Gilgamesh the King

by Robert Silverberg

  “Ah, why must we? We can go north! We can go south! We can go—”

  “No,” I said. The fire was upon me now. It pained me to see Enkidu languishing in such fear. His soul had softened in Uruk; he would die of it if I did not pull him forth. For his sake we must undertake this thing, no matter the risks. “There is only one place we can go, and that is the Land of Cedars.”

  “Where we will most certainly die.”

  “I am not so certain of that. But consider this, friend: only the gods live forever under the sun, and even they taste death now and then. As for mortals like us, what we attempt is nothing but empty air, the blowing of the wind. Yet we must attempt it, I think, even so.”

  “And die. I have never known you so eager for death, Gilgamesh. No matter what you say, that is how you seem.”

  “No! No! I mean to fend off death as long as I can. But I will not live in fear. How can it be, Enkidu, that you are afraid?”

  This time my jeering roused no anger in him. He looked away, scowling, bleak-faced.

  “I have seen Huwawa,” he said sullenly.

  Now I grew angry myself. This was not the Enkidu I knew.

  “Well, then,” I cried, “fear him! But I will not. Stay back where it is safe, then. Come with me to the Land of Cedars, yes. The journey will refresh you; the keen air will awaken your soul. But when we are in the forest, I will let you walk behind me. What if he slays me? If I fall to him, well, at the least of it I will have left behind me a name to last forever. They will say of me, ‘Gilgamesh has fallen to fierce Huwawa.’ That is no disgrace, eh? Where can there be any disgrace, in falling to a demon so dreadful that he frightens even the hero Enkidu?”

  His eyes met mine. He grinned fiercely, and his nostrils flared. “How sly you are, Gilgamesh!”

  “Am I? How so?”

  “To tell me you’ll let me walk behind you.”

  “It will be safer for you there, Enkidu.”

  “Do you think so? And have everyone in Uruk say afterward, ‘That is Enkidu, he walked behind his brother in the forest of the demon’!”

  “But if the demon frightens you—”

  “You know I will walk at your side when we come into Huwawa’s domain.”

  “Ah, I would not require that of you—you who have seen the dreadful Huwawa.”

  “Spare me your mockery,” said Enkidu wearily. “I will stand beside you. You know that, Gilgamesh. You have known it from the beginning.”

  “If you are unwilling to go—”

  “I tell you, I will stand beside you!” he bellowed. And we laughed and seized each other in a great hug, and made an end to all this talk: and I let the word go out that I soon would set forth from Uruk to the Land of Cedars.

  I cannot tell you how many times, as we made our preparations for the journey, I asked Enkidu to describe the demon for me. Each time he offered the same words. He spoke of the roaring, the mouth like fire, the vast outpouring of storm-force. Well, I could not give him the lie: there was no artifice in Enkidu, he had not the slightest trace of the skills of deception. Plainly he had seen the demon, and plainly the demon was no trifling foe. From time to time we all see demons, for they are everywhere about, lurking behind the doors, in the air, on the rooftops, under bushes; I had seen demons often enough myself; but I had never seen one to match Huwawa. Still, I felt no fear. The very fear Enkidu had voiced only sharpened my resolve to fetch cedars from Huwawa’s forest.

  I chose fifty men to go with us, among them Bir-hurturre, but not Zabardi-bunugga, for I told him that he must remain to command the army of the city while I was away. I had great adzes cast for felling the trees, of a weight of three talents each, with handles of willow and box-wood; and my artisans made for us swords worthy of heroes, with blades of two talents’ weight each, and golden sheaths, and pommels on the hilts that only a big man’s hand could grasp. We gathered together our finest axes, our hunting-bows, our spears. Even before the day of departure I heard the war-song humming in my ears, which I had not heard in too long a time, and I felt like a boy again, I felt fresh blood coursing hot in my veins.

  Of course the elders were gloomy. They formed a delegation on the quay and marched into town through the Gate of Seven Bolts, chanting prayers in their dour long-faced way. The people gathered around them in the Market-of-the-Land and began to chant and weep too, and I saw there was going to be trouble; so I went to the marketplace and presented myself before the elders. It was not hard to predict what they would say: “You are still young, Gilgamesh, your courage is greater than your wisdom, your heart leads you into something rash. You take a road you have never traveled, and you will be lost. You are strong, but you will never prevail against Huwawa. He is a being of a monstrous kind; his roaring is like that of the storm-flood, his mouth is fire itself, his breath is the breath of death.” And so on and so forth. Which was exactly what they said. I heard them out; and then I replied, smiling, that I would seek the protection of the gods and that I was confident the gods would protect me, as they always had in the past. “It is a road I have never traveled, I admit,” I said, “but I go without fear. I go with joyful heart.”

  When they saw there was no changing my mind, they altered their tune. Now they warned me simply not to be too sure of my own strength. Let Enkidu go first, they said. Let him lead the way, let him protect the king. To this advice I listened calmly, smiling still, not entering into any dispute with them. They told me also to place myself under the mercy of Utu of the sun, who is the god who guards those in danger, and I swore to go that very day to the temple of Utu and offer him two kids, a white one without blemish and a brown one. I would beg the aid of Utu, and I would promise him a glorious offering of praise and gifts if he granted me a safe return. And on my journey to the Land of Cedars I would perform this rite and that one, this observance and that, to insure myself against all harm. I promised these things in all sincerity. I was not unaware, after all, of the perils.

  When the elders were done plaguing me, it was the turn of the priestess Inanna, who summoned me to the temple I had built for her and said angrily, “What is this madness, Gilgamesh? Where are you going?”

  “Are you my mother, to speak to me this way?”

  “Hardly. But you are king of Uruk, and if you die in this venture, who will be king after you?”

  Shrugging, I said, “That is for the goddess to determine, is it not, and not I. But have no fear, Inanna. I will not die on this journey.”

  “And if you do?”

  “I will not die,” I said again.

  “Is it so important to attempt this thing?”

  “We must have the cedar.”

  “Send your troops, then, and let them fight with the demons.”

  “Ah, and would you have me tell them that I am afraid of Huwawa, and send them in my place, while I sit here comfortably at home all the rest of my days? I will go, Inanna. That much is settled.”

  She stared at me furiously. I felt, as I always did, the power of her beauty, which was in its fullest ripeness now; and I felt also the force of her love for me, which had raged within her like the fire of the heavens since we were children; and I felt, beyond that, the anger that she had for me because she was unable in any way to fulfill that love as women and men ordinarily do.

  I thought also of those times, one night a year, when she and I had come together in the bed of the goddess, when she had lain naked in my arms with her breasts heaving and her thighs parted and her fingers clawing the skin of my back, and I wondered whether I would live to embrace her that way again. For in my way I loved her also, though my love was always mixed with a certain mistrust and more than a little dread of her wiles. We were silent a time. Then she said, “I will make offerings for your safety. And go, get you to your mother the old queen, and ask her to do the same.”

  “I mean to go to her next,” I said.

  It was true. Enkidu and I crossed the city to the wise and great Ninsun, and I knelt before her and told her th
at I was setting out on an uncertain road, with a strange battle to fight. She sighed, and asked why it was that the gods, having given her Gilgamesh for a son, had endowed him with such a restless heart; but she made no attempt to dissuade me from going. Instead she rose and cloaked herself in her holy crimson robe, and donned her breastplate of gold and her necklaces of lapis and carnelian, and put her tiara on her head, and went to the altar of Utu on the roof of her dwelling. She lit incense to him and spoke to the god for a time; and then she returned to us, and turned to Enkidu, saying, “You are not the child of my flesh, strong Enkidu, but I adopt you as my son. Before all my priestesses and votaries I adopt you.” She hung an amulet about Enkidu’s neck, and embraced him, and said to him, “I entrust him to you. Guard him. Protect him. Bring him back safely. He is the king, Enkidu. And he is my son.”

  The praying and discussion were done with at last; and I led my men forth out of Uruk the city, to the Land of Cedars.

  21

  SWIFTLY WE WENT UP OUT of the warm lowlands, leaving behind us the groves of date-palms and the golden breast of the desert, and rose into the cool green high country to the east. We traveled in forced marches from dawn to dusk, crossing seven mountains one after the other without pausing, until at last the forests of cedar stood before us, uncountable legions of trees ranging along the slopes of the rough land ahead. It was strange for us seeing so many trees, the Land having scarcely any. They made the jagged hills look almost black. They seemed like a hostile army, waiting calmly for our onslaught.

  There was another great strangeness in those fanged ridges and rocky gullies: the fires of the outcast gods and demons that rose out of the stone here and there, and their thick black oily outpourings, which came rolling down toward us like the sluggish snakes of the nether world. For we were entering the land that is known as the Rebel Lands, into which the gods who rose up against Enlil were exiled. Here did the victorious warriors Enlil and Ninurta and Ningirsu cast their banished enemies in that great battle of gods long ago; and here they still sulked, still rumbling and growling and shaking the earth, still giving off their great blasts of smoke and fire and letting their serpents of oil seep from the depths of the ground. With each step we took we penetrated deeper into this dark realm, knowing all the time that sinister deities with angry red eyes snorted and puffed beneath our feet.

  Yet we allowed ourselves no fear. We paused at the proper times and made the proper observances to Utu, to An, to Enlil, to Inanna. When we camped at night we dug wells and let the holy waters rise to the surface as offerings. At the last, before sleep, I invoked Lugalbanda and took counsel with him, for he had been in these lands himself, and had suffered greatly from the noxious fumes and blasts of the rebel gods. His presence was a strong comfort within me.

  Enkidu knew this country well. Like the wild creature he once had been, he guided us through the unending trackless leagues without fail. He took us around the places that had been burned and blackened by the hot breath of dangerous spirits. He led us past the regions where the land had slipped and broken and heaved upward and was impassable. He brought us past thick deep oily slicks that lay like black lakes upon the breast of the earth. Nearer and nearer did we draw to the inner forest itself, to the domain of the demon Huwawa.

  Now we were amidst the first outlying cedar trees. If we had come only for wood, I suppose we could have chopped down twenty or sixty of the trees and returned happily with them to Uruk, claiming triumph. But we had not come only for wood.

  Enkidu said, “There is a great gate here, sealing off the sacred groves within. We are very near it now.”

  “And Huwawa?” I asked.

  “On the other side of the gate, not far.”

  I peered close at him. His voice was strong and steady, but yet I was not entirely sure of him. I had no desire to injure his pride; but after a moment I asked, “Is all well with you thus far, Enkidu?”

  He smiled and said, “Do I look pale? Do you see me quaking with fear, Gilgamesh?”

  “In Uruk I heard you speak with great respect of Huwawa. There is no escaping him, you said. He is a monster beyond belief, you said. When he roared, you thought you would die of the fright of it. You said those things.”

  Enkidu shrugged. “I said those things in Uruk, perhaps. In cities men grow soft. Here I feel my strength returning. There is nothing to fear, my friend. Follow me: I know where Huwawa dwells, and the road he travels.” And he put his hand to my arm and squeezed it, and locked his arm hard around mine.

  A day later we came to the wall of the forest, and to the great gate.

  I had wondered about that wall since Enkidu first told me of it. The Land of Cedars lies in the unsettled borderland between the Land and the country of the Elamites, and ownership of it has been in dispute at least since the days of Meskiaggasher, the first king of Uruk. Since it is a territory that cannot be farmed, we have never tried to take formal possession of it, but whenever we found need of cedar-wood we have freely entered into it and collected all that we wanted. It was a serious business if someone was building walls through the forest. It is one thing if Enlil chooses to post some dread fire-demon here to guard the trees in his name: I have no say in what Enlil does. But I would not tolerate the setting-up of walls here by any black-bearded Elamitish mountain king who meant to try to claim the whole forest for his dirty ragged tribesfolk.

  The moment I saw the wall I knew that Elamites and not Huwawa or any other spirit had built it. It had the mark of men all over it, and not very skillful men at that. Cedar logs, roughly squared and indifferently bound with withes, were piled in a helter-skelter fashion along a crudely slashed track that stretched off in both directions as far as the eye could see: the pink heartwood of the trees was sadly exposed, as if the timber had been flayed rather than planed. Anger rose in me at the sight of this huge clumsy wall. I looked about at my men and said, “Well, shall we knock the thing apart and go into the forest?”

  “You should see the gate first,” said Enkidu.

  The gate lay half a league around to the south. Even before I reached it I gasped in surprise. It rose high above the wall, more a tower than a gate, and it was superb in every aspect. That gate would have been no disgrace to the walls of Uruk. It too was of cedar, trimmed and cut by a master’s hand, and framed and joined with high skill. Its pivot and rod were wondrously smooth and its great jamb was superbly fitted.

  “A gate of the gods!” Bir-hurturre cried. “A gate put up by Enlil himself!”

  “A gate that no Elamite could have built, at any rate,” I said, going close to inspect it.

  Indeed it was perfection. Not only was it flawlessly built, it was magnificently adorned: carved upon the finely seasoned wood of its face were monsters and serpents and gods and goddesses, in Elamitish designs that I remembered having seen on the shields of the warriors I slew in my campaigns for Agga of Kish. Mounted high at the top of the gate were three huge horns set close together, much like the massive horns that the Elamites carve and place on the facades of their temples. And down the sides of the wall were inscriptions in the barbaric Elamitish script, which is awkwardly patterned after our own: pictures of beasts, vases, jugs, stars, mountains, and many other things, tumbling together in some sort of declaration indecipherable to me. The carvings were nicely done, but it seemed a foolish way to write, this silly making of pictures.

  Then I saw something that angered me, low down on the left hand side of the gate. It was an inscription in the wedge-shaped characters of the Land, clear and unmistakable, saying, Utu-ragaba the great craftsman of Nippur built this gate for Zinuba king of kings, king of Hatamti.

  “Ah, the traitor!” I exclaimed. “Better that he had stayed in Nippur than to come here and render such excellent service to an Elamite lord.” And I lifted my axe to smash the face of the gate.

  But Enkidu caught my arm and stayed me. I looked about at him, frowning.

  “What is it?”

  His eyes were aglow. “The gat
e is very beautiful, Gilgamesh.”

  “So it is. But see, here, this writing? A man of my own nation constructed it for our enemies.”

  “That may be,” said Enkidu indifferently. “All the same, beauty is beauty, and ought not to be desecrated. Beauty comes from the gods, does it not? I think you should not shatter the gate. Step aside, brother, and let me force it instead. What does it matter if a traitor built it, so long as his work was righteously accomplished? The gods clearly guided his hand. Do you not see that?”

  It amazed me to hear him reason in this fashion; but I saw the wisdom in his words, which humbled me, and I yielded to him. I wish now that I had not. Enkidu stepped boldly forward and pushed the edge of his axe against the bolt, and thrust at the gate with all his strength, so that cords and sinews stood out all over his body. He grunted mightily under the strain and the gate swung open before him; but in that moment he cried out in a strange choking way and dropped his axe, and slapped his left hand to his right arm, which suddenly was dangling down as limp as a length of rope. He fell to his knees, moaning, desperately rubbing his arm.

  I knelt beside him. “What is it, friend? What has happened to you?”

  In a thick voice he muttered, “There must have been a demon in the gate. Look, I have hurt my arm! All strength is gone from my hand! It is torn within, Gilgamesh. It is ruined, it is useless. Come, see for yourself.” And indeed his hand was fearfully cold to the touch, and swung like a dead thing, and the skin looked strangely blotched and mottled. He was trembling as if some ague had come into him. I heard the chattering of his teeth.

  “Wine!” I called. “Bring wine for Enkidu!”

  The wine warmed him, and his shivering ceased; but his hand remained lame, though we heated it and rubbed it for hours. Indeed he did not begin to recover the use of it for many days, nor was it ever fully the same again. That was a sad thing, that such a hero as Enkidu should lose a part of his strength, especially when it had been for the sake of preserving something of beauty. What was worse, the fear of Huwawa returned to him when he injured himself, for he was convinced that the demon had put a curse on the gate; now he drew back, unwilling to pass through the gate that he himself had opened for us.