Robert Silverberg - Gilgamesh the King

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.