Gilgamesh the King

by Robert Silverberg

  Though there remained always something rough and earthy at the core of him, nevertheless he quickly came to take on the outer look and manner of a noble of the court, dignified, accomplished, handsome. I tried even to have him taught to read and write, but he drew the line at attempting that. Well, there are many great men of the court who lack that skill also, and few who have mastered it.

  If there was jealousy of him at court, I suppose I did not notice it. Perhaps there were some in the inner circle of heroes and warriors who turned away bitterly, saying behind his back and mine, “There is the king’s favorite, the wild man. Why was he chosen, and not me?” But if they did, they hid their scowls and mutterings very well. I prefer to think that no such envious feelings existed. It was not as though Enkidu had displaced some earlier favorite. I had never had a favorite before, not even such old comrades as Bir-hurturre or Zabardi-bunugga; I had never allowed anyone so close. They saw at once that the companionship I enjoyed with Enkidu was of a different sort from anything I had known with them, just as his strength was of a different sort from theirs. There was no one like him in the world; and there was nothing like our friendship.

  I took him completely into my confidence. I made every aspect of myself open to him. I even allowed him to watch me when I went into seclusion to beat the drum made of the huluppu-tree in the special way that put me into the trance. He crouched beside me as I disappeared into that other realm of blue light; and when I came out of it I found myself lying with my head cradled against his knees. He was staring at me as though he had seen the god emanating from me: he touched my cheekbones, he made holy signs with his fingertips. “Can you show me how to go to that place?” he asked. And I replied, “I will, Enkidu,” but he never could reach it, try as he would. I think it was that he had not been touched in an inward way by the god as I had been; he had never felt the fluttering of the great wings in his soul, he had not heard the droning and the buzzing, or seen the crackling aura, that are the first signs of being possessed. But often I let him sit beside me as I drummed, and he guarded me when I rolled about on the floor and thrashed and lashed my arms and legs in the ecstatic fit.

  When there was work to do—the construction of canals, the strengthening of the wall, whatever labor the gods decreed for me—Enkidu was by my side. At the rituals he stood near me, and handed me the sacred vessels, or lifted the offerings of oxen and sheep to the altar as easily as if they were birds. When it was the season of hunting, we hunted together, and in that he was my superior, since he knew the wild beasts with a brother’s knowledge. He stood with his head thrown back and sniffed the air, and said, pointing, “That way is lion. That way is elephant.” He was never wrong. We went time and again into the marshes or the steppes or the other places where the great beasts dwelled, and there was no beast that did not fall to us. Together we killed three strong male elephants in the great bend of the river, and we carried their hides and teeth to Uruk and hung them up for a show on the facade of the palace. Another time he built a pit covered with branches and we captured an elephant alive, and brought it to the city also, where it stood bellowing and snorting in an enclosure for the whole winter until we offered it to Enlil. We hunted lions of the two kinds, the black-maned ones and those without manes, from our chariot: like me, Enkidu cast his javelins with the right hand or the left, with equal accuracy. I tell you, we were one soul in two bodies.

  He was different from me, of course, in many ways. He was louder and far more boisterous, especially when he had had overmuch wine, and he had a low taste in wit, roaring endlessly with laughter over jokes that would make a child’s nose wrinkle with distaste. Well, he was a man who had been reared among beasts. He had a dignity, a natural one, but it was not the dignity of one who has grown up in a palace with a king for a father. It was good for me to have Enkidu booming and roistering at my side, for I am too serious a man for my own good, and he lightened my hours, not as a court jester does with his carefully devised jollities, but in an easy and natural way, like a cool crisp breeze on a sultry sweltering day.

  He spoke out with complete honesty. When I took him into the Enmerkar temple, thinking he would be overwhelmed by its beauty and majesty, he said at once, “It is very small and ugly, is it not?” I had not expected that. Afterward I began to see my grandfather’s great temple through Enkidu’s eyes, and indeed it did appear small and ugly to me, and old, and in bad need of repair. Instead of repairing it I tore it down and built a splendid new one, five times its size, atop the White Platform: that is the temple that stands there now, which I think will win me fame through the thousands of years to come.

  It cost me some little trouble with the priestess Inanna, when I tore the Enmerkar temple down. I told her what I meant to do, and she looked at me as if I had spat upon the altars and replied, “But it is the greatest of temples!”

  “The one that was there before it, that Meskiaggasher built, was also the greatest of temples, in its day. No one remembers it now. It is in the nature of kings to replace temples with greater temples. Enmerkar built well, but I will build better.”

  She glared at me sourly. “And where will the goddess live, while you are building your temple?”

  “The goddess inhabits all of Uruk. She’ll live in every house and in every street and in the air about us, as she does now.”

  Inanna was furious. She summoned the assembly of elders and the house of men to declare her protest; but no one could not stop me from building the temple. It is in the province of the king to enhance the grandeur of the goddess by offering temples to her. So we swept the Enmerkar temple away, down to its foundations, although we left intact those demon-haunted ancient underground passageways beneath it: I did not want to meddle with those. I brought in limestone blocks from the limestone country to be the new foundations of my temple, and laid it out on a scale that no one in Uruk had ever imagined before. The citizens gasped in surprise when they came to watch the work and saw the length and breadth of what I intended to build.

  In building the new temple I made use of everything I had learned of the craft. I raised the height of the White Platform until it towered halfway to heaven, and put my temple high on its foundations above that, as the temples are in Kish. I made the walls thicker than anyone had ever thought to make walls, and I supported them on immense columns as sturdy as the thighs of the gods. By way of ornament for the walls and columns I devised a new thing so wondrous that I should be remembered for it alone, even if all my other achievements are forgotten. This was, to drive thousands of long pointed cones of baked clay into the mud-plaster that covered the walls and columns, before it had hardened. Only the heads of these cones were allowed to remain visible, and they were painted in red or yellow or black, and placed one next to the other to form dazzling colorful patterns in diagonals and zigzags and lozenges and chevrons and triangles. The result is that wherever the eye looks within my temple, it is delighted by vividness and complexity: it is like seeing a vast tapestry, woven not with colored wools but of an uncountable number of small bright roundels of painted clay.

  Enkidu thought also that the small shrine to Lugalbanda that Dumuzi had erected years ago by the military barracks in the Lion district was unworthy of my father. I had to agree; and I tore that down too, and built a far more appropriate one, with arches and pilasters of great size all covered over with my cone-mosaic decorations in brilliant colors. At the center of it I put the old image of Lugalbanda in black stone that Dumuzi had erected, for it was a noble enough representation, and I would not lightly discard anything made of a material so rare as the black stone; but I surrounded it by tripod-mounted lamps against mirrors of bright copper, so that a dazzling light filled the shrine at every hour. We painted the walls with pictures and leopards and bulls, as offerings to Enlil of the storms, whom Lugalbanda loved. At the dedication I poured the blood of lions and elephants over the tiles of the floor. Can anyone say that the hero Lugalbanda merited anything less?

  There were n
o wars in those years. The Elamites were quiet, the Martu desert tribesmen went marauding elsewhere, the collapse of the dynasty of Agga of Kish removed a powerful menace to our north. That the king of Ur had made himself king of Kish did not trouble me; Ur and Kish are far apart, and I saw no way that he could combine the power of the two cities in league against us. So we lived a calm and easy life in Uruk, growing rich in peace, fattening ourselves with trade instead of going forth to seek the booty of warfare.

  In those years the merchants and emissaries of Uruk went everywhere at my bidding, to the great enhancement of the city. From the mountains in the east they brought beams of cedar-wood fifty and even sixty cubits in length, and logs of urkarinnu-wood to the length of twenty-five cubits, which we used for the beams of the new temple. From the town of Ursu in the mountain of Ibla they fetched zabalu-wood, great beams of ashukhu-wood, and the timber of plane-trees. From Umanu, a mountain in the land of Menua, and from Basalla, a mountain of the land of Amurru, my envoys returned with great blocks of the rare black stone, out of which the craftsmen fashioned new images of the gods for all the older temples. I imported copper from Kagalad, a mountain of Kimash, and with my own hands I made a great mace-head out of it. Out of Gubin, the mountain of huluppu-trees, I brought huluppu-wood, and from Madga came asphalt to use in the platform of the temple, and from the mountain of Barshib I fetched blocks of the sumptuous nalua-stone by boat. I laid plans to send expeditions even farther, to Magan, to Meluhha, to Dilmun. The city thrived. It grew daily in splendor. I took a wife, and she bore me a son; and I took a second wife, as was my right. There was peace. On the night of the new year I went to the temple I had built, and lay with fiery Inanna in the rite of the Sacred Marriage: each year she clung more fiercely to me, and her body moved with greater abandon, as she received in a single night the whole year’s fulfillment of her hungers. I had the love of Enkidu to buoy me through my days. The wine flowed freely; the smoke of burning meat rose each day to the gods, and all was well. This was how I thought my reign would be forever and ever. But the gods do not grant such ease forever and ever: it is a miracle when they grant it at all.

  20

  ONE DAY I CAME UPON Enkidu and found him in a bleak and downcast mood, scowling and sighing and well-nigh close to tears. I asked him what troubled him, though I was fairly sure that I knew; and he said, “You will think me a fool if I tell you.”

  “Perhaps I will, and what of it? Come, speak it forth.”

  “It is foolishness, Gilgamesh!”

  “I think not,” I said. I gave him a close look and said, “Allow me a guess. You grow restless in our civilized life of ease, is that not it? You’ve become weary of dallying here in idleness.”

  His face reddened and he replied, startled, “By the gods, how did you know that?”

  “It takes no great wisdom to see it, Enkidu.”

  “I would not have you think that I want to return to my old life and run naked on the steppe.”

  “No. I doubt that you do.”

  “But I tell you, I’m becoming soft here. The edge of my strength is going from me. My arms are limp, my breath comes short.”

  “And the hunting trips we make? And the games we play on the jousting-field? Not enough, are they, Enkidu?”

  In a low voice I could barely hear he said, “I am ashamed to say it. But they are not enough.”

  I put my hand to his arm. “Well, they are not enough for me either.”

  He blinked in surprise. “What is that you say?”

  “That I feel the same restlessness you do. My kingship binds and confines me. The tranquility that I’ve labored to achieve for the city has become my enemy. My soul is troubled even as yours is. I yearn as much as you for adventure, Enkidu, for danger, for mighty deeds that will raise up my name before mankind. I chafe here. I long to take a great journey.”

  It was the truth. All was so serene in Uruk that being the king did not seem much different to me from being a shopkeeper. I could not accept a shopkeeper’s lot, for the gods had put divinity in me, and the divine part of me was and is unsleeping, forever questing, forever unsatisfied. That is the jest the gods have played on me—that I yearn for peace but am not satisfied when I attain it; but I think I have solved the riddle of that jest now, as I will tell you in its proper time.

  “Ah, is it so?” he said. “You suffer as I do?”

  “Exactly as you do.”

  He laughed. “We are like two overgrown boys, casting about for new diversions. But what will we do, then, Gilgamesh? Where can we go?”

  I gave him a long steady look. Slowly I said, “There is a place known as the Land of Cedars. For some time now I have been thinking of undertaking an expedition to that place.” That was not the truth: the idea had leaped into my mind that moment. “Do you know of it, Enkidu?”

  With a frown he said, speaking somewhat darkly and grimly, “I know of it, yes.”

  “Would it cure your restlessness, do you think, to go there with me?”

  He moistened his lips. “Why that place, Gilgamesh?”

  “We have need of cedar. It is a splendid wood. There is none of it in the Land.” I was not being devious with him. It was the truth. But also I had chosen the Land of Cedars for its sharp and bracing air, which I thought would bring Enkidu out of his melancholy. And above and beyond that, there was talk of late that the Elamites were staking claim to all the land around the cedar forest. I could not permit that.

  “There are other places where you can obtain cedar.”

  “Perhaps. But I mean to go to the Land of Cedars for it. They say it’s wondrous country there, high and green and cool, very beautiful.”

  “And very dangerous,” said Enkidu.

  “Is it?” I shrugged. “Better and better! You said you were growing restless dallying here in civilized ease—that you are hungry for challenge, for peril—”

  He said, looking as abashed as I had ever seen him, “Possibly you offer more than I bargain for.”

  “What? Too much peril, is that it? Did those words come from Enkidu’s lips? I never thought to hear you speak in a cowardly way.”

  His eyes flashed; but with an effort he kept himself in check. “There is a fine line, brother, between cowardice and common sense.”

  “And is it common sense to fear a skirmish with a few Elamites?”

  “No, not with Elamites, Gilgamesh.”

  “Then what—”

  “Are you not aware that the Lord Enlil placed the demon Huwawa at the gateway to the Land of Cedars to guard the holy trees?”

  I nearly laughed out loud at that. Indeed I had heard tales of the demon of the forest; every forest has its demon or two, and terrifying tales abound. But generally demons can be propitiated or otherwise turned aside; and I had not expected Enkidu to care a rat’s eyelash for beings of that sort in any case.

  I said lightly, “Well, there is some such story. But perhaps the demon will be busy elsewhere when we get there. Or perhaps the demon isn’t as ferocious as the tales make him out to be. Or perhaps, Enkidu, there’s no demon in the forest at all.”

  Quietly Enkidu said, “I have looked upon Huwawa with my own eyes.”

  His words had the force of a blow in the belly, so hushed was his voice, so taut with conviction. Now it was my turn to blink with amazement. “What?” I blurted. “You have actually seen him?”

  “When I was still ranging through the wilderness with the wild beasts,” he said, “I wandered once far to the east, and came into the forest where the cedars grow. It extends ten thousand leagues in every direction; and Huwawa is everywhere in it. There is no hiding from him. He rose up before me and roared, and I thought I would die of fright; and I am no coward, Gilgamesh.” He looked at me very closely. “Am I a coward, do you think? But Huwawa rose up and roared, and when he roars it is like the roaring of the storms that bring the great floods. I thought I would die of fright. His mouth is fire itself, his breath is death.”

  I still could not bel
ieve it. “You say that you saw the face of the demon?” I asked.

  “I saw it. There is nothing more frightening in this world. This Huwawa is a monster beyond belief. His teeth are like the fangs of a dragon. His face is a lion’s face.” Enkidu was trembling. His eyes were gleaming with the recollection of terror. “When he charges, it is like the onrushing waters of the river. He devours trees and reeds as though they are grass.”

  Dully I said yet again, “You saw the demon!”

  “I saw him, Gilgamesh. I was lucky to get away. He turned aside; he forgot me. I would not get away a second time. He will slay us. I tell you this: if we go to the Land of Cedars, he will slay us. He perceives everything that happens in that forest. He can hear the sound of the wild heifers roaming in the woods, even if they are sixty leagues away. There’s no escaping him. The contest is unequal.” He shook his head. “Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh, I am as hungry for some great exploit as you are: but are you hungry for death?”

  “Do you think that I am?”

  “You mean to go to the Land of Cedars.”

  “For the sake of adventure, yes. For the sake of making my heart beat faster in my breast. But I have no hunger for death. It is the love of life that draws me to the Land of Cedars, not any craving for dying. You know that.”

  “Yet to enter the lair of Huwawa—”

  “No, Enkidu. I have seen the corpses floating on the river, and it weighs heavy on my soul, seeing them and knowing that that is our fate too. I abhor death. Death is my enemy.”

  “Then why go—”

  “Because we must.”