by Brian Godawa
“Let us get this thing cut up,” said Gilgamesh. “I have a surprise gift for when the goddess returns.”
• • • • •
The goddess Ishtar was planning a return to Uruk soon. But she had her own surprise that she was working on for Gilgamesh. She had learned certain imprisoning spells of enchantment from Enki back before the Flood. They had used them on Leviathan, the sea dragon by luring it into an undersea cavern with the spells written on the rock walls. When Leviathan became surrounded by the engraved spells, it became temporarily under the control of its captors. From there, they unleashed the sea monster upon the field of battle in the desert of Dudael. The devastation had been massive.
And now, Ishtar had found her way into a certain desert canyon where she could engrave those spells of enchantment on a gorge of steep walls. She had been focused on her task for a couple of days, and was almost done when she heard the sound of her intended quarry approaching her trap. A mighty roar bellowed through the canyon and echoed like thunder off the steep rock walls around her.
“Come to me, my monster of chaos,” she muttered. “I have need of your talent for destruction.”
Chapter 30
Ishtar returned to the city of Uruk a few days after her disappearance. But she did so without fanfare and late in the evening when no one was out to see her except for watch guards.
She approached her temple complex only to discover that her tree, her beautiful single Huluppu tree was, gone. Cut down. Ripped from the heart of the earth. Her Anzu bird flown away, her Ningishzida gone, and her Lilith disappeared.
Her guttural cry of affliction ripped through half the city.
It woke Gilgamesh. He grinned to himself. The ever present never slumbering Ninurta even gave a slight upturn of his lips.
Enkidu heard it as well, but he was not so pleased, because he knew that this would probably mean a personal war of vengeance between Ishtar and Gilgamesh and he did not like the prospects. Ishtar would not give up until she was victor. And she could not die, so it would be an unending war. Gilgamesh however, could die.
Ishtar entered her temple area to be slapped in her face with the sight of half her remodeled temple crushed to smithereens from the fallen timber. All the work she had commissioned was destroyed in an instant by the hand of that protected worm of a king.
We shall see who can do more damage to whose walls by the midnight hour of this evening, she thought.
As priest king of the city, he had complete jurisdiction over every structure, even the temple complexes of the gods. He could do whatever he wanted to her temple. But Ishtar had wagered that her bold move would put him in a precarious political position as her temple grandeur in Nippur had placed Enlil in a precarious political position before the Flood. Enlil was at the top of the pantheon and Nippur was his patronized city, yet even he avoided the potential public relations damage of a quarrel with Inanna over her excessive temple enhancement. As a result she usurped his power in the city.
But Gilgamesh is not so politically astute, she thought. She had counted on his self interest, that he would seek to avoid doing anything that would reinforce the tyrannical reputation he was trying to overcome, and thus enable her to slowly encroach upon his authority.
She had figured wrong. He was asserting his territorial claims over her and he damned the consequences.
She could crush him like a frog, were it not for his personal bodyguard, that bilious overgrown brute, Ninurta, and for the oath of the pantheon not to transgress the narrative of the mythology they established. Well, oaths were always eventually broken. It was just a matter of time, and a matter of the right moment.
When she walked through the courtyard, it was full of servants and votaries playing a sport with wooden instruments called a pukku and mikku. Their fun annoyed her. She screamed, “Get out of here with your toys! This is my temple!” The servants scrambled and she continued on, wondering when they had started wasting their time in such ways.
When she stepped into her throne room, she received added insult to her injury when she saw the display of a newly carved wooden throne replacing her old one. On it was a letter sealed with the king’s own seal.
She opened it. It read, Dearest Inanna Ishtar. The bravado of this meat sack fed her rage. Accidentally writing her old name and then crossing it out as if he forgot she had changed her name.
Please accept my apologies for the minor demolition and inadvertent inconvenience I may have caused your remodeling with the downing of the Huluppu tree. It was an impediment to the architectural and structural integrity of the great city-state of Uruk. I would have preferred to tell you this personally, but you had been vacant from the city. Please accept these tokens of my appreciation of your patronage of my city.
Tokens, plural? She thought. What other object of spite did he create to vex me?
The letter concluded, I had them expertly carved out of the wood of the Huluppu tree for your nostalgic remembrance, and included the pukku and mikku instruments for the sporting pleasure of your servants.
She crumpled the paper in her fist and burned with malevolence, for the sporting pleasure of my servants? I will send those players with their instruments into Sheol.
She walked through her palace area to find the final offending object. When she got to her chambers, she saw it. The queenly bed of her intimate quarters had been replaced by a carved wooden one. This was an obvious attack on her sexual status and offer of marriage to Gilgamesh. She burst out in a fit of rage and cracked the bed into pieces. It was a good thing there were no servants or hierodules around her at the moment, because they would have lost their lives under her wrath.
She dragged her bed out of her chambers and down into the throne room where she set it on fire along with her wooden throne. She procured some of the diviners to add incense and incantations to the flames. It would be a homing beacon for her revenge.
She whispered to the earth and sky, “Gilgamesh, you will regret the day you disrespected my name.”
She was not going to wait for the midnight hour after all. She wanted her revenge and she wanted it now.
A mighty bellowing roar was heard throughout the land, and shuttered through the dark streets of Uruk. Something immense and very wicked was descending upon the city.
Chapter 31
Gilgamesh and Enkidu awoke simultaneously in their separate bed chambers in the palace. In mere minutes, Enkidu was suited up in armor and arrived at Gilgamesh’s door.
As he was about to knock, the door opened to Gilgamesh, armored and ready to go meet their approaching nemesis. They heard the war horns of the city in the background. The army was mustering.
“You are late,” said Enkidu.
“Excuse me,” said Gilgamesh gesturing to his armor. “I am as ready as you are.”
“But I made it all the way to your room before you even opened the door,” said Enkidu.
Gilgamesh thought quickly, “The king does not assist his servants. His servants assist him.” Got him, thought Gilgamesh.
“Would you prefer I help you with your armor next time, sire?” asked Enkidu with a touch of playful condescension.
Gilgamesh could not help but smile at his companion’s affectionate humor. But they had serious business to attend to.
“I will grant you a merit of honor before the entire city for punctuality and for being the first to gird your loins. But first, we have a city to protect, so shut up and let us get moving.”
Enkidu smiled and they bolted for the city gates.
The army of fifteen thousand strong was gathering before the gates in anticipation of commands from their king. When the city itself was under attack like this, an additional five thousand able bodied younger men and elderly joined the ranks as reserve support.
Gilgamesh ascended the rampart of the seven fold gate. No adversary, be they army or monster, would dare assault the impenetrable seven fold gates of Uruk. It was sure failure — and death.
Ninsun
was there to support her son, but he sent her away to the protection of the temple of Enki to offer a sacrifice on his behalf.
Gilgamesh and Enkidu looked out into the night surrounding the city. They could see nothing but blackness, but they heard the thundering footsteps of a gargantuan approaching their walls.
The mighty roar of this unseen titanic colossus resounded again. Enkidu could swear he felt the walls themselves tremble. Even Ninurta was alarmed. He stepped a protective foot closer toward Gilgamesh.
Night guards were lighting big torches along the city walls that cast an eerie orange glow for hundreds of feet out. But nothing could be seen yet.
Enkidu turned and was jolted by the presence of Ishtar beside them. They had not heard her approach. She often liked appearing phantom-like to enhance her mystery.
“What is this intrusion that disturbs my slumber?” asked Ishtar.
Gilgamesh had been staring at the plume of black smoke that seemed to rise from the Eanna complex like a writhing hypnotic cobra. He turned to Ishtar.
“Actually, I thought you might know, goddess,” said Gilgamesh.
Ishtar glanced at the smoke and returned the biting sarcasm of his letter with her own false remorse, “It pains me greatly to report that your wonderful gifts of wooden throne and bed accidentally caught on fire in the temple. I might have saved them, had I not been distracted.”
Another mountainous roar echoed across the walls. It was closer. Many of the warriors of Uruk soiled their kilts when they heard the sound. They were used to war, but this was something else. Something much worse.
“But now that I hear it,” said Ishtar, “I do believe I have a faint recollection of such a creature in the past.” She pretended to continue searching her memory.
Another thunderous roar ripped the air. And Ishtar’s eyes went wide with recognition.
“Ah yes,” she said. “Now I remember that sound. It was before the Flood. It was a creature I had assumed was dead, but obviously its amphibious nature saved it.”
“Well, what is it?” asked Enkidu impatiently.
“It sounds like the Bull of Heaven,” said Ishtar.
Gilgamesh and Enkidu glanced at one another with anxiety. They had heard of this mythical creature of chaos. But they would no longer need to rely on legends and folklore because the real thing just broke out of the darkness and approached the walls of Uruk.
It was immense. And black. Which explained why it was impossible to see in the darkness. But now in the torchlight, they could get a glimpse of its mammoth features. It walked on all fours, but appeared to be able to stand on its hind legs. Almost as tall as the walls, it had a bullish looking head with horns and a huge misshapen hump on its back, covered with stony irregular armor plates. It was an ugly denizen of darkness.
Ishtar let out a sarcastic tinge, “Oh my. That one is immense. I guess you have finally found your peer, Gilgamesh. ‘The Mighty Bull on the Rampage’ of Uruk versus the Bull of Heaven. It is positively mythological.”
Enkidu corrected her. “It is ‘Wild Bull on the Rampage,’ not ‘mighty bull on the rampage.’” He was hoping for some verbal victory out of this losing battle.
“Thank you, Wild Born,” said Ishtar. “We must get Sinleqiunninni up here. He cannot miss this opportunity to verify your accuracy and enhance his storytelling tablets.”
Gilgamesh knew she sent this monstrosity somehow, but he also knew he could never prove it if she was too devious to admit it. He knew that nothing she did was cowardly, so this was definitely some kind of secret scheme on her part. But now was not the time for court intrigue. They had a Bull of Heaven to kill.
However, before he could make his command, Gilgamesh and Enkidu were thrown off their feet by the fierce shaking of the wall. The Bull had rammed the wall a hundred feet down from the gate. The walls of Uruk were strong, but the Bull was stronger and a significant part of the wall crumbled before its pounding force. Its horns were stuck in the bricks, so it shook its head and jostled until they came loose, further weakening the wall’s integrity.
Down in the streets of Uruk, citizens were screaming and running for their lives to get as far away from that wall as possible.
The Bull reared back, and rammed again. Another part of the wall crumbled apart. It was holding well considering the humongous heavyweight attacking the structure. But it would not hold up forever. The beast snorted and roared again.
Gilgamesh yelled to his men below, “Open the gates! Attack the Bull in two flanks of a hundred apiece!”
The commanders of hundreds heard their command and led the men through each of the seven gates that were rapidly drawn for passage.
Enkidu interrupted, “ My lord, the Bull is favoring one side. I believe it is blind in one eye.”
Gilgamesh looked closely. His Nephilim eyes could see with clarity the scarred over eye at the distance. “By Enlil, you are right, Enkidu!”
Ishtar winced with anger. They had spotted the monster’s weakness before she had hoped. It was indeed blind in one eye. Before the Flood, this Bull of Heaven was known as Behemoth. It used to guard a secret location in the east that was first inhabited by the wolf clan of Cain and then by Noah ben Lamech’s tribe. Behemoth lost its eye when it had the unfortunate experience of killing the wife of Methuselah ben Enoch. Methuselah had launched his javelin with expert precision and marked the beast for future execution. But the execution never came because Methuselah had redeemed his revenge into advantage in the War of Gods and Men. Methuselah had a contingent of archangels help him to tether Behemoth and release it on the battlefield to counter Leviathan, the secret weapon that the gods had released from the water to wreak its destruction. But the desired confrontation never occurred because the waters of the Deluge swept the plain clean before it could happen. Behemoth, with its semi-aquatic nature was able to stay alive during the Flood.
Gilgamesh blurted, “Let us kill this blind brute!”
Gilgamesh started for the Bull, but was stopped by Ninurta. “King, this will not go well for you. Let your army do their work.”
Gilgamesh looked down on his men as they flooded out onto the plain in units of hundreds and approached the Bull of Heaven.
He looked to Enkidu who merely gripped his axe tighter awaiting his orders. Gilgamesh turned back to see how his men would do.
The first two flanks of a hundred men each trumpeted their war cry and attacked the monster with shields up and spears out.
The Bull turned its good eye toward them at the sound, and stomped its front foot, ready for blood. That was when Gilgamesh and Enkidu saw that it had a third rear leg giving it extra trampling capability, and added push each time it banged its head against something. This miscreant was diabolically ugly from hind to hump and a perfect incarnation of the chaos that it wrought.
As the soldiers got within range, the Bull of Heaven lowered his head and charged.
It was pitiful. The forces did not stand a chance. They were like a blanket of red laid out for the Bull to make its rampage precise. It scooped through the forces and trampled them to death.
A side flank of a hundred men used their chance to launch their spears at the beast from the side.
But its hide was full of bulbous calloused armor. Most of the spears simply bounced off its skin. The few that stuck in between plates merely added to the Bull’s rage. It turned and, using its head again, swiped away another hundred soldiers, crushing them or casting them to their deaths.
The other soldiers backed down. They were too frightened to run swift footed to their deaths.
Up above on the rampart, nobody could see the slight uptick of Ishtar’s lips as she watched the devastation she had called down upon Uruk and Gilgamesh.
Gilgamesh said to Enkidu, “They do not stand a chance. They are like an army of ants easily stomped on.”
Enkidu was watching it all with an Anzu eye. “Yes, but a single ant or two is hard to catch with one eye and clumsy feet.”
Gilgamesh glance
d at Enkidu, wondering what he meant.
But before he could figure it out, Enkidu strapped his axe on his back and barked, “I have an idea! If I can get behind him, you take the head!”
Before Gilgamesh could stop him, Enkidu was already running down the rampart to meet the Bull at the top of the wall.
Because the flanks of soldiers had balked, the Bull turned again to its goal of shredding the wall. One or more hits and it would run rampant through the city of Uruk, trampling homes and people to dust. Gilgamesh had figured the smoke of Ishtar’s fire was some kind of homing beacon.
As Enkidu approached the ledge, the Bull hit the walls again with its horns. Enkidu timed it right and jumped into the air as the Bull hit, so he would not fall victim to the tumult that shook the wall. He landed as the Bull was trying to extricate its horns from the brick rubble. He looked down and saw its gouged out eye socket blinded to his presence.
Enkidu looked down on the wall. The top third had crumbled away. One more hit and the Bull would be inside the city.
But then he saw the Bull raise its head to get a better sight of its damage. It was right up to the level of Enkidu. It snorted and Enkidu was blasted with a ghastly odor and a splash of nasal slime and foam that turned his stomach.
“Disgusting,” he muttered. But the Bull had still not seen him.
So he launched himself onto the head of the beast and grabbed its horn in a vise grip, bellowing “HO, HURRAH!” like a joyous stallion buster.
Now, the Bull knew of Enkidu’s presence. And it was infuriated at the annoying little flea that just jumped on it and screeched in its ear. It snapped its head backward trying to fling the little thing off its horns.
But that is exactly what Enkidu expected. He released and went flying in the air to the rear of the animal — right to its descending tail that was like a huge cedar tree. He caught it and lost his breath in the impact, but he held on.
Gilgamesh was already running toward the ledge. He and Enkidu could think like one when it came to battle. They did not even need to verbalize their strategy. Ninurta was paces behind him by the time Gilgamesh launched off the ledge onto the Bull’s head. He caught a horn and held on for dear life as the monster jerked and swished its head.
