Wives of the Flood

by Vaughn Heppner

  “What situation?”

  “Gilgamesh and Uruk are two of a kind,” Ham said. “Each saw the angel.”

  “So what?” Lud asked, still rubbing his belly.

  “So, at the moment, one is rich, or has a rich father, while the other has nothing.”

  “Don’t you think I know that?”

  Ham scowled, fingering his cane.

  Lud warily took a step back.

  “Why not play the two against each other?” Ham suggested.

  Lud snorted. “Because Uruk will take his offer back and leave me nothing.”

  “You’re not thinking. Consider the rivalry between Uruk and Gilgamesh, the hatred. Now, if Uruk thinks he might lose Opis to Gilgamesh of all people, why, I wouldn’t be surprised if he offered you even more.”

  Lud blinked until a sly grin slid onto his features. “Say, that’s rather clever.”

  The idea had been planted in fertile soil. So Ham departed, deciding that, despite what he had told Rahab earlier, he had been able to do something after all.

  4.

  Ham hefted a short-handled, bronze-headed pickaxe as Kush spoke to him and the elders inside a new mud-brick home. Kush spoke on the lack of hardwood, stone and supplies of copper ore.

  Shinar lacked all three. The soft palm trees were useful but nothing like oak or elm. Because of these lacks, Babel had become a city of clay or sun-dried mud bricks. To make them, a brickmaker piled clay onto a reed mat and poured water. After scattering straw or dung, he trod it underfoot. That mixture he slopped into rectangular wooden molds open on both the top and bottom. The top was dried in the sun for several days. Then it was turned over. The hotter the sun shined, the faster the bricks dried. Once they were thoroughly dry, a man could build a wall, a house, a shed or a fence.

  As he listened to Kush, Ham gripped the pickaxe in his callused hands. With these tools, they had raised walls, built dams and drained flooded land or prepared the land for winter plowing. The pickaxe was a gift from Jehovah, as useful as the adz had been in sheering planks for the Ark. This, he suspected, was his reason for being: to wield such tools, to make, build, construct and fashion from the sweat of his brow.

  Kush sat down, quaffing ale and wiping his mouth with a brawny forearm.

  Put, with his hawk-like visage, rose. Lighter-skinned and more supple-muscled than Kush, he spoke rapidly, gesturing often.

  Winter approached and they had ample supplies of wheat, barley and sesame seeds, a surfeit of cattle, sheep, goats and swine. But stone tools had shattered and the need for extra copper had grown. They needed a source for hardwoods and malachite, and a source for tin, gold and silver.

  Ham set the pickaxe down and nosily blew out his cheeks.

  Put grew silent, and his sons glanced at him.

  “The river flows downstream,” Ham said. “A simple observation, I realize. Viewed another way, it means that if one follows the Euphrates upstream long enough, he’ll reach the hills and mountains that feed it. Oak and elm will surely carpet those hills, as will granite and malachite. I propose to trek there, cut down trees, make rafts and float them back to Babel with a load of stones.”

  Half the Hunters volunteered to go.

  By donkey-train they went, following the winding river through the flat grasslands, the foothills and finally the hills themselves, the watershed catchments already blanketed with snow.

  “We’re near Ararat,” Ham said, when they arrived. “Probably close to Japheth Land.”

  Nimrod and Gilgamesh traded glances. Beor was said to live in Japheth Land.

  For weeks, they hewed trees, raising blisters until they all had leathery palms like Ham. From time to time, Nimrod hunted deer. With a stone, Gilgamesh scraped fat off the skins and Ham tanned the skins with gathered alum and gallnuts. Then he sliced the skins into strips and braiding them into ropes. They bound floating logs with these ropes and rolled granite, flint, obsidian and sandstone onto these rafts, sending off each giant raft with a two-man team using long oars and poles.

  “What about the donkeys?” Gilgamesh asked. “Can they ride the rafts?”

  Ham instructed them to cut reeds. With them, he made large round frames two or three times the length of a man. To these frames, he stretched the last of the deerskins, taut on the bottom, but not fined-off or tapered at the bow or stern. For flooring, Ham lined them with dried grass and then piled sacks of acorns and one or two donkeys apiece. The circular boats carried two paddlers each, one in the front drawing the paddle to him and another standing in the back giving a backward thrust. Just like the rafts, the current helped propelled them home.

  For supplies of copper, tin and gold ore, loaded donkey-trains wound back to the Zagros Mountains, to the settlement where the sons of Canaan lived. Beer, sesame-seed oil and fine pottery were bartered in exchange for the needed ores.

  They discovered bitumen in a smallish river named Is, a tributary of the Euphrates. Great quantities of bitumen lumps were dredged up there. The tarry substance had many uses, among them a new form of ink; another was as asphalt-like coating for reed boats.

  With these boats, Hunters traveled downstream of Babel and into a vast marsh filled with canebrakes and shallow lagoons. Thousands, perhaps millions of migrating pelicans, flamingos, geese, ducks, coots, gulls and terns used the delta marsh. At times, the entire sky seemed to move with them. The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers inundated the delta before their waters flushed out into the sea. With nets, bone-tipped arrows and traps, the Hunters captured or slew fowls by the bushel, and thousands of eggs made their way back to Babel.

  The city thrived, and time passed, although the second year proved more harrowing than the first. They had only dealt with the Euphrates during its lower water levels. Beginning in spring, when the snows in the upstream mountains and hills melted, the river began to rise. That signaled the sowing for summer barley, ten days of grueling work. Everyone split into teams, or cooperatives, helping each other.

  Gilgamesh, against Nimrod’s advice, was one of these, borrowing seed grain from Ham. He worked an outer field, carefully following his Great Grandfather’s instructions. First, canal water irrigated his field. “But not too high,” Ham said. Later, Gilgamesh drained the field and drove specially shod oxen over the weeds, trampling them and adding manure. With a mattock, he worked each field over twice. Afterward, he harrowed the ground smooth and ploughed, with boys breaking any remaining clods.

  Sowing meant a plough, with another man with a bag dropping seeds behind it. Afterward, he carefully cleared the furrows of any new clods.

  There would be more soakings—the first when young barley sprouts filled the furrows, the second when the barley covered the ground like a mat and lastly when the stalks reached full height.

  By the beginning of summer, floodtides threatened. The Euphrates had become a raging river, terrifying everyone. The very soil of the alluvial plain, the mud, made the matter worse. The mud was deep, soft and therefore yielding. The canals filled with fresh silt, the canal-mouths choking with it. Some canals overflowed, creating shallow lagoons and nullifying all the hard labor.

  Fortunately, the flooding only struck a few fields, outer ones—Gilgamesh’s among them. Thus, he lost the crop and owed Ham for the seed grain. He was now further behind in wealth than if he hadn’t tried to farm.

  Forestalling further tragedy, Kush ordered teams here and there, digging new canals, clearing old ones of silt and building emergency dams. That proved the most labor intensive of all the varied tasks, for the soft earth readily collapsed. Instead of supporting the shifting silt, it yielded to it, drawn along. Consequently, during the worst floods, rotating teams had to be on hand and alert to a dam’s destruction.

  Farther upstream, the riverbank broke and flooded wide sections of plain. There, reeds sprang to life. In other places, lagoons and shallow seas formed. Ducks and herons came in thousands. Carp, eels and various other fish swarmed the lagoons. With large draw nets, fishermen standing in their reed b
oats scooped up many of these fish. The upper edge of the draw net floated because of cork, while the lower edge sank due to stone weights. When drawn tight, hundreds of fish flopped and floundered in the nets. Bird-catchers spread similar nets over nesting places or they baited traps and waited for the fowl to nibble bait.

  Finally, the floodwaters receded, and the summer sun caused the crops to leap out of the ground. In gratitude, Kush sacrificed to the angel of the sun. The people settled into the routine of weeding, repairing canals or hoisting water with shadufs.

  Life seemed good to Ham, Kush and to most of the farmers and their wives and children. One man, however, a Hunter, grew frantic as Opis’s fifteenth birthday drew nearer.

  5.

  Nimrod and the Hunters built a large mud-brick hall named the Barracks. Like all such dwellings, first a mound had been shoveled into place and allowed to dry, the theory being that such protected the house from possible flood and damp earth. Then, brick by brick, cemented with liquid clay mortar, the walls were raised. Lastly, palm tree planks overlaid with palm leaves formed the roof, which was covered with a layer of mud.

  Wind and rainstorms, unfortunately, washed away mud and caused leaks. To repair the leaky roof, men had to plaster on more mud. To quick-dry and flatten this new mud, or to simply dry out the old after a rain, a large rolling stone was left on the Barracks roof.

  Many such dwellings had dirt floors. Nimrod tiled the Barracks with brick flooring. In the Barracks lived the Hunters, a few of them with their newlywed wives.

  Semiramis presently moved alone through the dark halls and corridors. Nimrod and a band of Hunters had left two weeks ago. He had made Gilgamesh her watchdog. She smiled. Poor Gilgamesh, he was dying to have Opis, but now he was a maid for Nimrod’s wife.

  She greeted Gilgamesh in the main yard: a dirt field surrounded by a brick wall, with straw targets at the southern end.

  Today, he had promised to take her gazelle hunting.

  They headed inland, away from the cultivated fields and canals. Two other Hunters joined them. Gilgamesh explained how they would swing out in a wide arc to beat sticks and scare gazelles toward them. They reached a desolate region of scrub, thorns and dusty grasslands. The two beaters jogged away with several hounds, leaving Semiramis and Gilgamesh alone on the treeless plain. The sun neared noon. Heat waves shimmered on the horizon.

  “Must we march in the heat of day?” she asked.

  Gilgamesh mopped his forehead. His scarlet headband was already soaked with sweat. “It’s hot, but at least the lions won’t bother us. They’re busy seeking relief in the shade.”

  “I wish we did the same.”

  He pointed at a thicket. “We can wait there, I suppose.”

  Soon they crouched in the shade.

  “Can I sip from your waterskin,” she asked. “Mine’s empty.” Gilgamesh passed his over and Semiramis sipped, dropping something into it, capping it and shaking the skin. He raised his eyebrows.

  “Honey drops,” she said. “Try it.”

  Gilgamesh uncapped the skin and guzzled. He nodded, but the water tasted no different.

  She asked about Opis. He shrugged.

  “No, no,” Semiramis said. “I’d like to hear.”

  Gilgamesh talked for a while, frowned, and touched his forehead.

  “Do you feel dizzy?” Semiramis asked, sliding closer, studying him.

  “I do.”

  “I know why.”

  He lowered his hand, looking at her. Her smile was sly and intoxicating. She was beautiful.

  “There’s a little green fly from the delta marsh. A very special fly Deborah told me about. I crushed and mixed it with herbs and date-palm honey.”

  Gilgamesh brought up the waterskin.

  “Those weren’t honey drops, my handsome hunter, but a love draught to loosen your restraint.”

  He noticed how near she was, the smell of her perfume and the way her lips parted.

  “How you must ache to hold Opis,” Semiramis said. “How you must long to kiss her, to have her.” Semiramis touched his forearm. “We’re both lonely, and both…” She squeezed his forearm. “The love draught is impossible to resist.”

  Her eyes were fire.

  “Am I not beautiful?” she whispered.

  Gilgamesh’s senses roared. And because of the potion, he told himself, whatever happened wasn’t his fault.

  They embraced.

  “I’m yours, Gilgamesh,” Semiramis whispered.

  His stirred passions, the roaring of his senses—Gilgamesh gave a great shout and tore away from her. “I can’t, I can’t!” he cried. He bolted, confused and guilty. After a league of running, he collapsed on the dirt. Would Nimrod kill him? What if Opis found out?

  Motion in the distance warned him of someone’s approach.

  Gilgamesh crouched, working over in his mind the adage of the anger of a woman scorned. It was empty in this interior country, with only vultures wheeling overhead. If he killed Semiramis—“No!” He felt sick at his murderous thoughts.

  He rose to greet her. She searched his face. She was so beautiful. Lust rose in him, but he fought it down.

  “Oh, Gilgamesh,” she said, taking his hand. “I am well pleased.”

  “What?”

  Semiramis laughed as if she were a naiad of the grasslands. “I but tested your love for Nimrod. Oh, you have surpassed my fondest hopes. Now, I can trust you. Please forgive me for doubting you, and for putting you through such a bitter test.”

  He frowned. He had thought about killing her. “No, Semiramis. I ask forgiveness. I thought… I don’t know what I thought. How could it have been anything but a test?”

  “Noble Gilgamesh,” Semiramis said, with a bitter smile. “Let us forget this incident and return to the hunt.”

  6.

  Nimrod returned from the north with a raft of mighty cedars. He sought out Ham, reminding the patriarch of the stories he used to tell of an Antediluvian tribe that made giant outrigger canoes.

  “You have your reed boats,” Ham said.

  “They’re not good enough for deep-sea voyages.”

  “Why bother with that?

  “To explore,” Nimrod said. “To outdo the exploits of the sons of Japheth, who, they say, went to the Far North and saw strange sights and returned with secret treasures. Might there not be lands beyond the delta-marsh filled with nuggets of gold or copper ores?”

  Under Ham’s direction, and with adzes and axes, Hunters hollowed out the two biggest cedars. With sturdy but flexible planks, Ham joined the two giant dugouts, making a catamaran. He spread reed mats onto the planks and made a deck, and in the center of the deck, he built a post for a small sail. In the bow and stern of each dugout, Ham built watertight compartments, there to store jerky, dried fruit and clay jugs of water. With a bow drill, he fashioned holes in each dugout’s sides, screwing in short wooden struts and stretching oiled awnings as shelter from the wind, rain and sun. Lastly, he fixed leather loops or tholepins onto the outer side of each dugout and slid five oars through them to an outrigger.

  With the vessel finally built, Ham named it the Odyssey.

  As Nimrod selected his crew, growing lyrical on the joys of adventure, of exploring the unknown and of the possible treasures, a company of notables urged Ham to guide the youngsters. Ham declined, citing two reasons: First, his bad hip precluded him from taking rugged journeys. Second, ever since surviving the Ark, he loathed the idea of sea travel.

  “But that’s just it,” Nimrod said one day by the boat. “Who among us has spanned the world like you? Who knows more about ship-handling than you?”

  Ham snorted. “For a year, I sat in a barge that slid wherever the tides moved us. That’s my ship-handling expertise.”

  “What fools you are,” Deborah later told Nimrod. “Convince Rahab that Ham should go. She’s the only one who can persuade him when his mind is made up.”

  Nimrod took her advice, and soon thereafter Ham reluctantly agreed to joi
n them.

  Several days later, they tested the oars and sail and found the Odyssey a maneuverable little ship. As they cruised down the Euphrates, the fifteen-man crew accustomed themselves to it.

  In the delta marsh, Ham kept them in the fastest flowing channels, avoiding swamps and canebrakes and trying to stay out of stagnant lagoons. They spied many birds, although the migratory ones had left for summer breeding grounds.

  On the fourth day, in the afternoon, they crossed the sea bar and headed toward a vast expanse of water. Everyone but Ham marveled at the sight of waves and a distant horizon where sea met sky. The young men shouted and pointed out how deep the waters seemed.

  “It’s horrifying,” Enlil whispered, as he peered into the green depths.

  Gilgamesh swallowed hard. Waves, small ones according to Ham, thumped against the boat, making it rise and fall. Anu fell overboard. The Hunters laughed as they hauled him back aboard.

  Leaning over, cupping his hand, Gilgamesh tasted the water. He spit it out. Salty, just as Anu said.

  “We should turn back,” rumbled Uruk, who sat in the middle of the reed matting.

  Ham chuckled. “The sight of a real sea wets your breeches, eh? Now imagine what it’s like when you’re out there and a storm roars over you.”

  They glanced at the old man with leathery skin. He swayed with each swell, perfectly at ease as he laughed.

  “What do you think lies beyond the horizon?” Nimrod asked.

  Ham shrugged. “We’re not going to explore like that, straight across the sea. No, my boy, we’re going to hug the land like lubbers.” Ham pointed to his right, at a sandy shore. “To oars!”

  The young men scrambled to obey as Ham drew Nimrod aside. “Here’s your first lesson as captain. Whenever things look bleak or your men grow panicked, give them something to do. It takes their minds off trouble.”

  That night, as the sun went down, they made landfall on the sheltered southern shore of an island. They explored it the next day and found nothing of note. So they set sail again on the Bitter Sea, as some of them called it, or the Sea of the Rising Sun, as Ham said. For several days, they bobbed along the ocher shores, occasionally landing to search for gold or malachite or salt licks. Mostly, they found salt marshes, desert and crawling sea turtles.