had blown yesterday through my native city, and
that alone was enough greatly to gladden me.
    Not long afterward we docked at the quay of holy Eridu. There
I bade the Meluhhan captain farewell and went ashore by myself. It
would not have been wise to go on further with that ship, for its
next port of call would be Ur; and that was no place now for me to
go in the guise of a solitary traveler. They would know me in Ur.
If I set foot there without any army at my back I knew I would never
see Uruk again.
    They knew me also in Eridu. I had not been off the ship three
minutes before I saw eyes flickering and fingers pointing, and heard
them whispering in awe and wonder, "Gilgamesh! Gilgamesh!" It
was to be expected. I had been to Eridu many times for the autumn
rites that follow in the wake of the Sacred Marriage. But this was
not autumn, and I had come without my retinue. Little wonder they
pointed and whispered.
    It is the oldest city in the world, Eridu. We say that it was the
first of the five cities that existed before the Flood. Perhaps it was,
though I no longer have as much faith in those old tales as I had
before my visit to the Ziusudra. Enki is the prime god of the place,
he who has power over the sweet waters that flow beneath the earth:
his great temple is there, and his chief dwelling place lies beneath it,
so they say. I believe it must be so: you can dig anywhere in the
low-lying ground about Eridu and discover fresh water.
    Eridu lies somewhat off the Buranunu but is connected to the river
by lagoons and good waterways, and it is as much a port as the river
cities themselves. Its site is difficult, though, for the desert comes
right down to the edges of the city and I think some day the dunes
may sweep right over it. They must think so too, for they have put
not only the temple but the entire city atop a great raised platform.
There is much stone around Eridu, and the city's builders have used
it well. The retaining wall of the platform is a massive thing faced
with sandstone, and the stairs of the temple are great marble slabs.
It is a thing to be envied, to have stone close by your city, and not
to be compelled as we are to build only of mud.
    The merchants of Uruk have long maintained a commercial house
in Eridu, close by Enki's temple: a place held in common, where
they can extend credit to one another and put their books in balance
and exchange rumors of the marketplace and do whatever else it is
that merchants do. It was there I went from the quay, moving un-
concerned through an ever larger crowd of whisperers and pointers:
"Gilgamesh! Gilgamesh!" all the way. When I entered the trading-
hall I found three men of my city working at their scribe-work with
stylus and tablet; they sprang to their feet at the first sight of me,
gasping and turning pale as though Enlil himself had come striding
into their midst. Then they fell to their knees and set up a frantic1
 making of the royal signs; wiggling their arms and waving their      I
 heads about like frenzied madmen. It was a while before they were
 calm enough to make sense.
  "You are not dead, majesty!" they blurted.
 "Evidently not," I said. "Who was it that gave that story forth?"
 They looked warily at one another. At length the oldest and
 shrewdest-looking of them replied, "It was said at the temple, I think.
 That you had gone into the wilderness out of mourning for Enkidu
 your brother, and you had been devoured by lions--"
  "No, that you had been carried off by demons--" put in another.
 "By demons, yes, that came out of a whirlwind--"
  "The Imdugud-bird was seen in the rooftops, crying evil omens,
 five nights running--" the third declared.
  "A two-headed calf was found in the pastures--they sacrificed it
at the Ubshukkinakku--"
  "And at the Sanctuary of Destinies, they--"
  "Yes, and there was green mist around the moon, which--"
  I broke into all this babble with a loud cry: "Wait! Tell me this:
at which temple was it that I was given forth as dead?"
  "Why, the temple of the goddess, majesty!"
  I smiled. That was no great surprise.
  Quietly I said, "Ah. Ah, I see: of course. It was Inanna herself
who uttered the doleful news, eh?"
    They nodded. They looked more troubled with each passing moment.
    I thought of Inanna and her hatred for me, and her hunger for
power, and how she had coolly put the king Dumuzi aside long ago
when he had ceased to serve her needs; and I knew that my leaving
Uruk must have seemed to her like a gift from the gods; and I told
myself that I had done the most foolish of foolish things, running
off in my madness and pain in search of eternal life, when I had the
duties of this life to carry out. How she must have laughed, when
she was told I had gone from the city by stealth! How she must have
relished it when the days went by and I did not return, and no one
knew where I was!
    I said, "Was she greatly grieved? Did she lament and tear her robes?"

They nodded most solemnly. "Her grief was great indeed, 0 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 Gil-
gamesh. 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 ~ame 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 bewilder-
ment. 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
any blame attach to us ever, when the gods call all the tunes?
the gods not also sent me Enkidu, and then taken him away?
was it not so, therefore, that it was the gods who had aroused it,
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
been following the dictates of the gods in all things. But where
the will of proud Gilgamesh, then? Was I nothing but the plaything
of the remote and uncaring great ones to whom this world below
The servant of the gods, yes: I will not deny that. We are all serving
of the gods and it is folly to think otherwise. But their plaything.
Their toy?
    Well, I could not linger then over such questions. ! brushed th
aside. If I am no longer king in Uruk, I thought, let the goddess I
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 Lugalbar,
within me. I had not felt him in a long while. The great king fill
my spirit with his strength and gave me much comfort. I knew fm
that that I need feel no shame for anything I had done. The thin
I had done were what the gods had decreed for me, and they we
right and proper things. My grief had been necessary. My quest h:
been necessary. The gods had resolved to bring me to wisdom:
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 met
chant 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 ! 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.

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 gob-
bled 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 mo-
ment. 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 tem-
ples, 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 straight-
away 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 woul
pull the whole chariot over. But Ninurta-mansum gripped the trace
and leaned all his strength into holding us upright. The other thre
asses stayed firm. The one that had stumbled came up out of th
river snorting and spewing, and got himself in balance; and we cam,
out safely on the river's sunrise bank. Perhaps not even Namhan
could have managed that.
    Now we were in lands tributary to Uruk. The city itself was stil
some leagues to the northeast. I did not know whose land we ha(
entered, whether it was Inanna's or An's or some magnate's of th~
city--it might even have been mine, for I had vast holdings in thi:
district--but whatever it was, temple land or private land, it wa~
land of Uruk. After my long absence I felt such joy at seeing thes~
rich fertile fields that I came close to leaping down from the chario
and embracing the earth. Instead I contented myself with a libatiot
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 bern
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 fox
hours, weeping with gladness, to kneel before me and express theii
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.
"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 wan-
derings, 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."
  "Her kindness is too great."
    "It is not a question of kindness, O king. It is a question of the
health of your soul, and of the safety of the city, and of the divine
balance and order of the realm, which must be maintained. And so
the goddess has decreed these rites, out of her great mercy and love."
    Ah, I thought. Her great mercy and love! I nearly burst out in
laughter! But I did not: I held myself in check. Well, I told myself,
I will play this game out to its end. In my most courteous and formal
way I said, "The mercy of the goddess is sublime. If my soul is at
risk, it must be cleansed. Lead me to the place of purification."
    As I stepped down from the chariot Ninurta-mansum glanced
toward me, and I saw him frown. It should have been no concern
of his that I might be giving myself over to treachery: he was Shu-
lutula's man, not mine. Yet he was trying to warn me. I realized
that he was one who would die for me, if needs be. Giving him a
reassuring clasp on the shoulder, I told him to take the asses to graze
but not to get too far away from me. Then, going on foot, I followed
the three priestesses of Inanna toward the pavilions below the walls.
    Plainly she had been a long time in planning this. What was vir-
tually a holy precinct had been constructed out here. There were five
tents, one large one with the reed-bundles of Inanna mounted in the
sand before it, and four lesser ones in which all manner of sacred
implements seemed to have been stored--braziers, incense-burners,
holy images and banners, and the like. As I came near, priestesses
began to chant, musicians to pound on their drums and blow into
their fifes, temple dancers circled round and round me with joined
arms. I looked toward the main tent. Inanna herself must wait in
there for me, I thought, and suddenly my throat was dry and fiery
knots tightened in my gut. Was I frightened? No, it was not exactly
fear; it was a sense of some great finality closing in upon me. How
long was it since she and I had been face to face? What transformations
had she accomplished behind my back in the city, since then? Surely
she meant to work my undoing today; but how? How? And how
might I defend myself?. Ever since my childhood--when she had
been little more than a child herself--my fate had been entwined
with this dark-souled woman; and it seemed certain that I was ap-
proaching now, within this great tent of scarlet and black that rose
before me on the plain of Uruk, the ultimate collision of our destinies.
    But I was wrong once again. The three priestesses raised the curtain
of the tent a little way and held it back, indicating to me that I should
go inside. I entered, and found myself in a perfumed place of rich
lustrous mats and sheer draperies; and awaiting me at the center of
it, seated kneeling on a low couch, was a woman of voluptuous form
whose body was bare except for a glowing pendant of gold that hung
between her breasts and the thick-bodied olive-hued serpent of the
goddess, which was wrapped like a rope about her waist, moving
in slow sliding pulsations. But she was not Inanna. She was Abisimti
the holy courtesan, she who had initiated me into the rites of man-
hood long ago, she who had done the same for Enkidu when he
dwelled in wildness on the steppe. I had been set and braced for
Inanna; the surprise and shock of finding someone else in Inanna's
place so stunned and staggered me that I recoiled and found myself
all but hurled into my fit. I felt myself going over the brink of an
abyss. I swayed; I shook; ! pulled myself back with the last of my
strength.
    Abisimti looked toward me. Her eyes were gleaming strangely;
they burned in their sockets like spheres of glowing carnelian. In a
voice that seemed to be making a journey to me from some world
that was not this world she said, "Hail, O king! Hail, Gilgamesh!"
And she beckoned me to her side.

FOR AN instant I was twelve years old again and I was going with
my uncle to the temple cloister for my initiation; I saw myself in
my kilt of soft white linen, with the narrow red stripe ofsu~rrendered
innocence painted on my shoulder and a lock of my hair in my hand
to give to the priestess. And I saw again the beautiful sixteen-year-
old Abisimti of my boyhood, whose breasts were round as pome-
granates, whose long dark hair tumbled loose past her gold-painted
cheeks.
    She was still beautiful now. Who could count the men she had
embraced for the goddess' sake before I first had come to her, or the
men she had embraced since? But the number of those who had
possessed her might be as great as the number of the grains of sand
in the desert, and still they could not take her beauty from her: they
could only enhance it. She was not young; her breasts were no longer
quite so round; and yet she was still beautiful. I wondered, though,
why her eyes looked so strange, why her voice was so unfamiliar.
She seemed almost dazed. They have given her some potion, I thought:
that must be it. But why? Why?
  I said, "I expected to find Inanna in here."
    She spoke slowly, as if in a dream. "Are you displeased? She cannot
leave the temple. You will go to her afterward, Gilgamesh."
    I should have realized Inanna would not go outside the walls of
the city. To Abisimti I said, "I am just as content, finding you. I
was surprised, that was all--"
  "Come. Put off your robe. Kneel down before me."
  "But what rite is this that we will do?"
  "You must not ask. Come, Gilgamesh! Disrobe. Kneel."
   I was wary but oddly calm. Perhaps this was a true rite after all;
perhaps Inanna meant only to serve, indeed, and had devised all this
to cleanse me of Enlil-knew-what impurity before I went inside the
city. I could not believe that the gentle Abisimti would be part of
any plot against me. So I put aside my sword and laid down my
robe, and I knelt on the mat before her. We were both naked, though
she wore a pendant and a living serpent about her middle, and I had
the pearl of Grow-Young-Again hanging on a string on my chest.
I saw her looking at it. She could not have any idea what it was; but
her brows came together for a moment.
  "Tell me what I must do," I said.
  "This is the first thing," said Abisimti.
    She reached to her side and lifted in both her hands an alabaster
bowl of wondrous slimness and elegance, carved with the sacred
signs of the goddess. She cupped it and held it forward between us.
There was dark wine in it. So we would pour out a libation, I
thought, and then perhaps we would make some sort of a sacrifice--
sacrifice Inanna's serpent, could that be possible?--and after that I
supposed we would speak a rite together; and at the last, she would
draw me down onto the couch and take me into her body. In our
coupling I would cast forth whatever it was that had to be purged
from me before I could enter Uruk. So I imagined things would unfold.
    But Abisimti held the bowl toward me and said in a slow dreamlike
whisper, "Take this, Gilgamesh. Drink it deep."
    She put the bowl into my hands. I held it a moment, looking
down at the wine, before bringing it to my lips.
    And I sensed a strangeness. Abisimti was shivering in the great
heat of the day. She was trembling all over her body. Her shoulders
were oddly hunched, her breasts swayed like trees in a tempest, the
corners of her mouth drew in and out in an odd quirking way. I saw
fear on her face, and something almost like shame. But her eyes
gleamed ever more brightly; and it seemed to me that they were
fixed on me in the way that a serpent's eyes were fixed as it stares
at its helpless prey just before striking. I cannot tell you why I saw
her that way, but I did. She was watching: she was waiting. For what?
  I said, suddenly suspicious once again, "If we are to take part in
 this rite together, we must share everything. You drink first; and
then I will take mine."
  Her head went back with a jerk as though I had slapped her.
  "That may not be!" she cried.
  "Why is that?"
  "The wine--it is for you, Gilgamesh--"
  "I offer it freely to you. Share it with me, Abisimti."
  "I am not permitted!"
  "I am your king. I command you."
    She wrapped her arms over her breasts and huddled into herself.
She was quaking. Her eyes no longer met mine. She said, so softly
I scarcely could hear her, "No--please, no--"
  "Take but a sip, before I do."
  "No--I beg you--"
    "Why are you so afraid, Abisimti? Is the wine such holy stuff that
it will harm you?"
  "I beg you--Gilgamesh--"
    I held the bowl out to her, pushing it practically in her face. She
turned away; she clamped her lips tight, perhaps fearing I would
force it into her mouth. Then I was certain of the treachery. I put
the wine-bowl down beside me, and leaned forward, taking her by
the wrist. Quietly I said, "I thought there was love between us, but
I see I may have been mistaken. Tell me now, Abisimti, why you
will not drink the wine with me, and tell me truthfully."
  She did not answer.
  "Tell me!"
  "My lord--"
  "Tell me!"
    She shook her head. Then, with a force that astonished me, she
pulled her arm free of my grasp and whirled around so suddenly
that her snake took alarm and uncoiled itself from her waist, gliding
loose of her. An instant later I saw a copper dagger in her hand. She
had pulled it from beneath a cushion behind her. I thought it was
intended for me; but it was toward her own breast that she drove
it. Seizing her wrist, I held the tip of the blade back from her flesh.
That cost me some little effort, for she had a kind of fit upon her
and her strength was almost beyond belief. Slowly I prevailed; I
forced the dagger back; then I wrenched it from her hand and hurled
it across the room. At once she fell upon me like a lioness. Our
bodies came together, slippery with sweat, in a wild struggle. She
clawed at me, she bit, she sobbed and shrieked; and as we fought
her fingers became entangled in the cord that held the pearl of Grow-
Young-Again. She pulled; I felt the cord burning like fire against
my neck as it went taut; then the cord snapped, and the pearl, rolling
down my body, went bouncing away.
    When I realized what had happened I pushed Abisimti aside and
scrambled desperately after that most precious of jewels. For a mo-
ment I could not see where it had landed. Then I caught the gleam
of its lustre reflecting the faint light of the brazier. It lay a dozen
paces from me, or so. But Inanna's accursed serpent had spied the
pearl also, and--the gods alone know why--was slithering swiftly
toward it.
    "No!" I roared, and sprang forward. But I was too late. Before I
was halfway across the room the serpent reached the pearl and took
it lightly in its mouth, as a cat holds her kitten. It swung around,
facing me, to display its prize. For an instant its yellow eyes glittered
with the most bitter mockery I have ever had to behold. Then the
snake raised high its head and opened its jaws, and the pearl went
sliding down its maw. If I could have seized that serpent I would
have wrung it until it disgorged the stone; but to my horror the foul
creature slipped cunningly past my grasp and made its writhing way
toward the flap of the tent. On hands and knees I crawled quickly
after it, but I had no chance of catching it. It was the subtlest of
beasts. Delicately it put its snout to the sand and wriggled down
into the earth in a moment and vanished from sight. In its place
remained only a few bits of its speckled skin that it had sloughed off
as it escaped. Already it was shedding its old self, and coming into
the renewal of the body that had been meant for me. All my labor
thus was a waste: I had toiled in far lands merely to obtain the boon
of new life for the serpent. For myself I had gained nothing.
    I stood stunned a moment or two. Then I looked back toward
Abisimti. While I had sought to regain the pearl she had seized the
bowl of wine and had gulped a deep draught of it: her cheeks were
dripping with the stuff. She rose to her feet in a frightful wild jerking
manner, staring at me with such sorrow and love as nearly broke
my heart. Every muscle of her body was writhing at a different
rhythm: she looked like a woman possessed by a thousand demon
    "You understand--I did not want to do it--" she said in a terribl
thick-voiced grunting way.
    Then the bowl fell from her lifeless hands and she toppled to th
floor virtually at my feet.
    I thought I might go mad in that moment, or at least be swep
into the tremors of a fit. But a strange calmness was upon me, a
though my soul, buffeted so hard, had shored itself up by closint
in on itself to make me invulnerable. I had no fits. I did not eve~
weep. I looked down and saw the dark stain of the spilled wine il
the sand, and calmly I scuffed other sand over it with my foot until
it was hidden. Then I knelt and closed Abisimti's eyes, she who had
been sent here to slay me and who had given up her own life instead.
I felt no anger toward her, only pity and regret: she was a priestess,
she had been under oath to obey the goddess' behest. Well, her oath
to Inanna had brought her now to the House of Dust and Darkness,
where I too might now be arriving, but for that look of fear and
shame I had spied in Abisimti's face as she handed me the poisoned
wine. Now she was gone. And the pearl of Grow-Young-Again
gone too, between one moment and the next. Siduri the tavernkeeper
had spoken truly: You never will find this eternal li~ that you seek. But
it did not matter. I was weary of chasing after a dream. The serpent's
mockery had given me my answer: it was not meant to be, I must
find some other way.
    I donned my robe and strapped my sword to my side and went
from the tent. The dazzling sunlight struck against my eyes like a
fist as I emerged. But after a moment I could see. The three priestesses
of Inanna stood before me, gaping in amazement: they had not thought
they would see me come forth alive.
    "We have done the rite," I said quietly. "I am cleansed now of all
impure things. Go you and look after the priestess Abisimti: she will
need the words spoken over her."
    The leader of the priestesses said, bewildered, "You have had the
sacred wine, then?"
    "I have made a libation to the goddess with it," I told her. "And
now I will enter the city, and pay my respects to the goddess in person."
  "But--you--"
 "Step aside," I said easily. I rested my hand on the hilt of my
sword. "Let me pass, or I'll split you like a broiled goose. Step aside,
woman. Step aside!"
    She gave ground as the darkness yields before the morning sun,
shrinking back, all but vanishing. I went past her to the waiting
chariot. Ninurta-mansum, coming to me, put his hand to my wrist
and gripped it hard. The charioteer's eyes were shining with tears.
I think he had not expected to see me alive again either.
    I said to him, "We are done with this business here. Let us go into
Wruk now."
    Ninurta-mansum took the reins. We rode around the bright-hued
pavilions and headed toward the High Gate. I saw people atop the
parapets, peering down at me; and when the chariot reached the
portal of the gate it swung wide and I was admitted' without chal-
lenge. As well I should have been: for they all knew me to be Gil-
gamesh the king.
    "Do you see, there?" I said to my charioteer. "Where the White
Platform rises, at the end of this great avenue? The temple of Inanna
is there, the temple that I built with my own hands. Take me there."
    Thousands of the citizens of Uruk had come to witness my home-
coming; but they seemed strangely cowed and awed, and scarce any
of them called my name as I journeyed past. They stared; they turned
to one another and whispered; they made holy signs, out of their
great fear. Through a silent city we rode down the wide boulevard
toward the temple precinct. At the edge of the White Platform Nin-
urta-mansum brought the chariot to a halt and I dismounted. Alone
I went up the lofty steps to the portico of the immense temple that
for love of the goddess I had built in place of the temple of my
grandfather royal Enmerkar. Some priests came out and stood in my
way as I approached the temple door.
  One said boldly, "What business do you have here, O Gilgamesh?"
  "I mean to see Inanna."
    "The king may not enter Inanna's precinct unless he has been
summoned. It is the custom. You are aware of that."
  "The custom now is altered," I answered. "Stand aside."
  "It is forbidden! It is improper!"
    "Stand aside," I said in a very low voice. It was sufficient. He
stood aside.

    The temple halls were dark and cool even in the heat of the da
so thick were their walls. Lamps were burning, casting a soft lig
on the colored ornaments of baked clay that I had had put by tl
thousands into those walls. I walked swiftly. This was my templ~
I had designed it and I knew my way in it. I expected to find Inanr
in the great chamber of the goddess, and so she was: standing at tl~
center of the room, fully robed and in her finest breastplates an
ornaments, as though she had prepared herself for some high cere
mony. She wore one ornament I had never seen on her before--
mask of shimmering beaten gold that covered all her face but he
lips and chin, with the merest of slits for her eyes.
  "You should not be here, Gilgamesh," she said coolly.
    "No, I should not. I should be lying dead in a tent outside the
walls just now. Is that not so?" I did not let anger enter my voice
"They are saying the words over Abisimti now. She drank the win~
for me. She did your bidding and offered the bowl to me, but Z
would not drink from it, and so she drank the wine herself, of he~
own free will."
    Inanna said nothing. The lips below the mask were clamped close
together and set in a tight thin line.
    "They told me while I was in Eridu," I said, "that in my absence
you declared me dead, and called for the election of a new king. Was
that so, Inanna?"
  "The city must have a king," she said.
  "The city has one."
      "You had fled the city. You ran off into the wilderness like a
madman. If you were not dead, you might as well have been."
  "I went in search of something. And now I have returned."
  "Did you find that for which you searched?"
    "Yes," I said. "And no. It does not matter. Why do you wear that
mask, Inanna?"
  "It does not matter."
  "I have never seen you masked before."
  "It is a new custom," she said.
  "Ah. There are many new customs, it seems."
    "Including the custom of the king's entering this temple unsummoned."
    "And," I said, "the custom of offering the king, upon his return
 to the city from a journey, a bowl of wine that kills." I went a few
steps closer to her. "Take offthe mask, Inanna. Let me see your face again."
  "I will not," she said.
  "Take off the mask. I ask you."
  "Let me be. I will not take off the mask."
    But I could not speak with this metal-faced stranger. It was the
woman of flesh and blood I sought to look upon again, the treach-
erous and beautiful woman I had known so long, she whom I had
loved, in my fashion, as I had loved no other woman. ! meant to
behold that woman one more time.
    Gently I said, "I would see the splendor of your face once more.
I think there is no face more beautiful in all the world. Do you know
that, Inanna? How beautiful you have seemed to me?" I laughed.
"Do you remember the nights we made the Sacred Marriage to-
gether? Of course. Of course. How could you forget? That year
when I was the new king, and I lay all night in your arms, and in
the morning the rain had come. I remember. ! remember those times
before you were Inanna, when you called me to the chambers deep
below the old temple. I was just a frightened boy then, and I scarcely
knew what games you were playing with me. Or that first time,
when they were saying the coronation rite for Dumuzi, and I wan-
dered off into the corridors of the temple and you found me. You
were just a child yourself, though you already had your breasts. Do
you remember? Do you remember? Ah, Inanna, in time I came to
understand the games you were playing with me! But now I would
see your face again. Put down the mask."  "Gilgamesh--"
    "Put clown the mask," I said. "Put it down." And I called her by
her name: not her priestess-name but her other, older, name, her
birth-name, which no one had spoken since she had become Inanna.
By that name I conjured her. At the sound of it she gasped and held
up her hands in a secret goddess-sign, shielding herself. I could not
see her eyes behind the mask, but I imagined that they were fixed
on me, unblinking, piercing, cold.
  "You are mad to call me by that name!" she whispered.
    "Am I? Then I am mad. I would see your face once more, one last time."
     Now there was a quiver in her voice. "Let me be, Gilgamesh. I
meant you no harm. What I did, I did for the sake of the city--the
city must have a king, and you were gone--the goddess commanded me--"
    "Yes. The goddess commanded you to remove Dumuzi, and you
did. The goddess commanded you to remove Gilgamesh, and you
would have done it. Ah, Inanna, Inanna--it was for the sake of the
city, yes. And for the sake of the city I grant you my pardon. I
forgive you all your schemes. I forgive you what you have done in
the goddess' name to harm me and to undermine my power. I forgive
you your hatred, your anger, your fury. I even forgive you your
vengeance, for it was you that called the gods down upon Enkidu
whom I loved, and I think but for you he might be alive this day.
But I forgive you. I forgive you everything, Inanna. If we had not
been king and priestess, I think I would have loved you even more
than I loved him, more than I loved life itself. But I was king; you
were priestess. Ah, Inanna, Inanna--"
    I did not use the sword. I took the dagger from my hip and put
it into her side between the breastplate and the beads of lapis around
her waist, and twisted it upward until I reached her heart. She made
a single small sound and fell. I think she must have died at once. I
let my breath forth slowly. At last I was free of her; but it had been
like cutting away a part of my soul.
    Kneeling beside her, I unfastened the mask and lifted it from her face.
    I wish that I had not done that one thing. What had become of
her since last I had looked upon her was difficult for my mind to
credit. Her eyes had lost none of her beauty, nor her lips; but all else
was a ruin. Some spreading blemish had seized her face and ravaged
it. She was pocked and cratered, red and raw here, gray-skinned and
sagging there: a nightmare hag, a demon-faced thing. She looked a
thousand years old. It would have been better that I left her covered.
But I had laid her bare, and I must carry the burden of that. I bent
forward; I put my lips to hers and kissed her for the last time; then
I fastened the mask back into its place, and rose, and went outside
to the temple porch to summon the people and tell them of the new
order of things that I meant to proclaim as I resumed my kingship in Uruk.

THESE HAVE been busy years, and fulfilling ones. The gods have
been kind to Uruk and to Gilgamesh its king. The city thrives; the
wall stands high; we have painted the White Platform with a fresh
coat of gypsum, and it gleams in the sun. All is well. We have many
tasks yet to carry out, but all is well. I sit now in my chamber in
the palace, inscribing the last of my tablets, for I think the tale is
told. I will not cease strivingmI will never do thatmbut a certain
peace has come over me that I never knew before, and that is new;
I had no peace in the times of which I have been writing, but now
I do. I tell you: all is well.
    It was easy enough to bring the soaring ambitions of Meski-
agnunna of Ur back down to earth: that was my first enterprise after
my restoration. I sent him a message confirming him in his kingship
of Ur, and granting him the administration of Kish as an additional
fief. He knew what I was saying, when I condescended to let him
hold the cities he already held. "But Nippur and Eridu," I told him,
"I reserve to myself, as the gods have decreed: for they are the holy
cities, subject to the rule of the high king of the Land."
    By that message I sent forth my claim to the supremacy. And at
the same time I dispatched iny army, under command of the faithful
Zabardiøbunugga, to enter Nippur and persuade the soldiers of Ur
to depart. I did not leave Uruk myself, since I had so much to do
there--the choosing of a new high priestess, for instance, and the
proper training of her so that she would understand the role she must
play in my government.
  While I occupied myself with those matters, Zabardi-bunugga
 managed the liberation of Nippur effectively enough, thou!
without some small damage. The men of Ur took refuge
Tummal, which is the house of Enlil there, and it was necess
break down the walls of that temple in order to remove them.

    These are full times for me. Indeed, there is never a momc
rest. I would not have it any other way. What else is there, to
plan, to work, to build, to do? It is the salvation of our souls, 
to the music in the courtyard: the harper plays, and by making
melodies he pays his birth-price. Look at the goldsmith, bent
over his table. The carpenter, the fisherman, the scribe, 
the king--in the performing of our tasks we all fulfill the com-
mandments of the gods, which is the only purpose in this life
which we were made. We find ourselves thrown by the whim
the gods into a chancy world, where uncertainty reigns; within the
whirlwind we must make a secure place for ourselves. That we
by work; and my work it is to be king.
    So I toil and my people toil. The temples, the canals, the 
walls, the pavements in the streets--how can we ever cease rebuild
ing and repairing and restoring them? It is the way. The rites and
sacrifices by which we hold back the surging powers of chaos--how
can we ever cease performing them? It is the way. We know our
tasks, and we do them, and all is well. Listen to that music, in the
courtyard! Listen! Listen!
    Soon--let it not be very soon, but I will be ready whenever the
hour arrives--I must begin the last of my journeys. I will go down
into the dark world t~rom which there is no return. My musician
will be beside me, and my concubines and stewards and valets, my
charioteer, my jugglers, my minstrels; and together we will make
our offerings to the gods of the world below, to Ereshkigal and
Namtar, to Enki, to Enlil, to all those who govern our destinies. So
be it. It does not trouble me now to think of that prospect. I have
never considered returning to Dilmun to beg a second pearl of Grow-
Young-Again: that is not the way. That old priest who calls himself
the Ziusudra tried to tell me that, but I had to learn it in my own
fashion. Well, I have learned it now.
    The light is going. There is the rite to perform tonight on the
temple roof, and I must hasten to it; I am the king, it is my task.
We honor Ninsun my mother, whom I proclaimed a goddess this
time last year when her days on earth were done. Already I hear the
chanting in the distance, and the scent of burning meat is in the air.
So, now, an end to all my stories. I have spoken much of death, my
great enemy with whom I have grappled so fiercely, but I will speak
of him no more. I have feared him greatly. I have walked with terrible
fear of his shadow. But I have made my peace with death now. I
have come to understand the truth, which is that the escape from
death lies not in potions and magic, but in the performance of one's
task. That way lies calmness and acceptance.
    I have done my work, and I will do more. I have made a name
for myself that will last down the ages. Gilgamesh will not be for-
gotten. He will not be left to trail his wings mournfully in the dust.
They will remember me in joy and pride. What will they say of me?
They will say that I lived, and I lived well; that I strived, and I strived
well; that I died, and I died well. I feared death as no man ever did,
and went to the ends of the world to escape him, in which I failed;
but when I returned I feared him no longer. That is the truth. I know
now that we need not fear death, if we have done our tasks. And
when we cease to fear death, there is no death. That is the truest
truth I know: There is no death.

Afterword

We have no reason to doubt that Gilgamesh of Uruk was an authentic
historical figure. His name occurs frequently in the king-lists of the
Mesopotamian land of Sumer--what is now the southern part of
Iraq--and it is likely that he lived about 2500 B.C. Beyond much
question he was a strong and successful king; until the end of in-
dependent Mesopotamian civilization, two thousand years later, he
was regarded always as the prototype of the great leader, a warrior
and statesman beyond compare. Myths of all sorts grew up about
him; he became a legendary culture-hero, who combined in himself
the best traits of Hercules, of Ulysses, of Prometheus.
    It is primarily with the historical Gilgamesh that I have concerned
myself in this book, but I have dealt also with that mythical one
who is the hero of the oldest work of tragic literature which has
survived into our time. I refer to the Epic of Gilgamesh, which is
perhaps two thousand years old--more than a thousand years more
ancient than the Iliad and the Odysseymand which may be even older
than that. Our text of it, which is incomplete but conveys the essential
story, comes to us in various forms that have survived by mere luck
out of the ruins of antiquity. The longest known version was found
by archaeologists in the nineteenth century in the library of the As-
syrian king Ashurbanipal--the Assyrians were the final inheritors
of the ancient Mesopotamian culture, long after the Sumerian foun-
ders had been absorbed by younger and more vigorous races--and
was set down on clay tablets about 700 B.C. In addition we have a
fragmentary version perhaps a thousand years older, written in the
language of the Babylonians who dominated Mesopotamia between
the time of the Sumerians and that of the Assyrians; and there is also
a version in the language of the Hittites of Syria, indicating that the
story was widespread throughout the Near East. All of these are
probably based on some Sumerian original that is lost to us.
    The Epic of Gilgamesh is a profoundly disturbing work: a med-
itative poem on the necessity of death. Gilgamesh is shown to be a
superhuman figure, confident to the point of arrogance, bursting
with vitality; and yet the fear of his own mortality reduces him to
a kind of paralysis, out of which he emerges to undertake a desperate
pilgrimage to the immortal survivor of the Flood, Ziusudra (Ut-
napishtim in the later versions). It is worth noting in passing that
the entire tale of Noah and the ark as told in the Bible is almost
certainly based on the Flood narrative embodied in the Gilgamesh
epic, which precedes it by at least a thousand years and perhaps much more.
    In retelling the story of Gilgamesh I have drawn freely on the
original epic, relying mainly on the two standard English transla-
tions, that of Alexander Heidel (1946) and E. A. Speiser (1955). I
have also incorporated into it the far older Sumerian poems dealing
with other aspects of the life of Gilgamesh, making use of the trans-
lations by Samuel Noah Kramer (1955). But at all times I have at-
tempted to interpret the fanciful and fantastic events of these poems
in a realistic way, that is, to tell the story of Gilgamesh as though
he were writing his own memoirs, and to that end I have introduced
many interpretations of my own devising which for better or for
worse are in no way to be ascribed to the scholars I have named.
    Perhaps it need not be explained--but I will--that the two rivers
referred to in the novel by their Sumerian names as the Idigna and
the Buranunu are those known to later civilizations as the Tigris and
the Euphrates. The ruins of Gilgamesh's Uruk are to be found near
the modern Iraqi town of Warka, which is twelve miles from the
present course of the Euphrates; but the literary and archaeological
evidence strongly indicates that the river flowed much closer to the
city in the time of Gilgamesh.