Mesopotamia - The Healer, the Slave and the Prince

by Yehuda Israely

  The temple scribe, an expert in all languages and scripts of the region, hid behind a curtain in the corner of the room. Eo brought him along to aid them in deciphering the hints that surfaced during the liver reading and the cryptic words spoken by the prince. The prince was also required to prepare. Before he began his fast as instructed, they gave the prince castor seed extract in order to try to exorcize the demon by vomiting. The burning stoves scattered about the room were intended to remove the demon through his sweat. This time, the prince was calmer, though completely disconnected from what was going on around him. All the other ritual accessories—the sesame oil, the tar and the masks—were like they were on the first night.

  Eo sat on the carpet opposite the prince and Rukha kneeled beside them. Eo began. First, he rocked back and forth to a rhythm he set for himself, slowly adding a tune with words that he repeated over and over again.

  “I hear you.

  I hear you.

  I hear you...”

  The heat was melting the tar, which began to drip onto the floor. Eo continued to sing for another long hour, patiently.

  Finally, they heard a voice emanating from Prince Enmerkar's throat, a voice that spoke rapidly like it had done on the first night,

  Eo continued in the same tune, but with different words.

  “I want to understand you

  I want to understand you

  I want to understand you...”

  The prince lifted his eyes to Eo. His gaze was pleading and frustrated. He began to glance around.

  Eo changed the verse he was reciting.

  “The Great Mother sent me.”

  The prince turned back to him.

  Eo continued: “The Great Mother sent me,

  The Great Mother sent me...”

  This time, the demon spoke more slowly but his language was unintelligible, and the pauses were still absent from his words. It seemed to Eo that demon was repeating his words.

  “Call in the scribe,” he whispered to Rukha.

  Wearing his black robe to make him invisible, the scribe approached Eo, a stylus in his right hand and a clay tablet in his left. The tablet was blank. The only marks on the soft clay tablet were the indentations made by the terrified scribe's fingers as he gripped it tightly.

  “I have failed you, healer. I cannot understand a single word the prince is saying and I did not manage to record even one word that he said,” the scribe whispered to Eo.

  “I want to understand you...” Eo repeated over and over again.

  Suddenly, he discerned a slight change. The staccato speech and the twitching in various parts of Enmerkar's body returned.

  Enmerkar turned directly toward the scribe and dictated something to him slowly.

  The scribe stood up, helpless, trying to impress the stylus into the soft clay in vain. He could not identify a single word that had a symbol in pictogram or in cuneiform script.

  The demon speaking from within Enmerkar's throat turned now to Rukha with pleading in his voice and eyes.

  CHAPTER 7

  The dark room was filled with the scent of cedar incense. Rukha tried his best to listen to the demon and understand it, but without success. He could not even discern a single syllable that spouted forth from the demon. The demon looked at Rukha and continued to murmur unintelligible words in despair. Rukha turned toward Eo in frustration. With a slight encouraging movement of his head, Eo directed Rukha's attention back to the demon. 'We must be patient,' thought Rukha as he focused on the demon once more.

  But patience was not enough. He could continue staring at the demon from now until the Euphrates ran dry and would still not be able to comprehend a thing. Something else was needed. Something that require time but not just time. Rukha concentrated, utilizing the skills that Eo had taught him. He recalled how Eo concentrated on the words of one patient or followed another's movements, but he had already exhausted all these options with no results.

  He tried to mirror the demon, to copy the position in which he was seated, in the hope that he would understand him based on the tensions of his body. He spent long minutes in the same position and bearing the same expression as the demon, but the only thing he felt was the demon's desperation to be understood. He did not glance again at Eo because he knew that Eo too was concentrating on the demon and he did not want to bother him with another task. Rukha repeated Eo's words: be patient, be calm, do not make an effort to understand, do not focus on anything; just be empty, exposed, vulnerable and sensitive, allowing the information to penetrate you on its own.

  Rukha relaxed his body and the creases in his forehead, taking deep, slow breaths as he felt the muscles of his face falling. His eyes transformed into large windows that absorbed the light from outside. At first he decided to remain in this state until the knowledge would ignite within him, but even that very thought required too much concentration. He dropped the thought and simply stationed himself opposite the demon.

  Eo closed the water clock. Even the dripping of the clock fell silent as utter silence enveloped the three of them. For a long time, the healer and his apprentice sat in increasing calmness. The demon squirmed uncomfortably, as if calling them to extract him from his torment.

  A sense of pleasure in the back of Rukha's throat began to warmly spread throughout his chest. His breath became lighter and a faint smile curled the corners of his mouth. He dismissed his initial thought, which was that this was no time for enjoyment. Then he recalled something that Eo said: 'Pleasure is an indication of truth.' He let the pleasure spread throughout his entire body, released his smile and waited for truth.

  He did not resist the urge to place his hands upon the demon's shoulders. The demon did not flinch. They locked gazes.

  Like a bolt of lightning, he felt a jolt that coursed from his head and spread throughout his body in convulsions. He could not explain how he knew, but he was certain that this was the truth.

  “He is a slave,” whispered Rukha.

  “What?”

  “The demon is a slave in the Netherworlds. I can identify with his longing for freedom. I am sure of it. I can feel it in the way he looks at me. As if we share a brotherhood of slavery between us. He is a slave. Approach him and ask him.”

  “No. You must approach him. He has already approached you. You will understand him better.”

  Rukha's heart pounded with excitement. The burst of happiness he felt over Eo's confidence in his abilities disturbed him in his concentration on the demon. In such a short amount of time, and thanks to the generous and wise Eo, he had climbed from the status of a slave condemned to death, chained to a wall and eaten by flies, to a healer's apprentice tending to the king's son. He wanted to hug Eo and cry tears of gratitude. His attentiveness to the demon faded. Rukha tried to compose himself. He struggled to block his personal thoughts and to focus only on the demon. But when his thoughts began to race again, he was seized with terror. For he did not really know what he was doing, and what would happen if he disappointed Eo? What if the king decided to sentence Eo to death because of his own failure? His fears distanced him farther and farther away from the demon.

  “Eo, I can't do it.”

  “Yes you can,” Eo calmed him. “You are talented and wise. If you sensed that he is a slave, be confident in your intuition. I trust you. No one can understand him better than you can. You can do this, Rukha.”

  “I am afraid that I will make a mistake.”

  “Don't worry.” Eo held Rukha's trembling hand. “You knew how to listen to the legion’s soldier who regained his ability to walk. People and the demons residing inside them are not that different from each other on a basic level. You can do this. The demon wants to be heard and he will keep at it until he is understood.”

  Rukha showed Enmerkar the piercing in his earlobe that was a testament to his former slavery. A spark flashed in Enmerkar's darkened eyes.

  “Sing him one of the slaves' songs,” whispered Eo.

  Rukha looked at Eo with
an expression that asked, 'Really?'

  Eo nodded.

  Rukha withdrew into himself and in a melancholy voice began to sing a song that his mother used to sing to him when he was a child:

  The loads of sheaves are many

  The bricks our backs made sore

  The smell of bitumen, the taste of mortar

  Like the bread of the poor

  The plow and threshing harness

  Cloaks us in the day

  From the rise of Shamash to nightfall

  We have no other way

  We are like the air to them

  Like the clear waters of the Euphrates

  The desert dust and wildflower

  Hardly regarded as worthies

  But do not fear the whip

  The taskmaster is a cruel one

  This is our destiny in the world

  My dear beloved son

  This is our destiny in the world

  But do not be sad, prithee

  Your mother's love is with you

  For your heart is always free.

  He continued to sing in a lamenting voice about slavery, the yearning for freedom, and the ability to make choices concerning your life without a master. The song placated the demon's spirits. At the sound of the sad notes, the prince's muscles relaxed even more. When Rukha finished, Enmerkar was calm, as if he had returned to his normal state and was once again the crowned prince of the Sumerian Kingdom. His cryptic words continued to flow from the netherworld but were now coming at a slower pace.

  Then another insight struck Rukha like lightning.

  Much to the surprise of Eo and the scribe, Rukha jumped up from his seat as if bitten by a snake, grabbed the stylus and the clay tablet from his hand and began to impress symbols upon it. In a fury and with great urgency, he filled the tablet with symbols.

  Aside from the king's scribes, treasurers and select priests, the common people of Uruk did not know how to read or write. This was a complex task that was intended only for the especially talented, a secret concealed by members of the guild who guarded their advantage zealously.

  Luckily for Rukha's, he paid no attention to the dangers posed by this law. Had he been more focused, it was likely that he would not have grasped that stylus. A citizen who was not licensed as a scribe and was found to be engaged in this sacred practice would be sentenced to flogging. The punishment would be doubly severe if the law were to be broken by a slave. A slave! The king's scribe was shocked when he saw the slave holding the scribe's stylus. Eo shot him a fierce glance and the scribe was silent. Eo marveled once again at Rukha's hidden talents.

  When the demon saw that Rukha was writing, he began to speak more slowly and in a clearer voice. Since he felt that his words were being understood, his face lit up. Eo instructed the scribe to hurry and bring more and more tablets, which Rukha densely filled with symbols in rows going from left to right, made up of small indentations and lines, long and short, triangular and diamond shaped in horizontal lines. There were spaces between some of the symbols, and some were impressed on top of others. He quickly filled tablet after tablet, his eyes staining to see in the dusky room. Eo and the scribe stared at him in amazement. Rukha was not accustomed to the practice of writing. He had not held a stylus since the time when was a child and he and his father used to play with clay. He murmured the syllables that he heard from the demon and pressed them into the soft clay. He nearly crushed the stylus with the intensity with which his fingers and blanched knuckles grasped it, but he persisted. Each time a muscle twitch came over Enmerkar, Rukha felt it in his body and noted it on the tablet. He decided to treat the convulsions as sorts of punctuation. Eo gestured to the scribe not to move and he himself moved back in order to allow Rukha to write the demon's words with utmost concentration.

  After a long time, Enmerkar's voice slowly diminished. Finally, he moved his lips soundlessly. Rukha continued to transcribe the sounds onto the tablet as long as he could make out the words shaped by Enmerkar's lips until the prince fell asleep.

  After the prince's servants took him to his bed and the scribe had left, Eo brought Rukha a cup of water that he had filled in the water clock. “Drink it slowly,” said Eo to his shaken and panting apprentice. After Rukha's breathing stabilized and his heartbeat calmed down, Eo turned to him with a questioning face.

  “I recorded the sounds,” said Rukha as he massaged his throbbing hand.

  “What?”

  “In my youth, my father taught me how to write the Ugaritic phonetic symbols from the land of the cedars, an alphabet that the God El passed down to my ancestors. The Ugaritic alphabet has thirty symbols, one for each of the sounds the mouth produces in speech. That was how I was able to write down and record everything that he said.”

  “So you did not understand him?”

  “No,” said Rukha with disappointment. “But we can try to read the sounds like we did with the sheep's liver. Perhaps the demon is trying to tell us something in code, either because he is in danger that he may be overheard by someone who is with us, someone who we cannot see, perhaps? Or maybe he is not speaking in code at all, but rather in the language of the demons and we are unable to understand his words while listening to them? Maybe by studying the written speech we will be able to understand it more?”

  Eo felt extreme pride in his student. “We must act patiently. We will not risk the formation of cracks that sometimes occurs when drying a tablet in the fire. Let's dry the tablets in the sun and wait until noon tomorrow to try to read it. We'll sleep here and dream again on behalf of the crowned prince. When we wake, you shall teach me the writing of the land of the cedars. You did well, my son. Good night.”

  “Good night,” answered Rukha as the sound of the words 'my son' echoed melodiously in his ears.

  CHAPTER 8

  They huddled around the tablets, their hands dusty from the clay. Rukha marked the order in which he had written them, pressing Ugaritic numbers into the top of each tablet. He read out loud and Eo listened, ready to reveal some unpredictable message, and looking for anything that may relate to the clues they received from the liver reading.

  At the beginning, the scribe was shocked—'A mere slave, holding a tablet!' But he accepted the king's instructions to write down whatever he was told. Eo stopped Rukha at the word 'gigi' and told the scribe to write it down. 'Gigi' was a crabapple tree. He stopped him again at 'susu', a sycamore. But the message was still unclear. After all, one could find various names of trees in almost any random collection of syllables.

  After they went over the tablets a number of times, Rukha asked, “Did you notice that the names of the trees can be read backwards? If I read the syllable pairs of 'gigi' or 'susu' backwards, we get the same words. Maybe we need to read the syllables backwards.”

  “Let's try it.”

  Rukha held the first tablet in his hand and read the syllables from the bottom of the tablet up to the top. The words still sounded like a meaningless jumble of noise.

  “Let's try something a little different now,” said Rukha. “Let's say that the convulsions that I marked stand for the divisions between the words. Let's try to read each word backwards, but keep the sequence of the words in the order in which they were spoken.”

  Eo understood what Rukha was saying. Even if the demon had tried to communicate with them backwards, it was hard to believe that he had turned his entire speech backwards. Perhaps he just inverted the order of the sounds in each word while expressing the words themselves in the correct sequence. It was likely that Rukha was correct, and the convulsions and twitching of his muscles were meant to serve as indications of divisions between each word. Rukha began to read again, and all of a sudden, coherent words began to emerge from the text, expressing the demon's desperate pleas.

  While Rukha read what he wrote in the phonetic script, the king's scribe recorded it in cuneiform script. He selected symbols from the six hundred at his disposal in order to record the words. The demon repeated certain th
ings a number of times and the scribe recorded it all. Afterwards, the three of them arranged the ideas into a clear message. Eo looked at Rukha in amazement. In all his years of experience, he had never encountered a demon's presence in such a clear manner. Until that moment, it was unclear whether their efforts would yield results; now, Rukha had produced the exact document that they needed. After they finished editing, the king and queen joined them, eager to hear what the demon had to say. The scribe stood and read:

  “I can see you through your masks and through the tar dripping off your skin. I know that you are mortals. I cannot speak to you in your own language because I am a demon and you are humans. I hope that you possess the wisdom to interpret my words and lift my burden from me.

  “I am 'Layil', demon of my King Nergal's underworld. I turn to you because only mortal men can help me. Demons and spirits are bound by the authority of King Nergal and Queen Ereshkigal. The Gods of the upper world are not allowed to interfere in matters of the netherworld. Only you, the mortals on Earth, can influence the Gods. This is my story:

  “I was a woodsman in the cedar forests of the forest God Enkidu for ages. I felled mighty cedars with a single blow of my sharp ax. I sold the cedars to the inhabitants of the underworld and primarily to Kumbaba. It was not easy to sate the hunger of the menacing demon with the thunderous voice, deathly breath and mouth full of fire and cedars. One day, I was so absorbed in my work that I did not notice that I had left the cedar forest and accidentally chopped down some trees from Kumbaba's private garden. When I realized what I had done, I saw the olive trees, crabapple trees, almond trees, date palms and sycamores lying dead on the forest floor. Kumbaba raged like a volcano. I did not run from punishment, for I loved my work and I had only acted hastily out of my love and enthusiasm.