Gilgamesh the King

"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 insects 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 fragrance 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. Wherever 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 language 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 frightened 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 together, 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 mountain, 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 disdained 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 goodnesspresence 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, Gilgamesh. 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 themselves 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, Gilgamesh! 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 Dilmun, and one can die; one may find mice gnawing in one's barleysacks, 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 columns. But I had fallen upon them too vigorously; they lay scattered in many pieces, and I cannot say how many I had kicked into the sea, but it was more than a few. Numbly I gathered up those that remained. Sursunabu told me with a gesture that it was futile. "We will manage without them," he said. "The risks will be greater. But if you are the child of the gods, perhaps you will ask them to look after us during our crossing." "So you will take me!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Then fare you well, Gilgamesh."

"Fare you well, Siduri."

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

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

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

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

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

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

There was no way I could disguise my height or the breadth of my shoulders, but! 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 commanded him to take upon himself the governorship of Nippur."

"It was that simple?"

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

"Especially if it is backed by a thousand men!"

"Especially so," said the other.

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

And Gilgamesh-where was he? Sitting in a tavern in Dilmun, waiting to be summoned to the isle of Ziusudra so that he might somehow wheedle eternal life for 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 Sursunabu 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 Sursunabu 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. Trembling, 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 speaking. 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 understand 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 Hasidanum; 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 images, 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; LuNinmarka 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 darkness 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 steadfastly 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 blessing, 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 dismissal. I felt an invisible curtain descend between us. Although the Ziusudra still sat before me, unmoving, he was not there. Lu-Ninmarka, 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 understanding; 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 impenetrable 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 manner 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 undertaking. 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 LuNinmarka 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 hardship and have wearied yourself so greatly without attaining any reward. 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 GrowYoung-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 LuNinmarka 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. Brightness 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 unconcerned through an ever larger crowd of whisperers and pointers: "Gilgamesh! Gilgamesh!" all the way. When I entered the tradinghall 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 Gilgamesh. They mourned most grievously for you."

My head roared. I thought my fit was coming on. I felt the buzzing within, I felt the hissing. I ~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 bewilderment. Was I still king? Did I even deserve to be? The gods had placed me in command over Uruk and I had deserted my post: that could not be denied. For that, anyone might say, I am to blame. But 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 gobbled up Kish and Nippur. What would be next, if not Eridu? "How can we doubt it?" Shulutula asked me. "He is seeking kingship over all the Land."

"The gods have not awarded the high kingship to Ur," I said.

He peered somberly into his wine-cup. "Can we be sure of that?"

"It is not possible."

"Once the kingship was in Eridu, was it not?" Shulutula said. "Long ago, before the Flood. Then it passed to Badtibira, to Larak,to-"

"Yes," I cut in impatiently. "Spare me. I know the ancient annals as well as you."

Though my brusque tone obviously ruffled him, he would not be deterred. I liked him for that. "I beg your indulgence," is what he said, and then with surprising boldness went right on. "-to Sippar and to Shuruppak. Then came the Flood, and everything was destroyed. After the Flood, when the kingship of the Land again descended from heaven, the place where it came to reside was in Kish, is that not so?" "Agreed," I said.

"Meskiagnunna has made himself the master of Kish; can it not then be said that the kingship has gone from Kish to Ur?" Now I saw what he was driving at.

I shook my head. "Hardly," I said. "The kingship resided in Kish, yes. But you overlook something. In the first year of my reign Agga of Kish came to Uruk to make war, and he was beaten and taken captive. Clearly the kingship passed from Kish to Uruk at that moment. When the king of Ur seized Kish, he seized only a hollow thing. The kingship had gone from it; it had gone to Uruk. Where it now resides."

"Then you maintain that the king of Uruk is king over the Land?"

"Most certainly," I said. "But there has been no king in Uruk these months past!" "There will be a king in Uruk again very shortly, Shulutula," I told him. I leaned forward until I could almost touch his enormous gourd of a nose with the tip of my own, and said in a way that admitted of no uncertainties, "Meskiagnunna can have Kish if he wishes it. But I will not allow him to keep Nippur, for it is a holy city and must be free; and I tell you this, he will never have Eridu either. You have nothing to fear." Then I rose; I yawned and stretched; and I emptied the last of my wine. "This is enough feasting for tonight, I think. Sleep calls me. In the morning I will visit the temples, and then I'll begin my homeward journey. I will require of you a chariot and a team of asses, and a charioteer who knows his way north."

He seemed puzzled. "You mean to go by land, majesty?"

I nodded. "It will give my people more time to prepare for my homecoming."

"Then I will provide an escort of five hundred troops for you, and whatever else you may-"

"No," I said. "A single chariot, and beasts to draw it. A single charioteer. I need nothing more than that. The gods will protect me, Shulutula, as they always have. I will go alone."

He had trouble understanding that. He could not see that I had no wish to come marching into Uruk at the head of an army of foreign soldiers: I meant to enter my city as I had left it, alone, unafraid. My people would accept me as their king because I was their king, not because I had reimposed myself by force. When men are subdued by strength of arms, they do not submit in their souls, but yield merely because they have no choice. But when men are subdued by the power of character they yield to the core of their hearts, and submit in full measure. Any wise king knows these things.

So I took from Shulutula of Eridu merely what I had asked of him: a chariot, a charioteer. He gave me also some provisions and a quiver of fine javelins, in case we encountered lions or wolves along the way; but although he hovered around me anxiously trying to persuade me to accept some more imposing escort from him, I would not do it.

I stayed in Eridu five more days. There were purifications that I had to perform at the shrines of Enki and An, and a private rite in honor of Lugalbanda. Those matters occupied three days; the fourth, according to Shulutula's conjurers, was an unlucky day, so I stayed on for a fifth. Then I set out at daybreak for Uruk. It was the twelfth day of the month Du'uzu, when summer's full heat was beginning to fall upon the Land. The charioteer he gave me was a sturdy fellow named Ninurta-mansum, who was perhaps thirty years old, with the first flecks of gray in his beard. He wore across his breast the scarlet riband that announced he had pledged his life to the service of Enki. In a curious way it called to my mind a fiery red scar that had marked the body of old Namhani, who had driven my team long ago when I was a young prince in the service of Agga of Kish. Which was oddly appropriate, for the only charioteer I had ever known who was the equal of Ninurta-mansum in skill was Namhani: they were two of a kind. When they held the reins, it was as though they held the souls of their beasts in their hands.

At the hour of my departure I embraced Shulutula and pledged him once more that I would shield his city against the ambitions of the king of Ur; he slew a goat and poured out a libation Of blood and honey at the main gate to insure my safe passage home; and then I rode out into the morning. We left the city by the Gate of the Abyss and went past the high dunes and a great grove of thorny kiskanu-trees, almost a forest of them: when I looked back, I saw the towers of the palace and temples of Eridu rising like the castles of demon princes against the pale early-morning sky. Then we crossed a rough stony ridge and went down into the valley, and the city was lost behind us.

Ninurta-mansum knew very well who I was and what was likely to happen if I fell into the hands of some patrolling squadron of men from Ur. So he gave that city a wide berth and swung around instead into the forlorn and desolate land on the western side of Eridu. It was all wasteland here, and a bleak bitter wind blew: the sand swirled up and took the form of tenuous ghosts whose melancholy eyes did not leave me all the day long. But I was not afraid. They were nothing more than swirling sand.

The asses seemed tireless. They flew onward hour after hour and seemed to know neither hunger nor thirst nor weariness. They could have been enchanted, or perhaps demons placed under a spell, so tireless were they. When we halted at sundown, they looked scarcely winded. I wondered what the beasts would do for water in this wilderness; but Ninurta-mansum began at once to dig, and straightaway a cool sweet spring came bubbling up out of the sand. Beyond doubt the blessing of Enki was upon that man.

When we no longer ran much risk of meeting warriors of Ur, the charioteer began to guide us closer to the river. We were on the Buranunu's sunset side and had to cross it somehow to reach Uruk; but that was no great task for Ninurta-mansum. He knew a place where at this time of year the river was shallow and the bottom was firm, and took us across there. We had one bad moment when the leftmost ass lost his footing and went down, which I thought 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 wanderings, O king. She knows that dark spirits have impinged on your soul; and she would cleanse you of their malign force before you come into the city. It is her way to serve, and this is her service: surely you know that."

"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 Shulutula'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 virtually 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 approaching 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 manhood 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-yearold Abisimti of my boyhood, whose breasts were round as pomegranates, 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 GrowYoung-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 moment 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 challenge. As well I should have been: for they all knew me to be Gilgamesh 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 homecoming; 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 Ninurta-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 treacherous 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 together? 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 wandered 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 Meskiagnunna 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 Zabardiřbunugga, 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 commandments 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 GrowYoung-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 forgotten. 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 independent 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 Assyrian king Ashurbanipal-the Assyrians were the final inheritors of the ancient Mesopotamian culture, long after the Sumerian founders 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 meditative 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 (Utnapishtim 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 translations, 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 translations by Samuel Noah Kramer (1955). But at all times I have attempted 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.

This file was created with BookDesigner program

bookdesigner@the-ebook.org

07/01/2012