Gilgamesh Immortal (Chronicles of the Nephilim) (28 page)

The next morning Ishtar arrived in the throne room to a seated Gilgamesh and his ever-present bodyguard Ninurta, holding a mighty battle axe that looked like something out of the pit of Death — because it was from the pit of Death.

Ninurta
’s eyes followed Ishtar’s every movement as she approached the throne.

Ishtar noticed Shamhat standing where the king’s Right Hand normally stood. Evidently, Gilgamesh was honoring the memory of her dead husband by granting her station.
She was adorned in an ambitiously ornamented dress reminiscent of her harlotry days. She was flaunting.

Ishtar was wearing
what could only be considered warrior garb of battle skirt, sandals, shield and dagger, axe, and sword on her belt. She took off the gilded gold helmet and looked Ninurta up and down with disdain.

She spoke first to
Ninurta, a counter insult to Gilgamesh. “Greetings, majestic Lord of Turnips.”

Ninurta
’s jaw clenched. She used a different humiliating epithet each time, as if he had no true title. Of all the outrageous extremes of her behavior toward him, it was ironic that this simple verbal mockery was the one thing that got under his skin like no other.

And she knew it. It delighted her to no end.

She turned to Gilgamesh and said, “King Gilgamesh, may we place behind us all petty offenses of the past. Welcome home, Scion of Uruk, Snorting Bull on the Rampage.”

The verbal jab at Gilgamesh did not work as it did with
Ninurta or Enkidu before him. It was Wild Bull on the Rampage, not “Snorting Bull.” But Gilgamesh took it in stride and chuckled as if at a joke.

“Is there a war somewhere I ought to be aware of?” asked Gi
lgamesh with a touch of sarcasm.

“No,” said Ishtar. “
I am just feeling a bit — feisty this morning.”

“Well,
I called you here for a reason,” said Gilgamesh.

Ishtar
gestured to Shamhat and replied, “Judging by your escort’s hasty replacement of mourning clothes with festive apparel, I would guess your intent was celebratory.”

Shamhat narrowed her eyes at the insult toward her
.

Gilgamesh said, “
Ninurta and I will be leaving Uruk for good.”

Ishtar’s eyebrows raised with curiosity.
“Oh?”

Gilgamesh said,
“You may have the city to yourself. Choose a puppet king and do whatever perverted manipulations you want with him.”

Ishtar said,
“Where may I ask are you and the Prince of Pumpkins going?” A snarl escaped Ninurta’s lips.

“North,” said Gilgamesh.

She stared at him. He was not going to reveal much. And she could see in his eyes a dark resolve she had never seen before.

“I take it your journey to find yourself
some immortality did not end with satisfaction.”

“I know what I must do, now,” he said. “I
know my destiny.”

Now it was her turn to surprise him.

“Well, I do not want Uruk,” she said. “Its days are over. It is rotting flesh on a Sumerian carcass. It is not the future, and you know it. Do not treat me like a fool, Gilgamesh, I could crush you in an instant.”

Ninurta
gripped his blade and stepped forward.

“
Slow down there, Mighty Chickpea,” she said, raising her hand. He growled. She mewed back like a cat.

She
turned back to Gilgamesh. “I have a counter offer for you instead.”

Gilgamesh
looked at her. He did not expect it would go easy. He knew he would have to negotiate. This goddess was cunning.

“
I am listening.”

She smirked and said, “
I happen to know that you are gathering all the offspring you have sired through your sexual exploits of
jus
prima
noctis
in your naughty boy years.”

Gilgamesh glanced guiltily at
Ninurta.

Ishtar said,
“You are not the only one with palace spies, after all.”

It was true. Gilgamesh had secretly sent a security force of soldiers to go throughout the city and
claim royal prerogative over his illegitimate children. Most of them were adults by now, and they were giants as well. They were
Elioud
, also called
Elyo
, the second generation of giants breeding with normal humans. Many were already warriors.

Ishtar continued to dig, “
You are amassing armed forces to take with you, leaving Uruk the husk of protection with its mighty walls as its only defense. I do not know what the assembly of the gods has commissioned you to do, but I know it is something big, something very big. Now, despite the confidence and bravado of Lord Lettuce Head here, you know full well that I am about the only one in heaven and earth who can become a thorn in the side of your ambition.”

Gilgamesh’s teeth clenched. She was right. She alone
could be the fly in his ointment if she but chose to be. And he knew she had already chosen.

She continued with a sense of glee, “
Let us face it, you know that I am very talented at chaos and destruction. I
am
the goddess of war after all. So the sole pursuit of my every waking moment would therefore be the overthrow of your designs, however grandiose they may be. And why not? Can you blame me? What else is there for me to live for?”

“So what do you want
in order to leave me be?” asked Gilgamesh. He knew she was far too sophisticated for mere threat. She was not threatening him, she was persuading him by building the logic to her counteroffer. And if he knew the inevitable, he would be more able to negotiate realistically.

“I want
my own city,” said Ishtar. “You are no doubt going north to build a new kingdom. If you build me a city further north of yours, then I will have the power I wish to thrive in, and I promise not to interfere in yours. In fact, I will represent your interests in the northern regions and you can consolidate your power over the whole of Mesopotamia, south
and
north.”

Then she added a finishing touch
of wit, “We would be pals. Allies, if you prefer.”

Gilgamesh considered her offer.

Ninurta leaned in and whispered some advice. He did not trust this dragon one bit. He knew her schemes and devices. He knew what she really wanted.

Gilgamesh shook his head
to Ninurta. He really had no other choice. Ishtar would surely engage in unending terrorism to foil the plans of the assembly, to foil his plans. He was going to build several cities up north anyway. Each of them needed a patron deity. So it was not all that much of a sacrifice on his part to give her one of them for her own little fiefdom. He wondered what she was not telling him. What nefarious double cross she may be scheming over, what small wording she might place at the bottom of the covenant that he could not read. It was never so simple with Ishtar. There were always hidden agendas and ulterior motives and unintended consequences. She could not be trusted.

But he had no other choice.
She would thwart his plans before he could build his forces strong enough to defy her.

“Accepted,” said Gilgamesh.

She brightened. Ninurta sighed.

But then he added, “On one condition.”

Her eyes narrowed. She knew this king would not be so easily outmaneuvered.

“That you preside over my funeral,” said Gilgamesh.

The funeral of Gilgamesh was extravagant.
Citizens packed the Processional Way, weeping and tearing their clothes and throwing dust over their heads. The funeral procession was led by Ishtar dressed up in her funerary best, a black costume of leather and satin with flowing robe and horned headdress of deity. She painted her face death white with black lipstick and heavy black eyeliner. She felt ravishingly dead as she led the procession out of the city toward their destination down to the Euphrates River bed.

Behind Ishtar was
a large empty golden chariot drawn by four stallions. Next, a small band of minstrel singers playing a dirge on their instruments and singing with a low chant like sorrow.

Then came
a portable throne bearing Gilgamesh’s ten-foot long sarcophagus, carried on poles by dozens of slaves. It was inlaid with gold and carnelian and lapis lazuli.

Then
came a long line of the mostly female palace servants richly adorned with gold and silver jewelry and wreaths of gold leaves, carrying small cups in their hands. They included the cup bearer, the barber, the gardener and other palace retainers, grooms and musicians. Lastly, a series of oxen drawing carts of wealth and goods for Gilgamesh to take with him into the afterlife.

Gilgamesh sat above the sevenfold gate of the city watching the
funeral train parade below through the gates out into the plains. He had exhumed Enkidu’s body from his tomb and arrayed his decayed corpse with garments fit for a dead king, including the golden family amulet that Enkidu treasured as his birthright. Enkidu’s body was placed into the sarcophagus intended for Gilgamesh. He had concluded that this was the perfect substitution. Enkidu could be king and experience all the pomp and circumstance he deserved as a great man, the adopted son of Lady Wild Cow Ninsun, high priestess of Shamash, whose sarcophagus followed behind Gilgamesh’s on a more humble funerary cart.

Gilgamesh had taken some time alone with
Enkidu’s corpse during the preparation period. He looked close into the sunken sockets of Enkidu’s skull, saturated with spices and herbs to preserve the flesh for its destination. He knew Enkidu’s destination was not an afterlife. His destination was the grave. All the journeys and all the quests he had shared with this great warrior of the steppe were now distant memories that had faded in his mind. He was no longer that man. He had faced the future and he had changed. He was not burying his friend for the afterlife, he was burying his past along with any shred of mercy, friendship, and compassion that he once toyed with. This would be the last bit of sentiment that he would allow to endanger his position of power ever again.

The funeral procession approached the tomb out by the river. Gilgamesh had a workforce of laborers temporarily divert the Euphrates so that they could build his stone tomb below the riverbed itself. It would be a way of discouraging tomb raiders as well as symbolically uniting him with the great river that, along with the mighty Tigris, fed the life of the Fertile Crescent for millennia past, and would continue to do so for millennia to come.

The entire population of Uruk had followed the parade out to the tomb and gathered around for the mourning ceremonies.
Thousands filled the plains with rapt attention as the entire funerary procession marched into the mammoth tomb and down a long sloping passageway. Inside the stone crypt they took various compartments as their residence. Even the oxen and their carts had a large room for sequestering.

Copper helmeted guards stood by the inside doors.
The retinue of over one hundred royal servants gathered around the sarcophagus of their king and the tomb was sealed. They drank poison from their carried little cups. They laid down in an orderly fashion and fell asleep, never to waken. They would enter the afterlife with their king — rather, who they thought was their king.

The oxen were given the poison to drink as well and the room of gathered wealth was sealed forever into the earth.

Up above the tomb, Ishtar presided over the ceremonies along with Gilgamesh’s successor, one of his royal sons, Ur-Nungal, who would rebuild the Urukean armed forces to maintain rule over the southern region, including Uruk, Ur, Eridu, Larsa, and others.

The ceremony bored Ishtar to death. It was all so much wasted ritual for her.
She wanted to get on with her kingdom building. Her duties here were now done, so she left the mourning ceremonies behind her to meet with Gilgamesh high upon the city walls.

As the mourning for Gilgamesh continued out by the river, Gilgamesh oversaw a contingent of several thousand soldiers leave the city to march north up the river. He stood on the parapet of the city gates, Ninurta to his right and Ishtar to his left. They watched the soldiers marching away from their beloved city to start anew upriver. Gilgamesh’s royal giant progeny led the marching mass and said goodbye to their past forever.

As Gilgamesh gazed over his
corps of marching loyal soldiers, he looked out onto the horizon and spoke words he knew would change the world.

“We will travel several leagues upriver
to our new home. I shall build a city in the north for the esteemed goddess of sex and war. You shall be Ishtar of Nineveh.”

Ishtar smirked with satisfaction.

“It will be a new world with new gods,” added Gilgamesh. “Ninurta, you shall be called by a new name, Marduk.”

Marduk nodded
with acceptance.

Gilgamesh stared out as if into the Abyss
itself. “Together, we shall build a city and a temple-tower with its top in the heavens and its roots in Sheol. We will make a mighty name for ourselves, that will resound in eternity.”

“What will be that name?” asked Ishtar.

“Babylon,” said Gilgamesh. “Gate of the Gods.”

Ishtar mused, “Mighty Gilgamesh,
potentate and god.”

“
Gilgamesh is dead,” he replied, looking out upon the distant funeral by the riverbed. “I am reborn, as you once were from Sheol.”

Gilgamesh
remembered the word that Noah had warned him of becoming and embraced it deep in his soul with consuming rage.

That word would become his name.

He said with slow burning pause…

“
I am Nimrod.

I am
Rebel.

I am
Empire.”