by Brian Godawa
Nimrod had finally acquired the wealth and manpower to begin his building project of both city and temple. He had but a few things left to take care of before returning to his home base upriver. One of those things was the primary reason he was visiting the Ur provinces. He wanted to have a private meeting with a sorcerer of Ur, an idol maker by the name of Terah.
Chapter 3
Terah ben Nahor had established quite a reputation from Sumer to Akkad for his innovative discoveries in astrology, and the art of divining the future and the will of the gods from signs in the heavens. He had started as a humble idol maker, whose house idols, called teraphim, had become well known for their exquisite carvings. They were mostly small terra cotta statues of deities, both human and animal shaped, from the size of a large finger up to a foot tall. They were often lime-washed or painted in red and black. They were set in the doorways of homes or buried under the threshold to protect the inhabitants from malignant spirits. But they were also worshipped in private family chapels and buried with family member’s bodies in graves as afterlife guardians.
Soon he was commissioned by the king to craft larger than life idols out of imported stone for the royal palace and temple. His interest in deity expanded into divination and he studied texts on extispicy, hepatoscopy, and lecanomancy, the arts of divining from animal entrails, livers, and liquid movements respectively.
His interpretation of omens became legendary and he was appointed an official diviner, called a baru. But that was short lived as he began charting the heavens for horoscopic portents. It was believed that the heavens and earth were united in cosmic oneness and that celestial events were signs that foreshadowed earthly events of kings and kingdoms. Mesopotamians also believed that the stars and planets in the heavens were interchangeable with the gods in a mystical union of being. Thus the term “heavenly host” carried a double meaning reference to both the stars in the heavens and the assembly of gods. The study of the heavenly host, and their movement through the heavens was ultimately religious devotion.
Urnanna had appointed Terah head sorcerer because of his vast knowledge of heavenly secrets. But Terah was also a strong asset because he had been very amenable to the king’s wishes. Terah sought to please Urnanna at all costs. This was why Urnanna was concerned as he led Nimrod and Marduk to meet Terah up the long ramp of steps that approached the Great Ziggurat’s temple of Nanna at the top. He suspected Nimrod was interested in building his own institution of magicians and sorcerers and Urnanna was about to lose his treasured Terah.
Either that or lose his head.
They entered the temple at the top. It was a white marble structure lined with pillars and hosting an exquisite black obsidian idol of the moon god Nanna before an altar in the center of the temple. Over in the corner Terah was engrossed in reading an astrolabe, a mathematical text of astronomical observations and calculations. Rather, he was apparently reading the astrolabe, because he had fallen asleep in his reading position and was currently snoring away, oblivious to his new visitors.
Urnanna cleared his throat loudly and Terah snapped awake. He noticed the king and stood with a bow. “My lord,” Terah blurted.
“Terah, you need to go home and get some rest,” said Urnanna. “You cannot live, eat, and sleep in the temple. You have a family and a life.”
“Yes, your eminence,” said Terah. And then he noticed the very large hooded muscleman, and the king looking closely at the statue of Nanna.
Urnanna announced, “Terah, meet King Nimrod, your suzerain.”
“Your high majesty,” said Terah and bowed again.
Nimrod did not look at Terah, but continued to examine the idol as he spoke.
“You have quite the reputation for a diversity of talents,” said Nimrod.
“At your service, my king,” said Terah.
Urnanna winced. That was most likely indeed going to happen.
Nimrod said, “You may leave us, Urnanna.”
Urnanna bowed and left the temple for the stairway descent. It was humiliating to be ordered around like a servant. But he knew that any show of pride or independence would result in punishment, if not instant death by the blade of Nimrod himself.
Once Urnanna was gone, Nimrod returned to his examination of the idol and said, “You have crafted an amazing likeness out of this black obsidian.”
“Thank you, my lord,” said Terah.
Nimrod said, “Your terra cotta house idols are known all over Mesopotamia. One could say you have cornered the marketplace with your expertise.”
“I pray my excellence honors the gods,” Terah replied.
“How are your skills with coarse stone?” asked Nimrod. “Sedimentary or igneous rock.”
“Competent, your majesty.”
Nimrod said, “How would you like to have your own institute of astrologers, sorcerers, and magi?”
Terah said, “Well, I, uh – that would be – an undeserved honor, my lord.”
Nimrod continued, “I want you to be my head sorcerer, Prince of the Heavenly Host. You would be fully supplied with everything you need and would answer only to me.”
Terah could not think of what to say, so he repeated himself, “I am at your service, my king.”
He paused and added, “Shall I gather my wife and belongings to return with you to the north?”
“Not yet,” said Nimrod. “Your first duty will be to accomplish a secret task for me down here and then travel up to Babylon at an arranged time in the near future.”
“As you wish, my lord,” said Terah.
Nimrod asked him, “What would be the stone that has the largest deposit nearest Ur, and the best balance between hardness and speed for sculpting?”
Terah thought for a moment. “I would have to say your best bet is limestone. It is the perfect medium between gypsum and granite. There is a significant region of it just west of here not too far into the desert.”
Nimrod said, “Good. I want you to establish a guarded quarry there. Keep it out of sight of the cities. I have hired dozens of stonecutters from the Zagros and the Levant to provide you their services. They will arrive this week.”
“I do not understand, my king,” said Terah. “What would you like me to make out of the stone?”
Nimrod was looking again at the idol. “An army of limestone golemim. Stone Ones in the form of soldiers. Ten thousand strong.”
Terah gulped. “Forgive me, my lord, but I still do not understand. Of what use will this ‘army’ of statues be to you? And how will I transport them all upriver?”
“You will not have to transport them,” said Nimrod. “They will march up to Babylon for my command.”
Terah was too shocked to ask the obvious question.
Nimrod walked up to him and pulled out a battered piece of parchment paper and handed it to Terah. He read it.
“This is highly sophisticated sorcery,” said Terah.
“That is why I wanted the best sorcerer I could find,” said Nimrod.
“Its purpose is to animate the non-living. Where did you get it?”
“I stumbled across it on a journey I had long ago.” Then Nimrod added as an after thought, “In another life.”
It was indeed another life. For Nimrod had been the infamous Gilgamesh, king of Uruk before he changed his identity and his life. He had stumbled upon the animated Stone Ones while seeking his great great grandfather, Noah the Faraway, now remembered as Utnahpishtim. The written spell, placed into the mouth of a golem, brought it to life as a slave to do the bidding of its master. These Stone Ones had no life, no breath, just animation. So they could not be killed and were almost impossible to stop. Nimrod had fought with several Stone Ones and had defeated them by crashing them into each other, which turned them into rubble. He commandeered the current spell from one of the mouths of the defeated golemim.
Nimrod explained, “You will keep the sculpted Stone Ones in the desert, out of sight from the cities until you have completed their numbers. Then you
will duplicate this spell on as many parchments, and place them in the mouths of the golemim. As you said, the spell will animate them to do your bidding. You will arm them with weapons and march them up to Babylon at a coordinated time. Then you may take residence in my city and begin your institute as you desire.”
It was obvious what Nimrod was planning, an invincible army to rule over all of Mesopotamia. And it was also obvious why he wanted it done in secret in the desert. He needed the element of surprise to accomplish his purpose.
Better to be on the side of the conqueror, thought Terah, than on the side of his conquered.
“It will be my honor,” said Terah.
It was more like a lack of honor. For Terah was driven by self-preservation, not virtue. The pursuit of secret knowledge, of any knowledge, had created in him a fear of death. The more he learned, the more he realized how much more he had to learn, which resulted in a dreadful awareness of how little time he would have left in his life to satisfy his craving. He would not live forever, so he sought to cram as much into his short life as he possibly could. Therefore, whatever maintained his survival would take precedent, so that he could maintain his pursuit of more knowledge. The result was that he tried to serve too many masters that all demanded his allegiance.
Fortunately, he did not have any children yet, so it would be relatively easy to pick up his minimal possessions along with his wife Amthelo, and make the trek up to Babylon when necessary. Until then, she would be able to stay in Ur, while he accomplished his labor of mining and sculpting the sedimentary rock. He could make visits back home whenever he needed to.
“I will need the army two new moons from now,” said Nimrod.
Terah gulped. He knew not to complain to this king for he could see there was no compassion in his eyes, only power. He could tell that hesitancy of any kind would provoke wrath. Okay, he would not see his wife for two full months after all. He would be working morning, noon, and night carving an army of ten thousand soldiers and bringing them alive with the duplicated spell he held in his hand.
Terah said with bold confidence, “You will have your army of golemim in two new moons.”
Nimrod grinned and slapped Terah’s back.
“Now that is what I like to see, a willing attitude. You and I will work well together, Terah. As you can imagine, I have very big plans. And I want you to be a part of them.”
“I am at your service,” repeated Terah. It was a bit too pandering.
“Of course,” said Nimrod, “if you reveal any of the details to anyone, I will torture and execute your entire family in front of your eyes, and then do the same to you.”
“Of course, my lord,” gulped Terah. “Of course.”
Chapter 4
Nimrod had chosen the middle of Mesopotamia for his city of Babylon. It was a convenient location between the north and south where the Tigris and Euphrates were in close convergence. That would enable control of the waterways of life that doubled as the main thoroughfare for trade. From Babylon, Nimrod had equal access to both his newly created northern cities as well as the conquered southern ones. He had found a plot of land that was well suited for his plans of a mighty city and settled the area in preparation. He placed pillared boundary markers with serpent and scorpion curses engraved into them as guarantors of his oath to destroy trespassers.
Of the three clans of the sons of Noah, Nimrod had risen to become the leader of the Hamitic tribes. Joktan ruled the Shemites, and Phenech the Japhethites. As Nimrod extended his power, he did so through a beneficent suzerain treaty with Joktan and Phenech. They were allowed to engage in the local rule and administration of their cities, as well as their tribal traditions, so long as they paid tribute to Nimrod and supported the building of Babylon with some conscripted corveé labor.
It was an uneasy alliance.
But while Nimrod was pursuing his plans of building a city and temple, the goddess Ishtar had been pursuing her own plans. The City of Nineveh was just being built up north, and it was to be her very own city of patronage. She would be called “Ishtar of Nineveh.” It was her spoils acquired by a secret deal with Nimrod back in Uruk.
Ishtar was the unruly and defiant goddess of sex and war. The pantheon of gods had rejected her for her megalomaniacal rebellion. She had a real problem with authority, unless she was the authority, so they ostracized her from their hierarchy. When she discovered their plans to unite with Nimrod in a scheme of global governance, she blackmailed them into giving her some territory and freedom in exchange for her promise not to undermine their goals. Each party would agree to live and let live.
But Ishtar did not like the idea of letting anyone live. And she had no intention of being shipped up north to be out of the way of the action. She had other plans. She did not seek to overcome the assembly of gods, for that was not likely, even for the goddess of war. Rather, she would outdo them with a scheme so monumental, she thought it might even rival the originality of her previous idea for the War on Eden. At least in this postdiluvial world.
The heart of her plan was a person. A single person whose identity was crucial for accomplishing the long-term goal of Nachash, the Serpent of Eden, the Shining One whose attention she craved. Before she set off for Nineveh, she summoned the services of Sinleqiunninni (“Sin-leekee-oo-nee-nee”), Nimrod’s ummanu, or king’s scholar.
As chief ummanu, Sinleqiunninni was responsible for the scribal and academic duties of Nimrod’s kingdom. He was principal of the school of scribes and oversaw the accounting and library archives. Anything that had to do with writing on clay tablets and storing of information was under the ultimate authority of Sinleqiunninni. He was an introverted man who spent more time with tablets than with people and thus his lack of sociability and poorly developed body. His obsession with details and correcting everyone in conversation drove Nimrod up a stone wall. The only reason Nimrod did not have him exiled or executed was because he was the only one who knew how and where to access the information needed for important decisions, from tax records to king’s proclamations to ancient charts of stars. His memory was impeccable and useful for the king’s control of his kingdom. His knowledge kept him alive.
While Nimrod was down in the Ur province hunting humans for his slave force, Ishtar employed Sinleqi, as he was called for short, to scour the genealogical archives of the local cities. He was looking for a single person from the lineage of Noah’s son Ham. Because the population had expanded rapidly after the Deluge during the time she had been bound in the earth, it was quite a task to track down her target. Records were scattered and incomplete because it had taken some time for the early postdiluvian generations to get organized.
Sinleqi had begun his search in Shuruppak, Noah’s city of origin. But he found what he was looking for in the labyrinth of chronicle archives at Kish, the first city of Cush, son of Ham.
Before the Flood, Noah’s pregnant wife, Emzara, had been captured by the god Anu and the goddess Ishtar, who was called Inanna back then in her Sumerian incarnation. Emzara had a son in that captivity whom she named Ham. Ham was seduced by the culture of his captors and was drawn into their idolatry. He became a priest of Inanna/Ishtar and had been initiated into the occultic secrets of the Watchers.
The Watchers were Sons of God, members of Elohim’s divine council, or heavenly host. Two hundred of them rebelled and fell to earth during the ancient days of Jared. Led by the mightiest of the Watchers, Semjaza and Azazel, they took on new identities as gods of the Mesopotamian pantheon; thus they were referred to as gods, Watchers, or even Watcher gods. Semjaza had become Anu, the most high father god of the pantheon, and Azazel had become his consort Inanna. They established a hierarchy of four High Gods over the rest of the pantheon, and Seven Who Decree the Fates. They had no idea that an insignificant scrapper, the Watcher called Gadreel, would bide his time and build his strength and fighting technique to become the mighty Ninurta of Uruk, and now Marduk of Babylon.
These Watchers took on the disg
uise of divinity in order to draw worship away from the Creator, who was known in antediluvian times as Elohim, but also went by other names such as El Shaddai, which meant God Almighty; El Elyon, which meant God Most High; and the secret covenant name of Yahweh, the eternally self-existent one.
But drawing worship away from Elohim was not all these evil Watchers were after.
Following the Fall in the Garden of Eden, Elohim had promised he would one day provide a seed of royal kingship that would restore creation to its intended glory and humanity to its intended identity as the family of Elohim, true Sons and Daughters of God. The Watcher gods sought to corrupt that seedline by mating with humanity and violating the heavenly earthly divide. The result of their crossbreeding were the Nephilim, unholy giants who became known as the Seed of the Serpent at war with the Seed of the Woman, Eve.
When Ham was under the spell of Anu and Ishtar, they had secretly experimented on him through occultic sciences that were beyond the knowledge of mankind at the time. They had altered his body by splicing their own genetic makeup into his. But they also violated his wife, Neela, impregnating her with a newly developed genetic implantation. One that would carry the recessive genes of the Watchers without resulting in immediate gigantism. They hoped this would suffuse throughout the population with more efficient results.
When Elohim sent the Deluge as punishment for mankind’s wickedness on the earth, part of that evil was this miscegenation of unholy human angelic hybrids. Before the waters flowed, archangels came from heaven and imprisoned many of the Watchers in the earth to await their final judgment. Seventy of the Watchers remained free.
And so did one of their abominable Nephilim offspring.
The eight family members of Noah who were saved on the ark included Ham and his pregnant wife.
Cush was the tainted bloodline of Neela from whose lineage was Nimrod.
But Nimrod was not Ishtar’s interest. She had failed to persuade him to join forces with her. There was another child created by another abomination that Ishtar was seeking out. After the Flood, Ham in his vile wickedness contested his father Noah’s patriarchal authority by raping his own mother, Emzara. When Emzara gave birth to a son, he was hidden away out of shame and disgrace. Ishtar had heard that Noah cursed that son of abominable union to be a servant of his other brothers. He was cut off from his inheritance. Of the three sons of Noah; Shem, Japheth, and Ham, the lineage of Ham would never be the Seedline of Eve. Shem’s was the chosen line.