by Brian Godawa
• • • • •
A generation passed. Nephilim giants multiplied upon the face of the earth and subdued it.
Chapter 6
Enoch ben Jared pushed open the doorway to the council chamber of the palace just in time to see Thamaq, one of the ruling Rephaim, pound the table in anger, all but spitting in the face of King Enmeduranki. “We have given a command and we expect it to be obeyed!” shouted Thamaq. Yahipan, the other Rephaim, grunted and nodded sternly as he leaned forward to emphasize his agreement with his co-regent’s words.
Enmeduranki was the priest-king of the city of Sippar, and Enoch, his young eighty-five-year old apkallu wisdom sage. Sippar sat strategically at the point of closest proximity between the Tigris and Euphrates in the northernmost region of Shinar. As the crucial port city for all the economic activity of the area, all commercial trade between the northern and southern regions of Mesopotamia went through Sippar. Commodities like stone, cedar, and lapis lazuli from the north, as well as barley, beer, and livestock from the south all passed through its trade channels. It was a split city, with one half on each bank of the Euphrates. A transportation canal had been dug from the nearby Tigris to connect the two rivers that serviced different sides of the alluvial plain.
The fertile land around Sippar produced an abundance of crops. But there was a shortage at that moment, and the Rephaim were not happy about it.
Enoch choked down his disgust for these contentious rulers and set the clay tablets on the table, bowing in deference. “My lords, the accounting of the food stores of the city.” He wished his entrance could help Enmeduranki, but he knew the report was not good news.
“Thank you,” said Enmeduranki. He looked over the tablets for the numbers. Drops of sweat pooled on his forehead and trickled down his cheeks. The pressure was taking its toll on him.
Enmeduranki was a good soul who sought to rule his people with compassion. But he was also a vassal of the Rephaim, the true rulers of the city. They were a new addition to the bureaucratic hierarchy above the priest-king and below the god. Enmeduranki was supposed to be a liaison between the people and the Rephaim demigods, but what it really amounted to was making the people accept the demands of the Rephaim. And their demands continued to increase.
“It is as I feared, my lords,” he sighed. “There is nothing left.”
“What do you mean there is nothing left?” blurted Thamaq. “What about the famine food stores?”
Thamaq and Yahipan were two of the original Nephilim born by the seed of the gods to rule over men. They were both nearly seven cubits tall and dressed in ostentatious robes of royalty. They were impious models of vainglorious conceit, releasing their tempers at the slightest of discrepancies. They even mocked Utu the sun god behind his back, an unforgivable posture of blasphemous arrogance. Enoch detested them.
“I am afraid the famine stores are exactly what the Nephilim just finished consuming,” Enmeduranki offered. The impossible position of responsibility without true authority wearied him. “The last of our famine food stores. The normal stores were emptied out last month.”
Yahipan broke in, “Enlist more citizens to grow and harvest more food.”
“The entire city is already conscripted to do so. We have no more private laborers who are not slaves of the realm. We have no source of income, only administrative expenditure,” pleaded Enmeduranki.
Thamaq rebuked him, “Enmeduranki, we must find a way. The Nephilim occupy the palace streets in protest. They dug the canals and built the entire irrigation system that brings the very life waters to this city from the Tigris and Euphrates. Do you question their entitlement to sustenance?”
Enmeduranki swallowed his sigh at the utterance of that big lie. The Nephilim had built the vast irrigation canals that radiated around the cities like blood vessels. But those earthworks had been completed many years before, and they were now in grave disrepair. The giants had gathered themselves into a union of agreement that demanded minimal labor and maximum subsidy from the realm. They had become an organized gang of thugs. Neither the Rephaim nor the gods seemed to be concerned about the demise of the city’s economy.
“I do not question their right, my lord. But as you know, the Nephilim have increased their food intake by a factor of four over the past generation. No one anticipated such exponential growth when we first created our programs. We simply cannot keep up with their consumption.” They were very large and very hungry mouths to fill, the priest-king thought bitterly to himself.
Thamaq regathered himself, “I am not sure you understand the seriousness of our predicament, priest-king. Facts and statistics are irrelevant to the Nephilim. They are hungry, bitter, and their numbers are strong. If they rise up in revolt, I will not be able to stop them. This entire city will be at their mercy.”
“What say you, apkallu?” asked Yahipan with biting sarcasm.
Enoch’s bowed head lifted to see the intense stare of both of the Rephaim.
“You sit there in silence. Are you not a fount of wisdom? Then spew us some wisdom.”
For a fleeting moment, the futility of his office flashed through Enoch’s mind. He took his religious and political responsibility seriously, so seriously that he had adopted the Shinarian name Utuabzu in honor of Utu. Yet, increasingly, it seemed clear that the Rephaim were not so serious in their respect of the office or of his skills.
The city’s governance was a typical Mesopotamian oligarchy modeled after the divine council of gods. Sippar’s patron deity was Utu, the sun god. Enmeduranki was nominally the governing ruler, the priest-king, created in the image of the gods. He carried out the combined duties of both religious observance and government on behalf of the deity. He had a council of elders of the city with whom he counseled, but he held closest his personal apkallu wisdom sages.
Enoch, as sage counselor to the priest-king, was required to command a wide breadth of knowledge. He had trained in the sciences of both heavens and earth. He was shaman, diviner, scribe, and poet all in one. But it seemed to him that the most important office he held was as bard, the carrier of the culture’s stories. All the laws, governance, religious beliefs and values of a people flowed downstream from the culture embodied in the songs and epics of the poet. Hearts and souls are moved by story and he who controls the cultural narrative controls the people.
The world of storytelling was changing dramatically around Enoch. The new visual communication called “cuneiform” was overtaking the traditional oral recitation of verse. Scribes created cuneiform as a codified physical expression of language, using utensils to make impressions on clay tablets. The scribes wanted to keep a tangible account of personal and public wealth that could not be challenged with verbal lies or faulty memory. Using handheld styluses, they could list objects owned by the ruler and how many he possessed. It had started out as pictographs of cows, gold, wheat, wood, and other belongings. It had evolved into an abstract system of symbols that could be rapidly copied or communicated in a legal dispute.
Eventually the scribes saw other uses for this thing called writing. They experimented with ways of inscribing their oral epics and myths onto the clay. Writing could record what was said by the poet or sage. That record would be preserved unchanged through the years. It was a kind of magic that most sages hated because they feared it would soften their minds. After all, that which was recorded on clay did not need to be held in the memory. But Enoch was fascinated with writing. He wanted to adapt it into a tool for transmitting the dream visions he received from the deity.
“Well? The Anzu got your tongue?” Yahipan growled with biting sarcasm.
Enoch’s stories would not be appreciated today. Today, all that mattered was the original use of writing for accounting records.
“Forgive me, Yahipan,” said Enoch.
“Would you be pleased with a bloodbath?” said Yahipan.
“By no means, my lord,” said Enoch. “I am a man of peace and piety. I deplore violence, and I have sou
ght to encourage the people to submit to the rule of the priest-king and your majesties.”
In truth, Enoch detested these Rephaim with all his being. They exploited the citizens with their tyrannical control and redistribution of wealth and food. But he was also a pacifist. He believed in submission to authority and would never encourage civil disobedience, let alone an uprising. Violence only led to more violence. He believed he should trust the gods and accept their decrees with steadfast faith.
“In my lowly opinion, it seems evident that both the Nephilim and the citizenry have become dependent upon the government to care for them. It is most natural then for them to not care for themselves and to become hostile when their subsidies are taken away. Unfortunately, it seems to me that we are not up against a matter of political opinion, but of reality. The government is bankrupt. There is no more to give. We cannot spend what we do not have.”
“You call that blathering ‘wisdom’?” complained Yahipan. “I want a solution, not a contest of blame!”
Enoch frowned and then quickly banished it. This was not a contest of blame, these were the bald facts. All the other cities such as Erech, Eridu, and Larak faced these same facts. The strongest economic cities were all collapsing. The giants had been brought to all these cities to accomplish mighty feats of industry for the Rephaim. The purpose had been to glorify the gods and build an empire of power for the pantheon. But it had all gotten out of control. Now, the entire civilization was in jeopardy of collapsing. The giants were large, strong, warrior-like, and organized. They appointed leaders to press their demands upon the Rephaim rulers of all the cities. Revolution seemed inevitable.
The victims in all this turmoil were the average citizens, the backbone of the civilization. These were the ones Enoch felt were exploited at the expense of this class warfare for power. The society appeared to be an advancement of civilization, but Enoch believed it moved toward the inevitable centralization of power into the hands of the elite priestly caste, of which he was one. It remained a point of cognitive dissonance for him.
His position made him privy to the myriad of government archives compiled by their scribes, registering every aspect of the lives of its citizens. Births, deaths, genealogies, land transfers, tax records, all were used to drain every ounce of income tax, land tax, head tax and death tax from every soul.
It would seem that slaves, in comparison, had a less complicated life. At least they were called what they actually were. The average citizen became a slave without that name. He worked hard on his farm or in the marketplace, earned an honest wage to take care of his simple family, paid his taxes to the realm, worshiped his gods, and left others alone to seek their own happiness. This average man and his family had his life sucked out of him by taxes and government control, only to end his life in Sheol, forgotten and never to return. Was this the will of the gods? It made Enoch weep at night and question his devotion to the pantheon. He felt that he was a man stuck in the middle, trying to make both sides happy, the ruling elite of the gods, and the common citizens who served that divine council. He felt a miserable failure.
“Apkallu! Are you listening to me, maggot?!” Yahipan’s outburst brought Enoch back to the immediate moment. “I will whack your skull from your spine.” He raised his hand.
Thamaq stopped him. “Brother, he is not worth your energy. We have been apprised of the facts by our servants. Let us withdraw to our chambers and determine our course of action.”
Yahipan looked at Thamaq. A slight glint of lust in his eyes brought a smirk to Yahipan’s face.
Enmeduranki turned to Enoch. “Where is your son, the apprentice? If he is to become a sage, would not this situation be essential to his learning?”
“Forgive me, my lord,” replied Enoch. “If you will excuse me, I will go and brief him.” Enoch bowed and left the room. He did not even have the beginning of an idea where in the world his rascally son Methuselah was. But he had a good idea of who he might be with.
Chapter 7
Methuselah swung the pear-shaped mace down toward the skull of his adversary, a fifteen-year old girl named Edna. She raised her shield and blocked it effectively, then parried with her own mace.
He barked, “Excellent, runt!”
Methuselah was a strapping twenty-year old handsome young man. His unusual blue eyes often drew the teasing of his companions, saying that he was a Bene ha Elohim, or more likely a product of their union with the daughters of men. It was not true, but he played along with it because he liked standing out from the crowd. He was a fiery lad with a passion for arguing, not the best of traits for an apkallu in training, since their order was marked by restraint and listening. But Methuselah hungered for knowledge, and loved to study and learn about everything.
At this moment, though, he was not learning. He was teaching. And it was not an intellectual exercise, but a physical one.
Edna swung again. He blocked her blow.
“Is that the best you can do, you scrawny little female?”
Methuselah burst into action, swinging one blow after another. Edna could barely keep up with the raining strikes. If she let one get through, it would leave a nasty bruise she would nurse for days.
With each swing, Methuselah verbally challenged her strategy. “What did I teach you? Have you no counter plan? I am stronger than you, so how can you defeat me?”
With those last words, he backed her up against the wall of the small practice room, his mace to her neck. He had used sheer strength to overwhelm her.
He leaned in close to her face and mused, “Now, if I was a particularly wicked soldier, having worn you down, I might take my pleasure before killing you.” He was not teasing her. He wanted her to face the reality of the world.
“Too late,” she said. He looked at her puzzled.
“Letting you expend your energy on me was my counter plan. While you were worn out and pompously crowing into my face with your horrible breath, I was disemboweling you,” she said.
He glanced down to see her hand with knife blade at his abdomen. She shifted it down to his groin and added, “Or severing your manhood if you prefer.”
He smiled. “I am proud of you, Edna.” He kissed her forehead and turned to sit down for a rest.
To him, it was just a simple peck of affection. He did not notice that the soft swift touch of his lips upon her skin almost made her swoon. She gathered herself together and plopped down next to him.
“Why do you talk mean to me while fighting?” she asked.
He smiled. “That is what warriors do. It is mental warfare. Wearing down the enemy inwardly as well as outwardly.”
“Oh, I see,” she said, and added playfully, “you ogre.”
He smiled at her. “You are hardly wet with sweat.” He was drenched from the exercise.
“We women do not sweat, we glow.” Her look of serious reflection melted into shared laughter.
“Edna,” he said, “You are amusing. You are a girl, yet you prefer the company and roughhousing of boys. You do not wear makeup or jewelry. You sneak around your superiors to learn sports and fighting — and you are good. You are really good. You are intellectually curious and you want to see the world, yet you are a temple virgin, dedicated to the gods.”
It was true. Edna was a spitfire boyish girl. Her serious expression returned in an instant. She brushed a strand of hair away from her face. It was a sole loose one that had come out of her otherwise usual tightly wrapped and bound hair bun.
“Do not tease me, Methuselah. Girls have no choice in their placement in society. I do not want to be a boy, I just enjoy doing things that boys do. It is not that I do not have female desires as well.”
He laughed. “That would make you the perfect wife I guess.”
She thought to herself, Yes! And I would make you so happy.
He interrupted her thoughts. “Those female desires will soon be opened up like a flower blossom when you engage in the Sacred Marriage rite with the god.”
&
nbsp; She blushed through a moment of uncomfortable silence.
“I wish I could be married to a normal man — like you.”
She gulped. Did she say too much?
Methuselah looked at her seriously. “Me too, Pedna.” It was one of his many affectionate nicknames for her. He would call her “Edna Pedna,” so she had responded by calling him “Methuselah Poozelah,” and they eventually shortened them to Pedna and Poozela.
His whole countenance changed from joy to sorrow. He knew the consequences of being betrothed to the gods. He knew the ultimate end of bearing the Nephilim offspring. It always bothered him. On the one hand, the gods were sovereign and had the right to their wives. Humans were, after all, slaves of the gods. But on the other hand, how could so gruesome a reality be part of a just world?”
“What happens to the child-bearers?”
“That is the prerogative of the gods,” he said. He could not bring himself to tell her. Instead, his silence and the look of dread on his face spoke loudly.
“Would you let them hurt me, Poozela?”
His heart nearly broke in two. He had been a big brother, even a father figure, to this girl ever since he noticed her special qualities and vivacious lust for life as a mere ten-year old. He had secretly trained her to read cuneiform, fight with weapons, and reason like a sage. She now stood on the verge of her sixteenth birthday, and he was about to lose her forever. He struggled to hold back a flood of tears ready to burst. He did the only thing he could do. He deflected the question.
“We exist to serve the gods, not question them.”
It was the pious response, the proper answer, his duty. And he did not believe it for one second.
“Poozela.”
He kept staring out to space.
“Poozela?”
He looked into her eyes. He could not avoid her tender soul.