Gilgamesh the King

by Robert Silverberg

  But I held my seat. I had business in these islands with Ziusudra; I had come a long way to do what I had to do here; I could not leave just yet, no matter what responsibilities called me to Uruk. Or so it seemed to me just then. Perhaps I was wrong about that; quite certainly I was wrong about that. But I think it is just as well that I did as I did. Had I chosen at that moment to return to my city I would never have gained the most important wisdom that I possess.

  I slept not at all that night. Nor did I rest well in the days that followed. I thought of very little but the arrogance of Meskiagnunna, prancing about in Nippur’s sacred precincts as though he were its king. But I stayed in Dilmun. And on the fifth day, or perhaps it was the sixth, the boatman Sursunabu reappeared and said to me in his usual cheerless manner, “You are to come with me to the isle where Ziusudra dwells.”

  35

  THE ISLAND WAS LOW AND flat and sandy, and—unlike high-walled Dilmun—completely undefended. Anyone might have beached his boat there and walked straight into the house of Ziusudra. At least the island had no defenses of the conventional sort; but when Sursunabu pulled his little craft onto the shore I noticed that along the beach were three rows of small stone columns of the sort I had so wantonly smashed in my foolish anger. I asked him what those were and he said that they were Enlil’s tokens to Ziusudra, given at the time of the Flood. They protected the island from enemies: no one would dare trespass where such tokens were erected. Whenever Sursunabu journeyed to Dilmun or the mainland he always took some of them with him and set them up beside his boat to guard him. I felt even more ashamed then at the way I had scattered and broken those things like a wild bull mad with wrath. But evidently I had been forgiven, since Ziusudra was willing to have me come.

  I saw what seemed to be a temple near the center of the island, a long low building with white walls that were brilliant in the hot sunlight. The hairs rose upon the back of my neck as I looked toward it: it came to me that within that building, just a few hundred paces from me, must be the ancient Ziusudra, the survivor of the flood, he who had walked with Enki and Enlil so long ago. The air was still; a great silence prevailed here. There were twelve or fourteen lesser buildings about the main structure, and some little farm-plots. That was all. Sursunabu conducted me to one of the outbuildings, a small square house of a single room, entirely without furnishings, and left me there. “They will come for you,” he said.

  It is a time out of time, when one is on the island of Ziusudra. I cannot tell you how long I sat there alone, whether it was one day or three, or five.

  At first I was fretful and even angry. I thought of walking to the central house and searching the patriarch out; but I knew that that was absurd and would be damaging to my purposes. I paced my empty room, walking from corner to corner. I listened to the noise and buzzing of my own brain, that unceasing sputtering inner chatter. I peered at the sea, dazzling my eyes in the fiery track of sunlight that blazed across its breast. I thought of Meskiagnunna king of Ur and all that he was attempting to do. I thought of Inanna, who surely was scheming in Uruk against me. I thought of my son the babe Ur-lugal, and wondered if he would ever be king. I thought of this, I thought of that. The hours passed, and no one came to me. And gradually I felt the great silence of the place seeping into my soul: I was beginning to grow calm. It was a wonderful thing. The noise and buzzing within my mind subsided, though it did not entirely die away; and after a while I was as still within as everything was without. At that moment it did not matter to me what Meskiagnunna might be doing, or Inanna, or Ur-lugal. It did not matter if they left me sitting in this place twelve days, or twelve years, or twelve hundred. It was a time out of time. But then I passed beyond that wondrous calm, and grew angry again, and impatient. How long would I be left like this? Did they not know that I was Gilgamesh king of Uruk? Urgent business awaited me at home! Meskiagnunna, king of Ur—Inanna—the needs of my people—Meskiagnunna—the care of the canals—would I be home in time for the ceremony of the lighting of the pipe?—the pageant of the statue of An?—Meskiagnunna—Ziusudra—Inanna—ah, the babble, the chatter of the mind!

  And then at last they came for me, when I had made myself as frantic as a baited hound.

  There were two of them. First came a slender solemn girl with a dancer’s supple body, who I think could not have been more than fifteen or sixteen years old: she would have been pretty, if she smiled. She wore a simple robe of white cotton, and no ornament, and carried a staff of black wood carved with inscriptions of a mysterious kind. For a long moment she stood at the threshold of my door, regarding me in an unhurried way. Then she said, “If you are Gilgamesh of Uruk, come forth.”

  “I am Gilgamesh,” I said.

  Just outside, a tall fierce-eyed dark-skinned old man, all planes and angles, was waiting. He too wore a cotton robe and carried a black staff, and he looked as though the sun had baked all the flesh from his bones. I could not tell how old he was, but he seemed of great age, and a surge of wild excitement went through me. Trembling, I said, stammering, “Can it be true? Do I behold Ziusudra?”

  He laughed a little. “Hardly. But you will meet the Ziusudra at the proper time, Gilgamesh. I am the priest Lu-Ninmarka; this is Dabbatum. Come with us.”

  That was strange, what he had said: the Ziusudra. But I knew I ought not ask him to explain. They would offer me such explanations as they cared to when they cared to do it, and otherwise would offer me none at all. Of that I was sure.

  They led me to a house of fair size close by the main temple, where I was given a white robe like theirs, and a meal of lentils and figs. I scarcely touched it; I had not eaten in so long, I suppose, that my stomach had forgotten the meaning of hunger. While I was there others of that priesthood came and went in the house to take their midday meals, and they glanced at me only casually, without speaking. Many of them seemed very old, though all were sinewy, sturdy, full of vitality. After they ate they prayed at a low altar that bore no image, and went out to work in the fields. Which is what I did also when Lu-Ninmarka and Dabbatum were done with their meal; they beckoned to me and led me outside, and put me to toil.

  How good that felt, working on my knees under the hot sun! Perhaps they thought they were testing me, seeing whether a king would do the labor of a slave; but if that was so they did not understand that some kings take pleasure in the work of the hands. It was the season of planting barley. They had ploughed the land already in strips eight furrows wide, and they had dropped their seed two fingers deep. Now I came along behind the plough, clearing the field of clods, leveling the soil with my hands so that the barley when it sprouted would not have to struggle against hills or valleys. You may say it was a task that called for no great skill, and you would be right; nevertheless I had pleasure from it.

  Afterward I returned to the dining-house. Another old man—ancient, even, withered and parched—entered as I did, and once again my heart leaped at the sight of him: was this one at last the Ziusudra? But one of the others hailed him by the name of Hasidanum; he was simply one of the priests. This old man made a libation of oil and lit three lamps, and knelt over them for a time murmuring prayers in a voice too faint and feathery for me to hear. Then he sprinkled some of his oil on me. “It is to cleanse you,” the girl Dabbatum whispered at my side. “You have the pollution of the world still upon you.”

  For the evening meal it was lentils again and fruit and a porridge of onions and barley. We drank the milk of goats. They used no beer here, nor wine, and ate no meat. The work of the afternoon had awakened hunger in me, and also thirst, and I lamented the lack of meat and drink. But they did not use them; I did not taste them again until I had left the island.

  So it went for some days. I cannot say how many. It is a time out of time, on the island of the Ziusudra. I worked in the sun, I ate my simple meals, I watched the priests and priestesses at their devotions, I waited to see what would happen next. I think I ceased to care about Meskiagnunna, about Inanna, about Ur, about Nip
pur, about Uruk itself. That great calmness of the island returned to me, and this time it remained.

  Every second day they went to the main temple for their high rites and ceremonials. Since I was only a novice I could not take part in these, but they let me kneel beside them while they chanted their texts. The temple was a huge lofty-vaulted room devoid of all images, with a gleaming floor of black stone and a red ceiling of cedar timbers. When first I entered I expected the patriarch to be there, but he was not, which caused me sharp disappointment. But I taught myself to curb my impatience: I thought perhaps they would not admit me to the presence of the Ziusudra while I seemed too eager for his blessing.

  I listened to their rituals without at first understanding much of what was being said, since the language they used was a strangely old-fashioned one. It was plainly the language of the Land, but I think they must have been speaking it the way people spoke before the Flood. But after a while I saw how the words were fitted together and how they differed from the words we used today, and the meaning, or some of it, came clear to me. In these rituals they were telling the tale of the Flood; but what they told was nothing at all like the story I had heard so many times from the old harper Ur-kununna.

  It began with the anger of the gods, yes: displeasure over the noisy brawling slothful ways of mankind. And the gods sent rain, indeed, week upon week of it; the rivers rose, bursting their banks, spilling across the plain, ripping open the walls of the cities and falling like wolves upon the low-lying streets and houses. Throughout the Land the destruction was dreadful and the loss of life was great.

  But then the story began to diverge from the one I knew, as an unknown path splits from a well-traveled highway; and it led me to an unfamiliar place. I heard the name of Ziusudra, and listened close. And what I heard was this: “The wise and compassionate Enki came to Ziusudra king of Shuruppak, and said to him, ‘Stir yourself, O king, and put aside provisions and useful goods of all kinds, and take yourself and your people to the high ground; for the devastation will be great.’ Ziusudra did not falter, but hearkened at once: he put aside provisions, he put aside useful goods of all kinds, and he loaded them on the backs of his beasts of burden, and he and all his people went up into the hills, and there they remained as the flood waters raged in the lowlands. And they did not come down again until the storm had ceased.”

  What was this? Where was the great ship into which Ziusudra had loaded the people of his household, and the beasts of the field two by two? What about the voyage across the sea which had come to cover the face of the Land? And what of the dove he sent forth, and the swallow, and the raven? Fables and legends, and nothing more? Was such a thing possible? The tale they were telling here had none of those pretty things in it. It was a simple account: a bad rainy season, turbulent rivers, a shrewd king acting swiftly to mitigate the disaster for his city. The longer I listened, the more ordinary the story seemed. When he came down from the hills, Shuruppak and all the cities of the Land were in a bad way, choked with mud, stained by water. The farms had been swamped, crops and animals had been lost, the stores held in the granaries were ruined. There was famine in the land; but in Shuruppak it was not so bad as in other places because Ziusudra had taken care to escape the worst of the storm. That was all. No Land-engulfing sea, no ship of six decks, no dove, no swallow, no raven. I could not believe it. Such a simple story? It is not the way of priests to make stories simpler in the retelling. But what these priests were saying was that there had never been an all-destroying Flood, but only some heavy rains and some difficult times.

  And if that were so, what of the rest of the story, the coming of Enlil to speak with Ziusudra and his wife, the great god taking them by the hand and saying, “You have been mortal, but you are mortal no longer. Henceforth you shall be like gods, and live far away from mankind, at the mouth of the rivers, in the golden land of Dilmun”was that too a fable? And had I come halfway across the world for the sake of a mere fable? Ziusudra does not exist, the tavern-keeper Siduri had said. Was it so? How big a fool had I made of myself, in undertaking this quest? Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh, where are you running? You never will find this eternal life that you seek.

  Despair overcame me. I was lost in confusion and shame.

  It was then that the old priest Lu-Ninmarka rested his hand on my shoulder and said, “Rise, Gilgamesh, bathe yourself, put on a fresh robe. The Ziusudra wishes to see you this day.”

  When I had made my preparations he took me to the main temple. I found myself to be strangely calm; or perhaps it was not so strange. The spell of the island was upon me. We entered the great room of the cedar beams and black stone floor and went to its rear; Lu-Ninmarka touched his hand to a place in the wall and it swung back as though by sorcery, revealing a passage that curved away into darkness. “Come,” he said. He had neither a lamp nor a torch. We went forward, and at once I felt a damp clinging mist rising out of the earth, carrying a faint scent of salt. It is the water of the great abyss, I thought, that must climb the roots of the island and discharge itself into this tunnel. Lu-Ninmarka moved confidently in the darkness and I was hard pressed to keep up with him. I did not allow myself the ease of feeling my way with my hands, but walked steadfastly although I could see nothing. How far we went, how deep beneath the skin of the island, I cannot say. Perhaps we were only moving in circles, round and round the great central room following the coils of a vast maze. But after some long time we came to a halt in the darkness. Ahead of me I saw the faintest of amber gleams, as gentle and dim as the brief flickers of light which come from the glow-fires that sparkle in the summer night. Dim as it was, it startled my eyes; but a moment later I was able to see, after a fashion. I stood at the threshold of a small round room with earthen walls, illuminated by a single oil lamp mounted in a high sconce. Incense sputtered in a porphyry dish on the floor; and at the center of the room, sitting upright and straight on a wooden stool, was the oldest man I had ever seen. I had thought the priest Hasidanum was ancient; this one could easily have been Hasidanum’s father. I felt awe like a choking hand at my throat. I who had walked with gods and fought with demons was stunned at the sight of the Ziusudra.

  His face was like a mask: his eyes were white and sightless, his mouth was a dark empty slit. He was altogether without hair, devoid even of eyebrows. His cheeks were soft, his face was round. The other old men of this island had a gaunt, lean, sun-dried look about them, sharp edges everywhere; but the Ziusudra had passed beyond that gauntness and was smooth and pink and full-fleshed like a baby. His blind eyes were trained upon me. He smiled and said, in a voice that was deep and resonant, but hollow somewhere at the core, “At last you are here, Gilgamesh of Uruk. What a long time you were in coming!”

  I could not say a word. How could I speak to this man whose forehead had been touched by the hand of Enlil?

  “Sit. Kneel. You are too big; when you stand you rise like a wall before me.”

  I did not understand how he could know my stature, when he was unable to see: maybe his priests had told him, or possibly he felt the minute fluctuations of the currents of air in the passageway. Or perhaps he had the sight beyond sight; I did not know. That last was most likely. I knelt before him. He nodded and smiled a faraway smile. He put forth his hand to bless me, and touched it to my cheek. His touch had a sting; his fingertips were very cold. I thought they must be leaving white imprints on my skin.

  He said, “You draw back. Why?”

  I managed to reply, in a hoarse rusty whisper, “No reason, father.”

  “Do you fear me?”

  “No—no!”

  “But you have an aura of fear about you. They tell me you are the greatest of heroes, that your strength is without limit, that all men hail you as master. What is it that you fear, Gilgamesh?”

  I stared at him in silence. My overwhelming awe was ebbing, but still it was hard for me to speak; so I stared. He was still as stone except for the expressions of his face. I thought for a moment that he might i
ndeed be a statue, some ingenious construction worked by ropes by a priest hidden in the floor. After a time I said, “I fear that which every man must fear.”

  From very far away he asked, “And what is that?”

  “I had a friend, and he was my other self; he fell ill and died. The shadow of my own death falls upon me now. It darkens my life. I see nothing but that lengthening shadow, father. And it frightens me.”

  “Ah, then the hero is afraid of dying?”

  I could not tell if he was mocking me.

  “Not of dying,” I said. “Dying is only pain, and I know pain and do not fear him much. Pain ends. What I am afraid of is death. I am afraid of being cast down into the House of Dust and Darkness, where I will have to dwell for all eternity.”

  “And where you will no longer be a king, and drink rich wine from alabaster vessels? Where no one will sing of your glory, and you will lack for all comfort?”

  That was unfair. “No,” I said sharply. “Do you think comfort is so important to me, I who left my city of my free will to roam in the wilderness? Do you think I am in such great need of wine, or fine robes, or harpers to sing of my deeds? I like those things: who would not? But losing them is not what I fear.”

  “What do you fear, then?”

  “To lose myself. To live in that shadow-life that comes after life, when we are nothing but sad dusty empty things shuffling our wings in the dust. To cease to perceive; to cease to explore; to cease to journey; to cease to hope. All those things are Gilgamesh. There will be no more Gilgamesh, when I go to that dismal place. I have been on a quest all my life, father: I cannot bear that that quest will end.”