Gilgamesh Immortal (Chronicles of the Nephilim) (20 page)

The funeral of Enkidu was an
elaborate affair. Gilgamesh cut his hair and cleaned himself up to oversee the administration of the ceremony. His madness was over.

He
wanted to give Enkidu the honor of a king. As his adopted brother, he had the legal right to it, but as a mighty warrior and peer of Gilgamesh, he deserved it.

Gilgamesh called together a blacksmith, a goldsmith, a
nd a lapidary jeweler to craft a golden statue of Enkidu with a beard of lapis lazuli and gem laden skin of gold. Black obsidian, red carnelian, and white alabaster were incorporated into this image of his friend like none other.

Then Gilgamesh slaughtered a herd of fatted cattle and sheep and piled them high
in the open before the temple of Ishtar on behalf of his friend.

The processional of slaves carried the body in its sarcophagus on a portable throne with carrying poles.
Behind them followed gifts that Gilgamesh had prepared to lay in Enkidu’s tomb for the underworld: A chair and staff of lapis lazuli, jewelry of silver and gold, an obsidian knife with sharpening stone, his mighty battle axe, and a table of precious wood laid out with carnelian bowls of honey, lapis bowls of butter and flasks of oil. Gilgamesh thought to himself that these accessories were of no help to the dead, but only served to comfort the living in their delusion of hope. But even that, he told himself, was something if it would help ease his grief.

They walked the processional way, performed services in the temple of Shamash, and buried the body in a palace family tomb.
Gilgamesh noted the irony that Shamhat was the first to leave the crypt. Gilgamesh, with Ninurta his newly returned shadow, was the last to leave, but his mourning was over. Enkidu was dead, and with him, friendship, love, and hope.

But
Gilgamesh was alive.

• • • • •

Ishtar
stormed through her temple, flinging servants and prostitutes out of her way like rag dolls. When she crashed out of her palace doors, she hit them with such force that they ripped off their hinges with shattering splinters. One of the flying doors crushed a guard to death.

But Ishtar
did not even stop to notice. She was infuriated and concentrating on finding that despicable tramp, the Queen Mother.

She had been trying a new outfit on when the
sleazy courtier alerted her to intelligence he gathered from the royal palace. As she marched through the street, she thought her long flowing silk robe behind her was a nice touch. It enhanced the ethereal majesty she was after in her wardrobe. Her skin had been colored white with black lips and eye shadow, the pallor of the undead. She painted high arching eyebrows to amplify her facial expression. She had a large neck ruff embroidered with golden thread that circled her head and framed her face like a work of art. She was a work of art. And this particular theme was virginal so it was all white. She loved to create irony and was particularly aroused by the image in her mind’s eye of a virginal queen’s white purity awash in the blood and gore of slaughter.

She entered the temple of Shamash and st
omped her way to the rooftop where she found Ninsun engaged in offerings to Shamash.

“Where is he,
Cow?!” she yelled.

Ninsun
looked at her fearfully. Ishtar sensed a presence and turned to see the quiet muscular figure of Ninurta standing in the shadow of the pillars. And in that instant, she knew Gilgamesh was gone. He had left the city. But where and why?

“
I thought I smelled excrement,” said Ishtar. “Ninurta, you really must stop hiding in the shadows like a cockroach. Unless of course — you want to
be
a cockroach, in which case I am sure my sorcerers could help you out with some incantations and magic potions.”

Ninurta
stepped out silently into the light. He strode toward Ishtar.

So this was
it. He was finally going to challenge her in a duel of power. Ishtar tightened with readiness and a slight grin. This upstart may be a mighty warrior, but he had nowhere near the experience of Ishtar. She had cut through a myriad of warriors and tread through oceans of blood to get to her position as the fiery goddess of war. She had an uncontrollable temper, but when it came to battle, she was an invincible champion of technique, precision, and skill. In the assembly of the gods, she was uncontested.

Just try me
scrapper
, she thought.
Give me the excuse.

But
Ninurta was not challenging her. He walked right past her, their eyes and clenched teeth following each other like serpents ready to strike. He walked up to and stood beside Ninsun.

I will have my day, blowhard
, mused Ninurta.
And then you will know wrath. But my day is not yet here.

“I see,” said Ishtar. “The
calf of Uruk is gone on a secret mission, so guard the cow.”

Ninurta
did not speak. His power was his silence. Words were wasted on enemies. Silence maintained advantage.

Instead, Ninsun responded, “
Gilgamesh is on a clandestine quest of utmost importance and secrecy. He will reveal his undertaking and purpose upon his return.”

“How formal
and proper of you,” hissed Ishtar. But then she stopped and brightened with realization.

“You told him,
did you not?” said Ishtar.

Ninsun would n
ot say. But she did not have to. This little imposter outwitted her and told Gilgamesh before Ishtar could force her.

“You did.
You told Gilgamesh about his lineage.”

Ninsun gave a nervous glance at
Ninurta who remained as inexpressive as a stone statue.

Ishtar added slyly,
“And about your façade of deity?”

Ninsun had already been so completely humiliated by Ishtar in he
r own city and temple that this was mere redundancy.

Ishtar
announced with sarcastic melodrama, “And now he has gone on a journey to seek the Land of the Living in search of his ancestry and eternal life.” It was too easy for her to figure that one out.

Ishtar approached Ninsun. Her extravagant robe dragged on the floor giving
her the appearance of floating in the air.

Ninurta
placed his hand on his sword hilt.

“Stay your
nervous hand and sweaty loins, guard dog,” said Ishtar. “I am not in the mood.”

But
Ninurta stepped closer, his face an impenetrable wall of stone, his sword arm a steel trap ready to spring.

Ishtar leaned close enough to whisper to Ninsun
with a triumphant grin. “Your orphan amputee is in for a big surprise.”

Ninsun did not understand what Ishtar meant. What kind of surprise? Was it all a lie? Was he walking into a trap? But Ninsun was afraid to betray her fear.

She tried to act casual in her concern, “What are you talking about, ‘surprise’?”

Ishtar stepped back and laughed. “Why
do you not ask your dog?” Ninsun looked to Ninurta. He was not going to speak.

Ishtar leaned back in.
Ninurta followed with readiness. Ishtar hissed, “You are safe now, Lady Cow. But I have no more use for you. And the day will come when you will no longer be protected, and I will gut you.”

Ninsun
gulped and felt nauseous.

Ishtar
thought for a moment and added with a chuckle, “With orgasmic pleasure.”

She
turned and walked away with the swagger of a harlot, her robe train following behind her like a long flowing cape. At the entrance pillar, she stopped for one glance back at Ninurta and whispered too softly to hear, “You and I will dance later, big boy.”

But with
their preternatural hearing, the gods could pick out the softest of sounds at a great distance. Ishtar’s whisper did not go unheard.

Gilgamesh had left before the dawn with only a dirk in his belt and the clothes on his back. He was on a long perilous journey, but was going to need all his strength and the lightest load he could carry for the feat before him. It was the mightiest of all his accomplishments because it was a contest with his largest nemesis yet. He was going to outrun the sun.

Ninsun had told him of the legends of
Dilmun, the Land of the Living, that resided where the sun rises at the mouth of the rivers. The mouth of the rivers in Sumer was the Southern Sea that drank the Tigris and Euphrates and opened up into seas that circled the earth. The poetic reference to the sun rising was a way of saying a place of dawning glory faraway.

It was
a magical island considered an abode of the blessed, where Noah ben Lamech and his wife had retreated to live out their immortality awarded by the gods. It was described as an Edenic paradise. Some thought it was the original Eden.

Gilgamesh had read of this Land of the Living where the sweet waters came up and mixed with the bitter waters of the ocean. It was written that
in Dilmun, “the croak of the raven was not heard, the bird of death did not utter the cry of death, the lion did not devour, the wolf did not rend the lamb, the dove did not mourn, there was no widow, no sickness, no old age, no lamentation.”

Gilgamesh had wondered if
this was the Garden of Edin of Sumerian myth, where the gods bestowed eternal life to all who lived there. He could not know that the original Eden had been completely covered over in lava up in the Ararat mountain range. He was ready to sacrifice everything to find his great grandfather and obtain the immortality that alone could quench his thirst.

Ninsun had explained that the only way to find Noah was to find his boatman Urshanabi
who could take him to Noah across the Waters of Death. But Urshanabi could only be found by traversing “the Path of the Sun,” a long underground passageway beneath the earth that began at the twin mountain peaks of Mashu, and passed through a pitch black subterranean tunnel of Sheol. The dead could not escape Sheol, but if a living one like Gilgamesh could follow the pathway without wavering to the right or to the left, and he could do so before the sun could complete one revolution around the earth, he would safely arrive near the location of Urshanabi’s boat crossing.

Gi
lgamesh chuckled to himself. He remembered how Sinleqiunninni, his scholar sage and librarian, had gone off on another long jackal trail when describing to him the fabled Path of the Sun. “Actually,” the scholar had said, using one of his trademark sentence openers that was an indication he was about to correct someone again, “the Path of the Sun is not technically the
real
path of Shamash under the earth. You see, commoners in their ignorance lack nuance in their reasoning and simply think that it is the ‘literal’ path of the sun. But as a wisdom sage, I can tell you that the assured results of elite scholarship know that the sun travels around the solid firmament above and sets in the West, where it circles beneath the earth through its Underworld tunnel Eastward, where it rises behind the far mountains at the edge of the world. But the Path of the Sun that you are taking begins at the twin peaks of Mount Mashu within traveling distance to the east of Uruk, not the far edge of the world. Secondly, Mount Mashu is said to guard the rising of the sun, but in point of fact, if you begin your run where the sun rises, then you will be running against the sun’s circuit toward the west and will only have twelve hours before the sun sets and meets you in the beginning of its tunnel beneath the earth. Additionally, you are traveling westward which is in the opposite direction of the magical land of Dilmun which lies eastward in the South Sea. Therefore the fact that you have twenty-four hours to run your course
and
the actual tunnel does not match the true path of the sun, obviously implies that ‘Path of the Sun’ is a poetic metaphor that is lost on uneducated and ignorant literalists who…”

“Sinleqi
!” interrupted Gilgamesh with impatience, “Shut up, will you? I got the point.”

Sinleqiunnin
ni stopped with a gasp. Gilgamesh wondered if the scholar had even taken a breath during that entire monologue.

Gilgamesh summarized, “
I am passing through a pitch black tunnel in Sheol, and I have twenty-four hours to make it or else.”

Gilgamesh realized he was not done.
“Which leads to my next question. And please try to answer only what I ask in as few words as possible.”

“
Yes, my lord,” replied Sinleqiunninni.

“
What happens if I do not make it?” asked Gilgamesh. “Will the shades attack me? Just ‘yes’ or ‘no.’”

“But my lord,” said the scholar.

“Just yes or no,” insisted the king.

“Yes
and
no,” said Sinleqiunninni.

Gilgamesh sighed with a frustrated
roll of his eyes.

Sinleqiunni
nni blurted as quickly as he could, “No, they will not attack you if you do not stray into their crevices at the tunnel’s edges. Yes, they will eat you if you do.”

Gilgamesh stopped and gave his scholar a smile.

“See, now that was not too hard was it? Well done, scholar.”

“
However,” Sinleqiunninni tried to add.

“Ah ah ah
ah ah,” said Gilgamesh with his finger in the air to stop him.

The scholar obeyed and
gulped his words.

And Gilgamesh gulped at ho
w hard his task was going to be without getting eaten alive.

• • • • •

By the time Gilgamesh made it to Mount Mashu, he discovered the one last thing he should have let his long-winded scholar tell him: The gateway to the Path of the Sun was guarded by Scorpion people.