Robert Silverberg - Gilgamesh the King

THERE IS in Uruk the city a great platform of kiln-baked brick that was the playing field of the gods, long before the Flood, in that time when mankind had not yet been created and they alone inhabited the Earth. Every seventh year for the past ten thousand years we have painted the bricks of that platform white with a plaster of fine gypsum, so that it flashes like a vast mirror under the eye of the sun. The White Platform is the domain of the goddess Inanna, to whom our city is consecrated. Many of the kings of Uruk have erected temples upon the platform for her use; and of all these shrines of the goddess none was more grand than the one that was built by my royal grandfather the hero Enmerkar. A thousand artisans labored for twenty years to construct it, and the ceremony of its dedication lasted eleven days and eleven nights without cease, and during that time the moon was wrapped each evening in a deep mantle of blue light as a token of Inanna's pleasure. "We are Inanna's children," the people sang, "and Enmerkar is her brother, and he shall reign forever and ever." Nothing remains of that temple now, for I tore it down after I came to the throne, and put up a far more splendid one on its site. But in its time it was a wonder of the world. It is a place that will always hold special meaning for me: within its precincts, one day in my childhood, the beginnings of wisdom descended on me, and the shape of my life was shaped, and I was set upon a course from which there has been no turning. That was the day on which the palace servants fetched me from my games to watch my father the king, divine Lugalbanda, embark upon the last of his journeys. "Lugalbanda goes forth now to the bosom of the gods," they told me, "and he shall live for all time among them in joy, and drink their wine and eat their bread." I think and hope that they were right; but it may very well be the case that my father's final journey has brought him instead to the Land of No Returning, to the House of Dust and Darkness, where his ghost shuffles about sadly like a bird with crippled wings, feeding on dry clay. I do not know.

I am he whom you call Gilgamesh. I am the pilgrim who has seen everything within the confines of the Land, and far beyond it; I am the man to whom all things were made known, the secret things, the truths of life and death, most especially those of death. I have coupled with Inanna in the bed of the Sacred Marriage; I have slain demons and spoken with gods; I am two parts god myself, and only one part mortal. Here in Uruk I am king, and when I walk through the streets I walk alone, for there is no one who dares approach me too closely. I would not have it that way, but it is too late to alter matters now: I am a man apart, a man alone, and so will I be to the end of my days. Once I had a friend who was the heart of my heart, the self of my self, but the gods took him from me and he will not come again.

My father Lugalbanda must have known a loneliness much like mine, for he was a king and a god also, and a great hero in his day. Surely those things set him apart from ordinary men, as I have been set apart.

The imprint of my father is still clear in my mind after all these years: a great-shouldered deep-chested man, who went bare above the waist in all seasons, wearing only his long flounced woolen robe from hips to ankles. His skin was smooth and dark from the sun, like polished leather, and he had a thick curling black beard, in the manner of the desert people, though unlike them he shaved his scalp. I remember his eyes best of all, dark and bright and enormous, seeming to fill his whole forehead: when he scooped me up and held me before his face, I sometimes thought I would float forward into the vast pool of those eyes and be lost within my father's soul forever.

I saw him rarely. There were too many wars to fight. Year after year he led the chariots forth to quell some fiprising in our unruly vassal state of Aratta, far to the east, or to drive away the wild marauding tribes of the wastelands that crept up on Uruk to steal our grain and cattle, or to display our might before one of our great rival cities, Kish or Ur. When he was not away at the wars, there were the pilgrimages he must make to the holy shrines, in spring to Nippur, in the autumn to Eridu. Even when he was home he had little time for me, preoccupied as he was by the necessary festivals and rituals of the year, or the meetings of the city assembly, or the proceedings of the court ofjustice, or the supervision of the unending work that must be done to maintain our canals and dikes. But he promised me that a time would come when he would teach me the things of manhood and we would hunt lions together in the marshlands.

That time never arrived. The malevolent demons that hover always above our lives, awaiting some moment of weakness in us, are unwearying; and when I was six years old one of those creatures succeeded in penetrating the high walls of the palace, and seized upon the soul of Lugalbanda the king, and swept him from the world.

I had no idea that any of that was happening. In those days life was only play for me. The palace, that formidable place of fortified towered entrances and intricately niched facades and lofty columns, was my gaming-house. All day long I ran about with an energy that never failed, shouting and laughing and tumbling on my hands. Even then I was half again as tall as any boy of my own age, and strong accordingly; and so I chose older boys as my playfellows, always the rough ones, the sons of grooms and cupbearers, for of brothers I had none.

So I played at chariots and warriors, or wrestled, or fought with cudgels. And meanwhile one day a sudden horde of priests and exorcists and sorcerers began to come and go within the palace, and a clay image of the demon Namtaru was fashioned and placed close by the stricken king's head, and a brazier was filled with ashes and a dagger put within it, and on the third day at nightfall the dagger was brought forth and thrust into the image of Namtaru and the image was buried in the corner of the wall, and libations of beer were poured and a young pig was slaughtered and its heart was set forth to appease the demon, and water was sprinkled, and constant prayers were chanted; and each day Lugalbanda struggled for his life and lost some further small part of the struggle. Not a word of this was said to me. My playfellows grew somber and seemed abashed to be running about and shouting and whacking at cudgels with me.

I did not know why. They did not tell me that my father was dying, though I think they certainly knew it and knew also what the con sequences of his death would be.

Then one morning a steward of the palace came to me and called out, "Put up your cudgel, boy! No more games! There is man's business to do today!" He bade me bathe and dress myself in my finest brocaded robe, and place about my forehead my headband of golden foil and lapis lazuli, and go to the apartment of my mother the queen Ninsun. For I must accompany her shortly to the temple of Enmerkar, he said.

I went to her, not understanding why, since it was no holy day known to me. I found my mother clad most magnificently in a coat of bright crimson wool, a headdress gleaming with carnelian and topaz and chalcedony, and golden breastplates from which hung ivory amulets in the form offish and gazelles. Her eyes were darkened with kohl and her cheeks were painted deep green, so that she looked like a creature that had risen from the sea. She said nothing to me, but fastened about my neck a figurine in red stone of the wind demon Pazuzu, as if she feared for me. She touched her hand lightly to my cheek. Her touch was cool.

Then we went out into the long hall of the fountains, where many people were waiting for us. And from there we went in procession, the grandest procession I had ever seen, to the Enmerkar temple.