by Brian Godawa
Nimrod was not stupid. He knew Semiramis and his son Mardon had an unnatural relationship that would prove to be a tangled web of corruption. That they had become incestuous lovers. And Mardon was obviously a tool of Semiramis’ ambition. But Nimrod felt the fool for not addressing it in the early years as he turned away from his wife and child to accomplish his greater purposes of worldwide empire.
The worst of it was that queen and son had become divinized for the people, she as queen of heaven, and he as divine son. So it would not be advantageous to Nimrod’s reign to eliminate them, as their demise may very well cause an uprising amidst the people who had become their loyal and slavish dependents. Nimrod was counting on the anointing of Etemenanki as the new cosmic mountain and official establishment of Marduk’s reign to bring things back into line where they ought to be.
He had contemplated having mother and son sacrificed on the altar of Marduk during the Akitu Festival climax. He would have to wait and see if he would have the political pull with the population to be able to perform such a bold and daring move. Time would tell.
Semiramis stomped into the torture room looking for Mardon. She knew she would find him there. He spent too many hours in what he called his “playrooms,” a series of rooms for rapes, sorcery drugs, and torture. The torture rooms were specifically for experimenting with new means of extracting information or punishing insubordinate vassal rulers. The goal was to discover ways of keeping the victims alive as long as possible in order to inflict the most amount of pain humanly possible on another creature, for as long as possible before sending them off to Sheol.
The achievement of this goal required practice in order to perfect the techniques for maximum effect. But Mardon enjoyed torturing anyone, even without reason, so he had to find a source of disposable humans upon which to exercise his craft. The logical choice was slaves. He would tell them in a soothing tone that this would be their ultimate offering of service to the king and his kingdom before he subjected them to the most barbaric acts of cruelty.
Today found one of the rulers of a city, he could not remember which one now, that had been two days late in his delivery of harvest taxes to the king. Mardon put the vassal ruler “in the tub.”
“Sitting in the tub” as they called it, was a gruesome torture. The vassal was in a wooden tub covered over with only his head exposed. They would regularly feed him large amounts of gruel. But he was not allowed to leave the tub. Which means that he would be sitting in an increasing pool of his own excrement until his flesh rotted from the exposure. It would take weeks before the sufferer expired. The purpose of the cover was more than a form of restraint. It was to keep the stench from gagging the torturers and keeping them from their duties. Sometimes the process would be exacerbated by covering the victim’s face and head with honey and milk to draw flies.
But today, Mardon was experimenting with his dismembering technique. He had pulled an unwitting male slave from the ranks of brick makers and brought him to his playroom to practice cutting off extremities. The goal was to maintain minimal blood loss and unconsciousness through the use of tourniquets and cauterizing. The current slave had already had his genitals, ears, lips, and nose removed. And Mardon was deciding whether he should gouge out the eyes first or cut out the tongue. It was a difficult decision. He had killed several prematurely by cutting out the tongue, choking them on their own blood.
He stared at the moaning victim with emotionless curious eyes. He was like a reptile. He had no conscience, no sense of empathy for other human beings or their pain. He was as cold as stone. He did not even get “pleasure” from his practice. It was more of a pursuit of perfection that drove him. The perfect torture could accomplish the perfect royal objective, the maintenance of a healthy loathing, dread, and horror from the subjects of the kingdom. This would ensure the royal reign that he was planning to inherit.
Oh, the plans he had when he took over his father Nimrod’s rule. He smiled at the thought of it. To have absolute power was an aphrodisiac to him. And it might even be sooner than he thought because he was starting to think his mother was planning a possible assassination of the king.
“Mardon,” said Semiramis, interrupting his pensive thoughts. “I told you we have an audience with your father. Have I taught you nothing? Never disappoint the king, it breeds distrust, you fool.”
She walked into the room and saw the victim he was experimenting upon. Without losing stride, she grabbed a knife from the table of instruments and plunged it into the heart of the victim, killing him instantly. He let out a cry before giving up his breath.
“Mother! I worked for hours on that frog!” complained Mardon.
He called the humans frogs, lambs, and other animal names.
It disgusted Semiramis how twisted her son had become. The proverb came to her mind, From the wicked goeth forth wickedness. This was more than an apt description of this vile offspring of Nimrod. She wanted to raise a tyrant that she could control. But there was something darkly removed and sinister about this one. It led her to wonder if she would lose that control upon his ascendancy to the throne. Once he had absolute power, would he simply put her to death to take her out of the way? Would all her plans for the past generation be obliterated in an instant because she failed to recognize the true essence of this perversion of nature? Well, she could not worry about that now. She would have to plan for it later.
She wiped blood off Mardon’s cheek, like any nit-picking mother, and said, “Get cleaned up and meet your father and me in the throne room within the hour.”
“Yes, mother,” replied Mardon. He was subservient to her. He so appreciated the care with which she raised him to become an effective emperor. She had educated him about religion, politics, and the craft of court intrigue. She had taught him the fine art of treachery through diplomacy and getting your way. She had taught him how to rule a people through fear. He actually enjoyed the overbearing and domineering personality she exerted over him. It was an opportunity to feel a bit of what his victims felt, which would give him greater pleasure in their pain. Like father, like son.
It also satisfied his sexual hunger to be submissively beaten by her and abused in their acts of incestuous coitus. It was the only moment he could ever engage in the release of complete surrender, something he would never allow in any other circumstance. Surrender was an alien sentiment of other humans, an oddity he sought to understand like a scholar studying a tablet. And he could experiment with the curious activity of surrender during their fornication because he knew that she would never let him be hurt, let alone die. He was her salvation. He was her hope for the future.
It was a pity that she would have to be eliminated once he rose to power.
Oh well, he thought. From the wicked goeth forth wickedness.
Mardon arrived in the throne room dressed in his royal attire. Nimrod and Semiramis sat on their thrones, waiting for him.
Nimrod was impatient and annoyed. “So sorry to take you away from your garden of earthly delights, Mardon, but I have a kingdom to run, and you will accompany me and Terah on a tour of my cities.”
Mardon glanced at Semiramis. She nodded, and he stepped forward to kneel on one knee. He said, “Yes, my father.”
Nimrod held back his contempt. He could see Mardon was more the son of the queen than the king. Of course, he had no one to blame but himself as he had neglected his son once he noticed that he was not right in the head. But there was nothing he could do about it, so he thought he would make the best of it now and try to exert some influence on the reprobate scoundrel before it was too late. Though Nimrod was a Naphil, half-human, half-god, he was not getting any younger. He was over a century old. Even Nephilim die. Becoming the first world potentate would not be of much value if he could not establish a dynasty of power that would last for generations.
Mardon was the heir of that dynasty.
Nimrod announced, “We will start at Elam in the south and from there travel to Ur before coming up
to the northern cities of Nineveh and her sisters.”
“A wise course, father,” said Mardon patronizingly.
Mardon knew that of all the vassal kingdoms that served Nimrod, Elam was the most restless. Its king, Chedorlaomer, had been a prince of Nimrod’s host before being given the city-state of Elam to administer. Chedorlaomer had become very successful and comfortable with his new identity as monarch, and Elam was becoming quite a powerful entity. The king started to show signs of independence and because Chedorlaomer had served so closely under Nimrod, he knew the emperor’s ways intimately. That meant he could anticipate Nimrod’s behavior should Nimrod decide to use force to bring Elam under more control. It was a touchy situation and Nimrod knew that personal presence was always superior to surrogate proxy when it came to political diplomacy. So their first stop would be Elam.
“Will the high god Marduk join us?” asked Mardon.
“No,” said Nimrod. He knew his son despised Marduk. He was too much what Mardon wanted to be, a god without human weakness. Of course, it was what Nimrod wanted as well, but he could only imagine the havoc created on the earth if his son was able to procure the prerogatives of divinity.
Nimrod thought, He would be a male version of Ishtar.
Marduk had been spending more time in his temple, Esagila, and less time around Nimrod as he prepared for the fast arriving “Convergence” as they called it. The Convergence marked the alignment of the planets converging with the cusp of the Age of Aries. But it also marked the convergence of heaven and earth, as the temple tower would open a cosmic portal to the heavenlies. As king of the gods, Marduk would preside over the entire twelve day festival so he had his preparation work cut out for him.
This was going to be one very important year in the history of gods and men.
Chapter 18
In the desert outside Ur a lone figure stood before a fresh tomb in the rocky clefts of the lakeside area. In the tomb were two bodies. One was Emzara, who had died a few years earlier, and the most recent one was the body of Noah. The man who gave thanks to Elohim for the couple raising him was Abram. He was forty-eight years old.
He finished his prayer and laid a pack of his life’s belongings on the back of a donkey that would accompany his horse to the city of Ur. Abram had lived in seclusion with Noah and Emzara since he was an infant. They had raised him to know the Creator Elohim as El Shaddai, God Almighty, protector of the chosen seedline. They had poured their lives into their family offspring because they believed he was a new hope for their hope.
But they could not foresee the potential danger of raising a child in solitude to see himself as God’s special progenitor. It was the disadvantage of living as an only child. Abram was pampered, given total attention, and told over and over again, he was God’s special instrument. Abram had gotten the impression he could do no wrong. He had developed an overconfidence that lacked humility and almost presumed invincibility. After all, if El Shaddai was his guard and protector, who could slay him?
And if any human did try to take him on, Noah had taught Abram some secrets of fighting that had gone back to his distant ancestor Enoch the giant slayer. It was called the “Way of the Karabu” and it was a martial art that was revealed by the archangel Gabriel. Abram had a romantic view of himself as some kind of future king and adventurer with El Shaddai by his side clearing the way for his purposes.
It had been a lonely forty-eight years. But not entirely without human interaction. Though Noah and Emzara kept Abram away from the main cities of Sumer, they made sure to make trips to way stations in the desert. There they encountered trade merchants from all over the world, traveling through with their wares. Abram learned many customs and interacted with interesting people who told fabulous stories of their travels. He would have left the cave residence earlier, but wanted to bury both of his beloved ancestors before striking out on his own.
Noah had given Abram the name of Abram’s brothers, Nahor and Haran, in the city of Ur and told him to go to them with a tablet Noah had inscribed with a toledoth of Abram’s genealogy. The brothers would take Abram in and introduce him to his father Terah when they had the chance. It was a bit risky, but Noah was always one for shaking things up, even in his ripe old age.
When Terah was inducted as Nimrod’s prince of the heavenly host, he had kept the family down in Ur under the pretense of being able to focus on his duties in Babylon. He would then visit them on a regular basis with the ostensible motive of reporting on the state of the Southern kingdom, in Sumer, to Nimrod.
But Terah had an ulterior motive as well. He had seen the danger of his situation and the soul trap that would be Babylon. He wanted to spare his family as much as possible from the detrimental effects of close proximity to the emperor Nimrod and his ruling city. He knew the capriciousness of the tyrant and considered distance the best protection against the impulsive reactions of royalty. Terah was a man of many masters and he tried to juggle them all with the intent of protecting his family at all costs.
The family of Terah ben Nahor of Ur knew nothing of their long lost relative Abram. They were told a child had died a generation ago and forgot about him entirely.
They were about to get the surprise of their lives.
It was a cool and cloudy day. Nahor and Haran had finished cleaning up their stall of idols in the marketplace and were returning to their home. They had carried on the family business of idol making after Terah had been drafted into Nimrod’s service. It was a tireless business of unending demand. People were constantly breaking their little terra cotta figurines of household deities called teraphim. But they were also constantly changing gods or just wanting more gods to ensure their happiness. And it was becoming more popular now to have stone carved life sized statues in homes, which fetched a higher price for their craft. It was a business with a sure source of consistent income because of the spiritual hunger of humanity.
When they arrived at their house, they were almost too exhausted to notice the man waiting for them. He asked, “Are you Nahor and Haran ben Terah?”
They stopped and looked at Abram. He was a wiry one, full beard, a bit unkempt, most likely a middle-aged bachelor — not a good sign. And he looked as if he had traveled a great distance.
They sighed. They knew the custom of hospitality, that one should welcome strangers into one’s home and feed them and provide shelter if need be. Provided of course, the stranger was not hostile, in which case you could kill them.
Abram held out a clay tablet and said with great confidence, “This is a genealogy of mine authored by Noah ben Lamech. I am your brother and the long forgotten son of Terah ben Nahor.”
The brothers were open mouthed with shock. Nahor took the tablet and looked at it. Haran looked over his shoulder in disbelief.
They read through the tablet and saw the colophon, “These are the generations of Noah.” It was the signature of their beloved ancestor. Was it a forgery? It had the family marking on it. Nahor handed it back to Abram.
“Well, then we have much to talk about,” said Nahor. “Please, come and have dinner with us.”
“No, I could not impose on you with such inconvenience,” replied Abram.
“As you wish,” said Haran. “God bless you on your way.”
Nahor gave Haran a dirty look. It was custom to turn down an offer of hospitality as much as it was custom to reaffirm the offer right afterward. Nahor was being inhospitable.
“My brother is a jackass,” said Nahor. “Please ignore his rudeness and have dinner with us tonight.”
“Very well,” said Abram. “Thank you.” And he winked at an embarrassed Haran.
The household of Terah was large and well furnished. Several generations lived under his roof. As a member of the royal household, his family was given special treatment and lived in the wealthy quarter. And because of their idol making business, they had money to spare.
Abram sat before a spread of lamb, fish, fruits and vegetables, with bread and some beer
to wash it down. He had not eaten so extravagantly in his life.
His two brothers, Nahor and Haran, entertained him along with several others of Abram’s cousins.
“This is Lot, my son,” said Haran, “my wife, Eliana, and my daughters, Milcah and Iscah.”
Abram said wryly to the adolescent children, “Hello, nephew and nieces.”
Nahor took over. “Milcah is my wife.” He then gestured to the woman serving Abram. “And this is Sarai, your half-sister.”
Abram was surprised. He had thought she was one of the servants. At least she was acting like one. But she finally sat down in the empty seat.
Sarai would not look Abram in the eye. Abram, on the other hand could not take his eyes off her. She was stunning. The most beautiful woman Abram had ever seen. Which, on the surface, was not saying much because he had been raised in obscurity in the desert. But the women he did meet were often foreigners in trading caravans. So he had actually been exposed to some of the most exotic and attractive members of the opposite sex.