AHMM, July/August 2012

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “I suggest that I make two copies then, one for each language,” he said. “But I did not bring my Sumerian-Akkadian dictionary with me; it numbers more than thirty tablets. May I take my first tablet home with me so that the second tablet will be more appropriate for an Akkadian reader?”

  Shulgi thought that over. “Yes, but you must bring both tablets back tomorrow. I will trust your discretion, Nabu-zir.”

  Nabu-zir's head was churning. A love song? With the New Year rites approaching? It would have to be the traditional love song from the god Dumuzi to the goddess Inanna, which Shulgi would present to the high priestess. The high priestess would then present her own song, an erotic one in which Inanna would be explicit about her intimate attentions to her bridegroom, Dumuzi.

  But in that case, why the secrecy? The text of such songs was common knowledge, often sold in the bazaar. And why the Akkadian copy? The Akkadians had their own names for the gods—Ishtar for Inanna, for one. A double copy wouldn't work.

  There was no time to sort it out. Shulgi had started dictating. Nabu-zir's reed stylus flew over the blank tablet as if it had a mind of its own.

  “. . . My sweet maid who favored me, who fondled me,

  “Who gave me her caresses,

  “My sweet maid who is favored of limb,

  “Let me place my hand on that sweet place . . .”

  Nabu-zir's ears burned as the king continued. As the poem progressed, he saw that it was in the form of the vulgar songs heard in the Great Music Hall, with two four-line stanzas followed by a six-line stanza, two more four-liners and a final stanza of six lines. This was no dalliance between gods. It was an earthly love song, the song of a man who had made a fool of himself.

  The copy in Akkadian could mean only one thing. Shulgi's mistress was an Akkadian woman, one of those leftover aristocrats who still hung on in Ur, a cosmopolitan city more to their taste than the rude comforts that Akkad had to offer.

  It would be a terrible scandal if it got out. The Akkadians were tolerated but not loved, and the memory of their rule still stung. Shulgi's unfaithfulness would not bother his queen, the current nin-bada. She was used to relinquishing him each New Year in the public ceremony, and no doubt inured to his escapades throughout the year. But for him to be unfaithful to the goddess so close to the night of no moon was another matter. That was what sent Dumuzi to the underworld in the first place. Dumuzi's resurrection was essential. Ur's survival depended on it. If the gang around the high priest got wind of his indiscretion, they could use it to discredit Shulgi with the populace and win back some of the power that Shulgi and his father had taken from them.

  But it was futile to reflect on such matters now. Nabu-zir continued to write automatically. It was dark by the time Shulgi finished. He had paused only once, to call for a servant to bring in an oil lamp for Nabu-zir.

  Shulgi yawned and took a long draught of beer. Nabu-zir said, “Do you wish me to read it back, lord?”

  “What? No. You'd only echo back what I said and the way I said it. Bring me back your Akkadian translation tomorrow, and we'll go through it together.”

  Nabu-zir gathered up his writing materials and quickly fashioned a temporary clay envelope for the still-soft tablet. The envelope would protect the tablet's surface for the walk home, and also keep it from prying eyes.

  “Don't you wish to take your tub of clay?” the king asked in a tired attempt at humor.

  “I'll leave it for the scriptorium,” Nabu-zir said.

  * * * *

  When he left the palace, he found Lu-inanna waiting outside. There was enough light left to see by; there was still half a moon in the sky, enough to cast pale shadows over the plaza. Lu-inanna fell in step beside him and sneaked a covetous look at the clay envelope.

  “Is that it?” he said.

  “Lu-inanna, you are like the cat who was curious about what was in the crocodile's mouth, and, unfortunately for him, found out,” Nabu-zir said, quoting the old proverb.

  Lu-inanna quickened his step to keep up with him. “I can see that the lugal did not put his seal on the envelope,” he persisted. “It would be no great thing to open it and close it up again, with no one the wiser.”

  “I already know what's in it,” Nabu-zir said.

  He lengthened his stride and left Lu-innana puffing far behind him. Before long the wheezing deputy administrator vanished from sight. At the gates to the sacred grounds, Nabu-zir found a watchman setting off on his nightly rounds and followed in his wake, both for the protection an armed man might give him and the light from his torch. But when the man reached the boundary of his assigned territory he turned back and Nabu-zir was left to face the darkness alone.

  He was in the poor district now, familiar territory to him. He followed the banks of the canal as best he could, with the water and the dark shapes of moored boats on one side of him and the blank mud brick walls of the houses on the other. After a while he had a feeling that he was being followed. He turned around several times, but failed to catch anybody. Once he thought he saw a dim shape dart into a side alley, but the shape did not reappear, at least not any of the times he stopped to look behind him.

  He wondered if it might have been Lu-inanna, but dismissed that thought. The deputy administrator knew where he lived, and didn't have to go skulking after him. And he certainly didn't have the courage to waylay him, no matter how curious he might be.

  By the time he reached his own district at the boat basin, he decided that he'd been imagining things. He was among people who knew him, and nothing was going to happen, not with the tavern across the alley spilling light and noise from its open doorway, and drunken patrons staggering in and out. He'd send Nindada across for a pitcher of beer and have his supper.

  She was waiting for him, looking worried. “Your dinner is cold, lord,” she scolded, “but there are embers in the hearth, and I can warm it for you. I have a fine fish from the canal that a fisherman, one of your clients, brought, and I've already sacrificed a portion to Enki, the fish god, so you don't have to worry about a libation. I prepared it with onions and barley and lentils the way you like it.”

  “Have you eaten yourself, Nindada?”

  “You needn't be concerned, I've had quite enough. As the saying goes, ‘Hand and hand a man's house is built. Stomach and stomach a man's house is destroyed.’ “

  After he had eaten, he looked around for a place to hide the clay envelope. He didn't have much choice. His house was sparsely furnished, and the walls bare of anything but a few hangings. Of course there were all those shelves and stacks of tablets, including the dictionary and the precious copy of the tale of Gilgamesh in twenty numbered volumes, and he briefly considered hiding the king's poem among them, with the thought that sometimes an object could escape notice by being hidden in plain sight. But in this case, it seemed too risky. An intruder looking for whatever the king had dictated would probably go straightaway to his collection of tablets, and one with no markings on the clay envelope would be too obvious. Likewise, he eliminated the chest where he kept his few valuable possessions as being too likely a target.

  Then he had an inspiration. In the scanty larder next to the hearth was an unopened sack of grain, his weekly ration as a citizen of Ur. The cord that tied the neck was still sealed with the thumbnail-sized button of clay that bore the temple's certification of the weight of the sack's contents, as the law required.

  Even better for his purposes was the fact that Nindada had left her five-mina weight next to the sack, ready to use when the sack was opened. It was in the form of a stone carving of a duck, with the inscription: certified by shulgi, the mighty male, king of ur—part of Shulgi's campaign to regulate weights and measures.

  Working quickly, knowing he was breaking the law, he broke the seal and undid the cord. He buried the clay envelope in the center of the barley, where its contours would not show. Then he fashioned a small button of clay, and with a sharp reed of small diameter, forged a passable imitation of the
inscription.

  He retied the cord and buried its ends in the soft clay. In an hour it would be hard. He rocked back on his heels and studied his work with satisfaction. Only another scribe would be likely to detect it.

  He looked up and saw Nindada standing in the doorway. He didn't know how long she'd been there. She bit her lip and left without saying anything.

  Nabu-zir picked up the seal he had breached and crumbled it between his thumb and forefinger. He tossed the resulting crumbs of clay onto the hearth and mixed them with the ashes there, making the evidence disappear. Destroying the seal was not a crime, but the forgery was. He didn't want to think about the penalty for that.

  * * * *

  He slept fitfully, with dreams of demons of the night pursuing him. When he heard sounds from the outer room, he thought at first that they were part of the dream.

  He sat up and listened. Somebody was out there, and being careless. He heard the unmistakable sound of a tablet falling to the floor and shattering. Sudden anger replaced fear. He looked around the room for something he might use as a cudgel. His eye lit on Nindada's broom, leaning against the wall next to the doorway. It was almost as if she'd left it there for him; she always put her household utensils away when she was through with them.

  He tiptoed across the room and grasped the broom at its center of balance just above the bundle of twigs at the end.

  He stepped through the doorway and saw in the semidarkness the outline of a man rifling through the larder. The little lamp the man had brought with him, hardly more than a saucer with a wick floating in it, was resting on the hearth. He'd just ripped the sack of barley open and was removing the clay envelope from it.

  Nabu-zir stepped forward and swung the broom handle. He caught the intruder on the collarbone, and hoped he'd broken it. But the man gave a yelp of pain and danced away from him. The next thing Nabu-zir knew, the man had a knife in his hand and was rushing him.

  He took a step backward and tripped over a jar that was lying there. He found himself on his back with the man straddling him and raising the knife to plunge it into him.

  Nabu-zir's flailing hand found something heavy on the floor beside him. It was the stone duck that Nindada had left next to the sack of barley.

  He swung the duck with all his might. It struck his assailant on the side of the head with a sickening crunch. The knife clattered to the floor, and the man followed, limp as a votive offering on the altar.

  Nabu-zir extricated himself from under the body and stood up shakily. In moments, Nindada was in the room with a stone oil lamp. “Lord, are you all right?” she said.

  “I'm not dead,” he said. “Let's have a look at him.”

  Together they bent over the body while she held the flickering lamp high. The man's head was crushed, and there was no doubt that he was now explaining himself to the seven judges of the underworld.

  Nabu-zir's eyes went to the man's elaborate flounced skirt and the carnelian and lapis jewelry, then to the contorted face, still angry in death.

  “A rich man,” Nindada whispered.

  “No, but he wanted to imitate one. He's the king's scribe.”

  Nindada could not suppress a cry. She stood trembling beside him. “What will you do, lord?” she said.

  “Don't be afraid,” he said. “I will not be bound over by the judges of the Assembly. The circumstances are clear.” He quoted from Ur-nammu's law: “ ‘The penalty for trespass by day is a fine; for trespass by night, death.’ “ He glanced at the knife. “Not to mention the penalty for attempted murder.”

  She shivered. “When big men are involved, the law is a joke.”

  * * * *

  “You're a cheeky man to stand there and tell me that you've killed my scribe,” Shulgi said. “And a brave one, to dare to do so. But I always knew that about you, Nabu-zir. That's why I trusted you with my little assignment.”

  “You would have been told about it within a day in any case, mighty king,” Nabu-zir said. “There will be many feet rushing to bear the news.”

  “No doubt.” Shulgi scowled. “The high priest and his crowd. The nu-banda and his spies. Every little temple sycophant, brimming over with glee, hoping that the king's secrets will spill out in the wake of this revelation.” He thought a moment and added, “Including your prying friend, Lu-inanna.”

  “I don't think so, great lugal. “I've told you how he stood up to the high priest, though he was quaking in his boots. He's guilty of curiosity, nothing more.”

  “The man knew nothing anyway, except that your assignment somehow involved a poem. And even that was a lucky guess that, mongoose that he is, he somehow ferreted out of me.”

  Nabu-zir had to laugh, despite his precarious position. He knew the proverb Shulgi was thinking of. “If there is any food around, the mongoose consumes it,” he quoted.

  Shulgi frowned. “It's no laughing matter, Nabu-zir. Where do things stand now?”

  “I brought in the patrol at first daylight. They saw the situation immediately—the knife, the broken door seal, the ransacked larder and disarranged tablets, and put it down to simple burglary and a burglar caught in the act.”

  “The tablet, Nabu-zir, the tablet!”

  “I put my seal on the envelope and hid it among the tablets in my library before summoning the patrol. There was no reason to mention it.”

  Shulgi nodded. “Good. What then?”

  “I waited till they'd chewed over the facts and reached their conclusion, then informed them that I knew the man, that he was a disaffected scribe in the temple scriptorium who had a grudge against me for his demotion. Your lugalship's name did not come up. It fit their conceptions, and they put the attempted murder down to jealousy.”

  “Again, good. Go on.”

  “There will be a hearing before the Assembly's judges, but it will just be a formality, and there will be no reason to put it before a citizens’ jury. I'm bound to testify, of course, and it will come out that Nana-palil had once served as one of your own scribes, but things will have simmered down by then, and if anything it will only serve to reinforce jealousy as the motive for attempted murder.”

  “You've done well, Nabu-zir. But know that I cannot intervene at the preliminary hearing or at a full Assembly trial, if there should be one. I'm bound to obey my own laws and the laws of my father regarding the independence of the judiciary. Three of the judges on the panel are creatures of the temple, hostile to me, and with things as touchy as they are right now, I did not even dare to veto their appointment.”

  “I understand, lord.”

  “Now to important matters. Do you have the Akkadian translation?”

  “Right here, lord. I went to work on it right away as soon as I got rid of the patrol.”

  “And your Sumerian original?”

  Nabu-zir handed it over. “I had to fashion a new clay envelope for it.”

  Shulgi put the original aside as if it didn't matter anymore, and broke the envelope of the Akkadian copy. He scanned it, his lips moving, a small smile on his face. When he finished, he looked up at Nabu-zir. “You are a scribe who is a scribe indeed,” he said.

  Nabu-zir did not know how to reply to that, so he said nothing.

  The smile disappeared from Shulgi's face. “You've formed a number of conclusions, haven't you, Nabu-zir? How could you not.”

  “Please, lord, I'm just a simple tablet writer,” Nabu-zir said nervously. “The affairs of the mighty are none of my business.”

  Shulgi's eyes were still on Nabu-zir's face, but he spoke as if to himself. “A king is still a man, isn't he? He may love as a man, for himself, and not just as a duty he performs for the state.”

  He sat there with a face made of stone. After a while Nabu-zir saw that he had been forgotten, and he tiptoed quietly out of the workroom.

  * * * *

  “The question is,” Nabu-zir said, “who put him up to it? Was it you?”

  Lu-inanna almost dropped the pitcher of beer Nindada had brought
him from the tavern across the way. “Me, Nabu-zir? Why would I do such a thing?”

  “Because the high priest put you up to it, to keep his own hands clean.”

  “You're crazy. The high priest has his own henchman, the nu-banda, to do his dirty work. He doesn't need to drag a deputy administrator into it. Besides, that misbegotten scribe, Nana-palil, was quite capable of acting on his own. You saw how he hated you.”

  “Yes, enough to want to murder me. But he was looking for that tablet—the one you were so curious about.”

  “I was curious, I admit. But not enough to risk my neck. If anybody egged the fellow on to sniff out the king's secrets, it was the nu-banda, at the high priest's behest. It wouldn't be the first time he's engineered a political murder and found a way to cover it up. There was that case last year of the caravan master who was supposed to have been robbed and murdered by fellow merchants. A dupe was found to take the blame, but he died mysteriously before he could be tried. Then the man's daughter disappeared and it was put about that she'd run off with a slave.”

  He lowered his voice conspiratorially. “I happen to know that the daughter was raped by the shesh-gal, the chief temple director, and it was hushed up. But the father got the truth out of her, and was preparing to demand the penalties under the law, shesh-gal or not. You know the penalties?”

  Nabu-zir took a thoughtful sip of beer. “I do indeed. The father was entitled to rape the shesh-gal's daughter and deliver her to be prostituted. Further, the shesh-gal would have to deliver the bride price in silver, though the father could then marry off his daughter to anyone he wished.”

  “Exactly. That could not be. So the troublesome plaintiff was found beside the trail, half eaten by dogs. His donkeys and the merchandise they carried began to appear at various markets. But the daughter's body was never found. Nor the body of the slave she was supposed to have run off with. And the shesh-gal is still molesting virgins.”

  “What are you trying to say, Lu-inanna?”