I called for guards to be posted double at the gates of the temple as soon as I received word of one brother’s death and the other’s ascension, before I even began my mourning. My heart lurched in fear, remembering the distant fires that had accompanied my father’s death, and the terrible price Rimush had taken from Urim. But the people of Urim did not rise up again. There were no fires in the dark, no horns of alarm disturbing my sleep. Manishtushu, I quickly discovered, was a more popular king than my brother. No doubt it was because of the reputation he had been able to cultivate during Rimush’s reign. Though he and Rimush looked alike down to their every hair, the people of Urim and the cities beyond knew which brother had sent their sons to die hauling stone in the desert and which brother had not.

When Rimush marched into city after city to put down rebellions, it was Manishtushu he left behind to oversee the Empire, and he had done so shrewdly. If Rimush insisted on forcing his rebellious subjects to work, Manishtushu decreed that some of these teams of men would help rebuild cities that had been damaged in war. And it was Manishtushu who turned Rimush’s eyes and sword eastwards towards the underprotected Elamite kingdom of Barakhshe, a military venture which proved so profitable for the Empire that Rimush’s appellations began to include “Lord Over Elam”. Whether this was all Manishtushu’s doing or whether he was prodded and coached by a team of clever advisers, I cannot say. I have a much easier time imagining my second brother spearing ostriches and betting on bullfights and winking at young ladies than I do imagining him going over accounts and settling trade disputes. But whatever the source of his wise decisions, they served him well, for he faced neither dissent nor uprising when he took the throne upon the death of his twin.

It is a sorrowful thing to bury a brother, even a brother such as mine. In the early days I was despondent. I sang numbly and without feeling, spoke little and wrote even less than I had after Zumbu’s departure. What did not make it any better was that Manishtushu himself was eerily silent on the matter. How I would have welcomed some affection from my surviving elder brother! How I longed to hear his laugh and feel the warmth of his arms again, to trade stories of the gods with him on the deck of the ship bound for Urim. But his only missive to me was cold and full of duty; strikingly similar, in fact, to the one Rimush sent after our father died. You will be protected. All shall be well. Honor our legacy. Hollow platitudes, words carved in clay and spoken with a lead tongue.

That he of all people should admonish me to safeguard our family’s legacy is laughable, Inanna, perhaps the richest absurdity I have faced in all my long life, a greater farce than your sister tricking you into removing your clothes, or Dumuzid diddling his own sister in the sheepfold. Even if one reads the official accounts of my brother’s reign--even if one does not know the truth, as I do--it is plain that Manishtushu cared more for Manishtushu than for Akkade or the Empire or his family. The song of Manishtushu does not even mention the reign of Rimush. In the typical swaggering fashion of a king, he instead describes “all the lands which my father Sharru-kin left to me,” as if the whole world had sneezed or rubbed grit from their eyes only to find that eight years had passed between the True King’s death and his True Son’s ascension.

And the new king’s name, Who Is With Him, now suddenly bereft of its former meaning in the absence of a twin brother, began increasingly to be interpreted in a different way. Now in the royal seals and inscriptions of my brother his name was not parsed “Who Is With Him,” a simple descriptor of a second-born twin, but “Who Is With Him?,” a defiant rhetorical question suggesting the primacy of Manishtushu over all other men. Manish, it appeared, has inherited our father’s talent for erasing and changing names. Once defined even in name by his brother, the newly crowned Manishtushu proudly proclaimed that no man deserved to stand with him. Perhaps no man did, now that Rimush had gone to the Palace of Dust. But all this was only a sampling of what was to come, for it was in the second year of Manishtushu’s reign that I finally saw him as a king.

I received the message announcing his visit with joy, marvelling how the Empire had grown quiet enough for the king to pay a visit to his sister, rather than march to liberate her in time of war. Just as when Rimush had seen me, I agreed to meet in the En’s audience chamber, and I wore all my finery so that my brother would see. Ilum Palilis, crouching delicately, offered me a burnished copper mirror towards the end of her ministrations, and I had to smile and pretend I was pleased when in truth I was dismayed by something the girl had no control over: how old I looked. My earlobes had begun to droop from the weight of gold. There were lines on my brow and near my eyes that I did not remember, and my skin, though it glistened with perfumed oil, was not quite so smooth as it once had been. With my tongue I poked the hole in the hollow of my cheek where a tooth had been. I was now thirty years old, a grown woman who would no doubt be a mother several times over if I had led a different life. Would Manishtushu even remember me? (Ha! If only En Kheduana then could see En Kheduana now, double her age, she would die of fright. Then, I pouted and sulked that I did not look fifteen. Today, I would face down Anzu the Griffin with a marsh-boy’s throwing stick if it meant I would look forty.) But when the herald announced the king and my brother walked into the room, my heart pounded and my smile gleamed and I forgot all about my concerns over my appearance.

“It’s really you,” I said, and for a moment I had to choke back tears, so much did he look like Rimush, whom I had last seen in this very room and would never see again.

“It is,” he said. “It is a great joy and a great relief to see you, sister. Enship.” And though his voice sounded strange and hollow, I stepped forward to embrace him just as I had done with Rimush all those years ago. Manishtushu had come to me as Rimush had done, in the fringed red robe of a Northern king, with golden armbands on his wrists and biceps and a golden band holding back his hair. There was more than a little gray in that hair, I was surprised to note. Though I could tut and worry at myself growing older in the mirror, my brothers had always stayed the same age in my mind.

“Wait,” he said. I was startled by his reserve. I had expected him to lift me up like a doll, to roar with laughter and spin me around the room, but there seemed to be no mirth in his mood. Had kingship changed him that much, my turbulent, easy-smiling brother, so often angry yet so often glad? As I stood there puzzling over his behavior he turned from me to call a servant into the room, a woman who carried an unmistakable bundle.

My old lips crack into a smile, like riverbed dust puckering in the sun, when I think of how the nurse carried the babe into the room then, and of the first glimpse I had of my nephew Naram-Sin, who now sits upon the Throne of the World. How amusing, Inanna! How remarkable. The last time I saw my nephew was when he brought his daughter to meet me, in preparation for her own Enship that will follow mine, and he had a chest as broad as a temple door and the muscles in his legs bunched like a wild bull’s. He has the distinction of being the first king of Sharru-kin’s line to call himself a god, to have himself carved in stone not only with the crown of kingship but the horns of divinity. Yet this god was once a king, and before that a man, a boy, a baby in his nurse’s arms. This sharp-bearded and hard-eyed scion of the Northern mountains, beloved of the Moon and the Sun and the Evening Star, used to shriek in the night and dribble food down his chin and shit himself the same as everyone else. Your power, Inanna, your ability to change, is apparent in all things. Only you could take the crawling creature and elevate him to godhood. Only you could take the brother I loved best and turn him black with guilt and blue with sorrow, a pitiful thing with another man’s face and another man’s crown.

My brother lifted the child from his nurse’s arms with the utmost delicacy. Then he bid her wait outside the door, and she bowed and left us. After she was gone he gave me a proud smile, though I sensed a trace of some darker emotion beneath it, like an unclean odor that is masked by perfume but still creeps into the nostrils. “My son,” he said. “My firstborn son. Would you hold him, sister? He has not been held before by a High Priestess. It is a fitting honor for a prince.”

“A fitting honor for a prince,” I repeated, though it was an honor I had granted many lowborn children before. I took the infant from my brother’s hands and held him carefully to me. For all his kingly pedigree, he felt no lighter or heavier than any other child.

“Where is the child’s mother?” I asked Manishtushu.

“At the palace of the Lugal of Urim,” he said. “She is a Northerner, of good family, and she was furious when I told her I wanted to bring him here. She would not let me take him from her, so I let her come along for the journey. But you remember the girls of Akkade’s Great Household; she could not come without a whole retinue of hairdressers and manicurists and singers and slaves and companions. The woman has richer taste than Ishtar herself, I swear it before the gods.” It was heartening to hear him speak so, but the laughter that followed his words was pale and faded, nothing like the rich roar I remembered.

“So you have your bride after all,” I said, remembering that day many years before when we had shared wine on the boat to Urim. “I should like to meet her.”

“We would be very pleased if you would dine with us at the Great Household of Meshnannepada before we return to Akkade,” said Manishtushu, but even he did not seem enthusiastic. His mind was somewhere else; his eyes were not on me but on the child in my arms.

I bounced the baby a little. It was hard to see my brother in him, but then all babies look much the same. He smiled an untroubled smile at me and closed his eyes, which were a lighter brown than my brother’s, with traces of my own green.

“He is beautiful,” I said. “What have you named him?”

“Naram-Sin,” said my brother gravely, and I looked at him in surprise.

“Beloved of the Moon,” I repeated. “That is Kiang-Nanna, in Emengir. It sounds like the name of an En, not a prince. I might have taken that name myself.”

“It is for your sake that I named him,” said Manishtushu, and there was a hint of desperation in his voice that made me nervous.

“Sit, brother,” I said. “Why have you come here? You look like Enkidu when he woke from his dream of the Queen of the Underworld. Tell me what is troubling you.”

Manishtushu did not sit, but to my great surprise he went down on one knee before me. It was a gesture more suited to a servant; the only place I had ever seen a king do it was on the seal of our family, before Ishtar herself. I reached up to the seal dangling from the cord around my neck, my personal seal, which named me Chief Wife of the Moon but also Daughter of the King of the World. My brother closed his eyes as if in great pain. “Oh, sister,” he said. “Only you, blessed and beloved of the moon, can help me.”

“What have you done?” I asked. With a burst of sorrow I remembered Rimush and his cruel vengeance against the people of Urim. I realized I was terrified to hear the answer. What harm had he caused, what life has he ruined?

Slowly, Manishtushu looked up at me, but he did not rise to his feet. “What I did is unspeakable,” he said quietly. “An abomination before the gods. But ever since, the gods have shown me their favor. They have given me a peaceful kingship, they have given me a wife and a son who will be king after me. I have everything I ever wanted.” There was a wild intensity in his voice, and I wondered if my brother was drunk. He had not smelled of wine when he embraced me, but he was not acting like the Manishtushu I remembered. I could not remember him ever speaking of gods with anything approaching reverence, and it disturbed me immensely.

Under my steady, worried gaze, the King of the World’s eyes filled with tears. I rose to my feet and stepped towards him, cradling his son to my breast. “Yes, I have everything I ever wanted, sister; but I cannot enjoy it. I am crippled by guilt. It rules me as I rule the North and South. Therein lies the punishment of the gods, that I should have all I asked them for but never be able to enjoy it. Whenever the sun shines on my face I know Shamash is judging me, whenever the Moon rises by night I know that Sin can see what I did. I named my son for him because he rules the night, because you rule the night through him, and it was by night that I--that I--” He began to sob, and in my arms the little Naram-Sin began to cry. I did not know who to attend to, the baby or my brother. A woman only has one pair of arms, even if she is the wife of a god. Why had my brother dismissed the child’s nurse? Thinking quickly, I laid the child gently on the floor beside my brother. Then I put my arm around my brother’s shoulder so he could cry into my breast and crouched so that I could tickle the baby beside him with my other hand. It felt absurd but it seemed to work, for both the baby and the man quietened.

Manishtushu was quiet for a time, and I gathered up his baby son from the place where I had lain him. Then my brother said, “This is why I have come here, and why I have brought you Naram-Sin, my heir. He will be king after me; I do not want the stain of his father’s grief to mar his reign. You are closer to the gods than any person I know. Than any person I can trust. I beg of you, sister: pray for me, and for my son. Grant him your holy blessing. Ask your husband to forgive me, and if he cannot forgive, at least let him grant me a night with sleep.”

For the first time it seemed I was taller than him, for he was still on his knees and I was standing. Gripping my brother’s hand, I forced him to meet my eyes. “What have you done?” I asked him again, my voice steady. “You are my brother, and I will do all you ask of me, but I must know. You must speak it aloud if you are to earn Nanna’s forgiveness.”

“I cannot,” he said lamely. “I cannot speak it aloud.”

“You must,” I said. “You have come this far. If not for your sake, or mine, then for the child’s.” I stepped back, holding my nephew even tighter to my breast, cradling the soft back of his head with one trembling hand.

Manishtushu’s shoulders slumped. “I killed a man,” he said, without looking at me.

“You fought in Rimush’s campaigns, did you not? I should have thought you had killed many men,” I said carefully.

“Many men, and this one,” said Manishtushu. “And it was not in battle that I killed him.”

“Where, then?” I asked, a bit more loudly than I intended. The baby was beginning to squirm.

“In Akkade,” he said. “In the chambers of the Great Household.”

“And why?”

It seems so obvious now, looking back on it. How could I not have known? I should have known from the moment my brother walked in with that haggard, ghostly face, the moment he told me the pious name of his son, the moment he began to cry and I saw that he was a lost man, a gidim, a ghost upon the dunes. But O, Inanna, I swear to you that even then I did not know. Not until Manishtushu spoke again, his voice barely above a whisper, and said “So that I could be king.”

Words, go back to his mouth, horror, go back to the pit of my heart, bile in my throat, recede to my belly! It is by the grace of Nanna alone that I did not drop the child when I realized the truth. Perhaps Naram-Sin is beloved of the moon after all.

“Oh, sister,” said Manishtushu. “Enship. Can you forgive me? Can the gods forgive me?”

I was silent for a time. Then I said again, “What have you done?”

“You know what I have done, sister,” said Manish. “I see it in your face that you know my crime. Please, I beg you, do not make me say the words aloud. Do not make me speak his name.”

“No,” I said, the word flying from my mouth like a broken tooth. “I am asking you, what have you done? What have you ever done in your life for him, for Father, for us? You know better than any man alive that I came to Urim with no joy in my heart. For the sake of our family’s power and standing, I have endured the jeers and mockery of Sumerians who called me upstart and outlander. I have forsworn mortal husband or children and devoted myself to the people of a foreign city and marriage to a cold god. I have set myself the insurmountable task of writing sacred songs to unite all the great temples of our land, which even our brother--our brother whose name you dare not speak--did not appreciate. He accused me of doing these things for my own glory, and perhaps I did, but I did it for his glory as well, and for our father’s, and for the gods and the people too, so that they might look at one another’s works with pride. For the sake of the Empire and the world made whole. What have you done for any of them? Can you say that you have ever done a single act to further the legacy of Sharru-kin, a single act that was not only for yourself?”

Manishtushu ran his hands down his face, a weary gesture. “No,” he said. “I...I am a weak man, sister. I craved power. Kingship.”

“So did our father,” I said. “I will tell you that nothing I can do will take away your suffering altogether, nor can I swear to you it will not grow deeper. That is between you and the gods, and the gods love not the murderer and less the man who slays his mother’s son. You are right to say that my husband Nanna is all-seeing, but he is also silent. He does not judge the living, though some say when he sinks beneath the earth at dawn he sits with Gilgamesh’s shade to judge the dead. When you die, you shall go before him and speak your case then. But in this life, he will not begrudge a king who seeks penance and a blessing for his son.” My throat painfully dry, I searched for words, swallowing several times before I could find them. “And nor shall I. For I have a duty to my people and my god, but first and foremost to my family.”

Since I became En I have never truly been able to take off the aga, and then more than ever, for if I had been a normal woman in that moment I would have been a woman betrayed, a woman undone. I would have fallen to my knees and wailed, like your sister of the long nails and the unspeakable name who yanks her hair out “like a farmer tearing leeks from the ground.” I would have fled into the wilderness a haunted, hunted thing, like dark Lilitu when Gilgamesh bore down upon her nest in the khulub tree. Yet I did not quake or wail or fall. I became the En, the wife of a god, and in this official capacity I looked upon my brother and my brother’s killer, the man who had broken my heart. My god’s strength completes my strength. Manishtushu sought the favor of his divine brother-in-law, just as Dumuzid in the tale of your Descent begged Utu your brother to protect him from your wrath. Seeing his arrogance and foolishness, the sun god had no pity for vainglorious Dumuzid, and your husband, your Good Son the Shepherd King, lost his life for it. But Nanna is not Utu, and Kheduana, much as she may wish it at times, much as she may feel you pulsing beneath her breast and behind her eyes, is not Inanna. And even Dumuzid had a sister who offered her life for his.

My mind a flurry of family and gods and sorrow, I beckoned my brother the king to follow me, and to take the child with him. I took them to the temple, to the innermost sanctum, and I did the only thing I could do. I sang over them the songs of Nanna, my voice reverberating in the silence of the temple. I poured oil and perfume over the brow of my brother and of my little nephew, who gurgled and stared at me raptly, mesmerized by the sound of my voice. I blessed them, and I prayed for them. “Let this man find peace in this life with what he has done,” I said. “Let the gods find a suitable penance and let it be not more than he can bear. And this man’s child, let him not be punished for the sins of another. Let him grow strong and bear the crown of a king, and let him learn from the mistakes of those who sat on his throne before him and rule the better for it.” I thought of Rimush’s cruelty and of the cruelty he had been dealt and tears rolled down my cheeks, but I continued. Manishtushu had the face of a man lost in the desert who has just been given water, thankful yet too exhausted to express his thanks in words, barely strong enough to raise the water to his lips. “This I pray in the name of Nanna my husband, Shining Beacon of the Night, in the name of Ningal my holy sister-wife, in the name of all the gods and goddesses of Urim, of Shumeru, of Akkad. In the name of the most holy and sacred waters of the Two Rivers and of all the gods who flourish in between them.”

When it was done and I had let my brother’s thanks crash over me like a bitter and stinging wave, when I had bid him farewell and kissed the future god-king’s brow, when I was finally alone with my guilt and my grief, I called a messenger. “Ready a palanquin and a team of guardsmen with supplies to last five days. And send word to the priests that I am leaving,” I said.

“Where are you going, Enship?” he asked, with more than a hint of alarm in his voice.

“To Unug, to the temple of Inanna and An,” I said. “To see my sisters. I shall depart tomorrow at dawn and return the night of the fifth day. The House of the Great Light will manage without me.” I would tell Elamitu myself that she would accompany me. Ilum Palilis I would leave behind, for I still saw Baranamtarra every time I looked at her, and as Igiru had not been well of late, I thought it best to give her a few days’ respite from her service. But before the messenger could leave, I stopped him with one more request. “Go and tell Sagadu my scribe that he is to accompany me as well,” I said. “Tell him we are doing research for my next hymns to Inanna, if you must.”

“If I must?” asked the messenger curiously.

“You must,” I said. “Now go!” And I turned back towards the giparu in a foul and sour mood. I could tell that even he disapproved of my going, and it pained me. Had not Galusakar or any of the Ens before me ever left the temple now and then? Had the Enship and the weight of the round and heavy Moon ground them into so much dust all their long lives? These women were king’s daughters, king’s sisters; they must have known something of the treachery of men and how painful it is to love a king. Surely they would understand. Surely they would not begrudge me if I chose, this one time, to do something for myself.

The journey to Unug from Urim takes a single day on foot. Perched in my palanquin with Sagadu and Elamitu and swaying lazily in the morning heat, I was reminded of my wedding procession through the streets of Urim. I drifted in and out of sleep and my dreams were gruesome, fingers clutching at a bloodstained moon and two crowned skeletons marching in an empty place, endlessly, never seeming to get anywhere, the one in back never seeming to catch up with him who was in front. I did not need the interpreter’s art to know what they meant.

When it became too hot to travel overland we stopped to sit in the shade of a palm grove, my two companions and myself beside the team of men who had carried us, passing around water and a simple meal of bread, cheese and olives. I fanned myself with a fallen palm frond and listened to the sounds of the empty road. There was a roller-bird calling in the distance, and in spite of everything I smiled as I remembered the story of Ishtar-Inanna and the roller. Perhaps the menwomen would ask me to tell it again. I did not know what I would say to them when I saw them, but I hoped they would welcome me as they always had.

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“Enship, forgive me,” said Sagadu in his typical gracious manner, “I have no lack of confidence in the soundness of your command, but I must ask you something. What prompted you to make this journey to Unug? You have not touched the hymn to Inanna and An since Garashang’s last visit. I had thought you were nearly finished with the composition. Is there some flaw in it that you have detected, something lacking that requires that you visit the temple in person?”

His interest in my true motivations intrigued me. “Would you believe me if I told you that I received a divinely inspired dream?” I asked him. “That Holy Inanna herself came to me and asked me to go to the Eana at Unug?” Seeing him hesitate, I added, “Be honest, Sagadu. I want to know your thoughts, as you want to know mine.”

Sagadu’s eyes widened. He was not used to me asking him questions, I realized. Beside me, Elamitu smiled inwardly as though remembering something. “If I may be so bold, Enship,” he said at last, “No. I would not believe you, if you told me that.”

I smiled too, but it was as wan and bitter of a smile as my brother’s, my brother who had half-killed himself, it seemed, when he killed his king. “The truth, Sagadu, is this,” I said. “The menwomen of Inanna were always kind to me, since the first day I arrived in Unug. When my heart is heavy, they are always able to make it light again. Recently I have learned some truths that--disquieted me. And that is the real reason I have decided to go to Unug: not to praise Inanna in writing, but to lift my spirits. You are not disappointed, I hope? I know how seriously you take our work.”

“Certainly not, Enship,” said Sagadu. “That is a fine reason--did not the gods grant the menwomen their skills in dance and song so that they could make us all a little happier, our troubles a bit less hard to bear? At least, that is what they say when they ask for money.” He imitated the peculiar open-handed clapping that the menwomen use to announce their presence, and both I and Elamitu laughed.

“But Enship,” Sagadu said, “There is one thing that still puzzles me. If your reasons for making the journey are as you describe, why have you asked me along?”

To my great surprise and horror, Inanna, I blushed. Like a young girl, like I never married the moon or went to Urim and was still proud as a lioness in the gardens of Akkade! Perhaps it was your teasing, Inanna, as we drew closer to your temple and your people. Perhaps it was one of your moments rising in my breast, a little touch of Inanna peeking out into the open.

“Because you, too, have always been kind to me,” I said. “And you, too, know how to gladden my heart.” And Sagadu did not say anything else for the rest of the day, but as I could not conceal my blush he could not conceal his smile.

When we arrived at the temple gates and made our presence known to the guards, a delegation from the temple came to greet us. I recognized them at once. Robed in their wild colors, faced painted pale and heavy, flowers rising broken and shimmering from their heads, hands flailing with excitement. “Goddess, what a surprise!” Kankala crowed. “Our little Northern scamp has come to pay a visit!”

They threw their arms around us all in welcome, even the guards, whose discomfort the menwomen seemed to relish. Lodging was found for us in one of the temple’s outlying buildings where the young priests in training slept. “It’s not a giparu,” said Inanna-shudug apologetically. “But then, we would only be allowed to put one foot in one ourselves.” Not all the priests and priestesses of the temple were galaturras, but many were, more than I had even realized. I went straightaway to make an offering at your altar, as befitting a visiting High Priest, but as soon as this was done I found myself surrounded by Kankala and Garashang and Inanna-shudug and a bevy of others whose names I did not know but was quickly offered. With many interruptions and wild tangents, they told me of the latest goings-on in Unug. A new Lugal had been posted there after the rebellion against Rimush, just as in Urim and Lagash, but there were rumors that the old Lugal’s son was being raised in secret by supporters of his father, and that he might seek to become Great Man himself when he came of age. Eresh-gunu had passed on to the House of Dust, and I accepted an invitation to pour an offering on her grave the next morning. In her place the chief of the galas, their Amagal or Grandmother, was now Garashang, who had always been closest to the old matriarch. “Amagal doesn’t always go to the eldest among us,” she explained.

“Nor the prettiest,” said a young galaturra cuttingly. Garashang took off her sandal and shook it threateningly at the young one, who backed away amid laughter and clapping.

“Careful now,” said Inanna-shudug, placing her hand on my shoulder. “She wields a shoe like Ninurta with his mace Sharur, the Smasher of Thousands. And oh, when she throws it! I swear I’ve seen it round corners!”

I laughed as I had nearly forgotten how to. I laughed and smiled and ate and drank with them. I clapped my hands along with the music of pipes and drums and harps, and when the galaturra pulled a grudging Sagadu to his feet for him to dance with them, I joined them myself, the fringe on my robes flying and whirling as I bounced from heel to toe. I did not tell anyone of Manishtushu’s confession, or how I had blessed my brother who was also my brother’s killer. It seemed safer to keep the secrets of kings close to my heart, or perhaps I was not ready to speak such things aloud. I basked in the warm glow of their love, and was satisfied. When the galaturra told me I must see one of their sacred plays performed, I glanced towards Sagadu, whose interest had been piqued. “I should like to see the story of the descent of Inanna to the netherworld.” I knew the story well by now, so much time had I spent in the archives of the temple for my writings, but I had still never seen it performed. Out of all the many tales of you and Dumuzid, which are all different yet all alike, this one, my Lady, was the one my mind could not keep from returning to.

The galaturra exchanged glances. “Tomorrow evening,” said Garashang. “We shall need a day to prepare.” And she would say not another word about it, no matter how much I cajoled her.

All the following day as I toured the temple complex and made my offering at Eresh-gunu’s grave, I could not keep the evening’s entertainment off my mind. When night had finally fallen and dinner had been cleared away, the galaturra vanished, except for a few of the younger ones, who drew Sagadu and I from our seats at the table with gentle but insistent hands. They led us outside, to a flat space beyond the temple sanctum lit by torchlight and where there were already a crowd forming. Many were priests and temple functionaries, but there were common people mixed into the crowd as well, and as we approached Elamitu inclined her head graciously from where she sat beside two temple servants. With a glance towards Sagadu, I sat down on the ground beside him and watched the empty space between the fires.

I was by now familiar with the ways of your people, Inanna, so it did not surprise me this time when I heard before I saw. Rattle, hand-drum and flute began to sound in the darkness, and after them came voices chanting in Emesal. “She opened her ear from the Great Above to the Great Below, the goddess opened her ear from the Great Above to the Great Below, Inanna opened her ear from the Great Above to the Great Below…” using that uniquely Southern expression for turning one’s interest to a new subject. As the voices drew nearer I beheld the senior galaturra of the temple, their robes glimmering. Some had faces painted black on one side and white on the other. Others wore masks such as I had never seen: the bright and motionless faces of dogs and dragons, sheep and fish, waterbirds and fanged Underworld things. They clapped their hands and stomped in time to their own music, and with whoops and yelps the crowd joined them.

Garashang stepped forward in a golden robe, and I knew at once that she had taken on the role of Inanna. She mimed your toilette, crowning herself in gold, taking up jewels offered by an attendant and painting her eyes and lips in a hand-mirror with wild facial expressions. She gave instructions to a cowed and quavering Ninshubur to wail and lament for her when she went down to the House of Dust. She set off on her long journey, actually pacing around the perimeter of the torches with exaggerated effort. All the while the audience clapped and laughed and murmured to each other and the singers chanted.

For a moment I began to doubt my once unshakable conviction that the gods of North and South were one, for I had never seen you like this in all my life. I remembered my long-ago conversation with the galas about the differences in Ishtar’s and Inanna’s descent stories, how I had thought it was a tragedy and they had seen it more as comedy. Mighty queen you were in the pantomime before me, yet you were also quite clearly a buffoon. You were arrogant and self-important and did not realize your own pomposity, which made you all the more laughable. I thought of the absurdness of the mighty men and women I had known myself; empty-headed noblewomen and arrogant princes, kings who frothed and raged until their subjects got in line but whom death chased away as waking chases a bad dream. Enraptured by the strangeness of it all, I felt the prickling energy of your presence fill me as the tiny hairs along my arms stood on end. And I laughed, Inanna! I laughed!

Out of the corner of my eye, for I could scarcely turn myself away, I saw that Sagadu wore a bemused smile. I realized that, having lived his whole life in Urim, he would have had ample opportunity to see such a thing performed before, and I resolved to ask him about it later. There was no time for it now, for Inanna had been admitted through the gates of the Underworld by its doorman, played by a sneering Kankala. At each of the seven gates she was forced to remove an article of clothing, having been told by the doorman that no one wears clothes in the land of the dead--and this was the greatest joke of all, that Inanna should fall for such a simple ruse, since everyone knows that the dead are buried with the possessions they most loved in life. But Inanna succumbed to the trick and soon stood naked before the howling audience, the illusion shattered and the mighty queen reduced to a painted, indignant face above a sleek, glossy body, not quite the body of a man but not a woman’s body either, without hair, without breasts, with only a place of shadow between its legs. I remembered the tales in which you call yourself both man and woman. I began to see why the galaturra love you so, and why they use their own bodies to worship you.

Now Inanna’s dark sister came out, the Queen of the Dead herself, and it was Inanna-shudug’s turn to whip the crowd into a frenzy. She appeared masked and taloned with sagging breasts made of empty skins, a harridan ripped from a nightmare. Freely Ereshkigal’s black name was uttered; sung it carried not the curse it does when spoken. With lolling tongue and matted hair she pointed her long claw towards Inanna and announced the triple curse that sealed her fate. “I fix on you the eye of death. I curse you with the cry of guilt. I call down on you the word of wrath.”

I watched with a shiver as Inanna curled up and died. Then a wooden post was brought forth and she was raised up again, her eyes closed, her limbs limp, and held against it. With rope bound around her chest and limbs the spirits of the Netherworld displayed her where we all could see her, “a piece of rotting meat”. Dark-skinned like the Sumerians who surrounded me, her face painted a shade lighter, closer to my own. Flayed like the generals who stood against my father and brother, dead like both of them or like my garden-dreams of childhood. The audience grew quiet, and the music and chanting softer, muted, except for the aching melisma of a single lamentation-singer. I felt my heart swell and wondered at the power of the performance, to move me to laughter one moment and sorrow the next. Beside me Sagadu shifted uncomfortably.

But the story was far from over. Old Grandfather Enki, played by Kankala in a ludicrous beard made of sheep’s wool, brought forth a young galaturra and a kurngarra, one of the sword-dancers I had heard the galaturra speak of. They leaped and chattered and beckoned the musicians to brighten their tune. The kurngarra took out a pair of small blades and juggled them, and the galaturra squealed in feigned terror that brought laughter back to the night air.

I remembered the shameful curse laid on Asushunamir, the Shining One, who served this role in the Northern Ishtar-version of the tale and was declared the ultimate pariah for their trouble. There was no such admonishment here. These two performers descended with no difficulty and came to Ereshkigal’s bedside, where she lay writhing and shrieking in pain. Monster though she was, the pain she inflicted on others came from within, and like doctors prodding their patient’s belly the two servitors of Enki aimed to find the source of it. When she moaned, they moaned. When she spread her claws over her painted eyes, they covered their own faces with their hands. When she yanked on her own hair, they grabbed each other’s hair with tongues sticking out and eyes wild. They sympathized, and for their trouble she let them have whatever reward they asked. Of course they took the piece of meat that hung nearby, really the body of naked Inanna, despite Ereshkigal’s spluttering rage at being so tricked. And they sprinkled the Water of Life and Earth of Life upon Inanna, raising her from the dead.

The story was flying now into its final act. As Inanna, or Garashang, graciously accepted her clothes and put them on again, the galaturra and kurngarra with a final nod to the audience made their exit. But no sooner had the goddess, a bit humbled by her ordeal yet as glorious as ever, risen to her feet again than a host of menwomen with fanged masks in vivid colors came swooping in after her. These were the spirits of the Underworld, Ereshkigal’s servitors sent to bring her back into her sister’s clutches. As Inanna fled and the music reached a frantic pitch, they passed Inanna’s servant-gods, who had been groveling in mourning per her instructions, their mortifications exactly the same as those I had undergone for my father and, years later, for Rimush. The Underworld demons protested that if Inanna would not come back and be dead in the House of Dust, they must take another in her place, but the proper mourning of all the lesser gods who served her precluded their being taken by the spirits. Of all Inanna’s household only her husband Dumuzid had not mourned her. Played by a gala with a shepherd’s crook in one hand but a crown on his head, the meaning was so clear that I had to smile. Even my father had claimed your divinity as the source of his kingly power. A king too proud to acknowledge his god is no king at all, but a fool.

Dumuzid pleaded, but his pleas fell on deaf ears, and Inanna cursed him with the same words Ereshkigal had cursed her. The tears came unbidden, rolling down my cheeks. And when Dumuzid’s little sister Ngeshtinanna appeared wrapped in gilded vines, I wept all the more because of how it put me in mind of my mother, even though the similarity could not have been meant, even though her name meant Lady of the Grapevine and it was only fitting she should be so attired. She offered her life for his, six months of the year to be divided between them, and the dark spirits of the Underworld were appeased. With a final apotropaic salute to Ereshkigal, the musicians and chanters brought the play to a roaring conclusion. And when it was done I rose to my feet, I clapped and whooped my approval with as much fervor as any of the motley host of priests and servants and scribes and guildsmen who had gathered for the night’s entertainment. I had known every emotion in those few short hours, it seemed, that I had known in my whole life. Every Inanna-touched moment came trumpeting forth to remind me where I was, and had been, to light my path that I might see where I was going.

“There is one thing I do not understand,” I said to Garashang when the performance was done. “Why did Inanna go down to the Palace of Dust? Do you give any reason for it?”

Garashang shrugged. “She is the doer and undoer, the keeper of the me,” she said. “She doesn’t need a reason to do anything. Her reason is not important. What’s important is that we are always there to help her. As she is there to help you.” I regretted briefly having asked for such a tale, for a story that was both tragedy and farce, two things, like Inanna, or this land, or myself. It was after all so close to my life, a story of brothers and sisters, kings and death, and perhaps I would have been better off asking them to perform a lighter tale. Perhaps I would have preferred to go to bed that night with a smile on my lips instead of tumbled and confused thoughts, unsure of whether to laugh or cry. Yet I could not argue that in some way it had helped. To see my feelings played out on the stage was magic of a kind I had never known before, and I felt the urge to write come flooding back to me.

When we returned from Unug, a crowd of my temple’s functionaries was gathered at the gates to receive us. Getting down from my litter I saw my High Steward Adda, Sagadu’s brother Ningtuku, Ilum Palilis (standing apart from the rest but looking proud), as well as Ugunu and Baranamtarra.

“How has the temple fared in my absence?” I asked. And before I could catch my breath I was assailed from every direction by petitions, questions, updates on the status of shipments of goods I had scheduled to receive. The aga of the En was heavy on my head again. As usual, each had their different way of speaking. Adda was brusque and efficient, Ugunu gentle but firm, Baranamtarra persistent and with low expectations. Ningtuku was every bit as polite as his brother, but in between his “humbly begging your pardon”s I detected dissatisfaction that would have to be addressed.

“Another matter that needs your attention, Enship,” said Adda, as though it had slipped his mind before. “You will be wanting a replacement to serve you in the giparu.”

All the other words fell away and it was as though the blood had drained from my body. “Where is Igiru?” I asked. “Has some ill befallen her?”

Beside me I saw Elamitu stiffen, and Sagadu’s brow furrow. Ilum Palilis, who had been silent all this time, stepped forward, her head inclined.

My heart began to pound. “Where is she?” I asked again.

“She took ill the day after you left,” said Ilum Palilis softly. “And by yesterday, the One Not to Be Named had taken her. She has gone to the House of Dust.” Looking down again she pressed a hand over her mouth as though to keep more words from pouring out.

“She is dead,” I heard my own voice saying.

“As to a replacement,” said Adda, “Baranamtarra has suggested a young lady from the kitchens who may--”

I put up my hand to silence him. “Where is the grave?” I asked.

“The priests laid her in the temple graveyard,” said Ugunu. “Near where the other servants and slaves have been buried over the years. She was given the rites befitting a worshipper of Nanna.”

“I should like to see the place,” I said, struggling to keep my voice like the proper voice of an En. Oh, Goddess, when they string together the beads of my life, the moments dark and surging, they shall alternate them sorrow and joy, sorrow and joy, for so have they befallen me. Why was I not there? Should I have brought her with me--no, she might not have survived the journey, she might have died in Unug instead of Urim which had been her home once and was her home again. I should have been there, plain and simple.

“I am sorry, Enship,” said Ugunu. “I know that you were very fond of Egiru.”

“Igiru,” I said. “Her name was Igiru. Heron, for her gait and stature. She was born a child of Urim and a worshipper of the moon, and it was her greatest joy that she came back here after years of service in Akkade. She helped me see the joy in Urim when I was young and angry and alone. She--I would have--I wanted to, but--” the words failed and I realized that I had no real excuse, save my own selfishness. “I wish I had been here,” I said at last. The cluster of men and women around me was silent.

“Perhaps it would please your Enship to leave an offering at the grave,” said Adda. “You have a free hour tomorrow between your audience with the merchant Kisishu and the prayer for the motherless children of Urim.”

I nodded grimly. “I will do more than that. I must enter mourning again.”

“She was a slave, Enship!” Baranamtarra spluttered. “Perhaps your customs are different in the North, but here in the South, this is unacceptable.”

I threw up my hands in frustration. “I have lived in the South longer than I ever lived in the North,” I said. “Singing the songs of Nanna until my tongue went numb. Would you still hold it against me that my father’s fathers were of the mountains and yours of the marsh?”

Another woman might have been shamed into silence by these words, but Baranamtarra was shaking her head. “You cannot, Enship,” she said. “Think of the whispers, of what people will say of you if you do this thing. It is...unbecoming in one so powerful as yourself. The younger priests and the people of Urim will call you a weakling, to display such tenderness towards a slave.”

“What do I care if I display tenderness?” I said. “I am not leading troops to war. This is an aga on my head, not a crown. And besides, what right have you to speak to me so, Baranamtarra? You are talking to the wife of your god.”

Puffing out her chest, Baranamtarra stood as tall as she could. “I, too, am a bride of Nanna,” she said stiffly. “And I will not tolerate--”

Ugunu placed a hand on the small of Baranamtarra’s back. “As the concubine in the palace treads softly before the Queen, so we before the En,” she said primly. Baranamtarra glowered, but she did not speak again, and Ugunu said, “You shall do as you see fit, Enship,” and with her hand still planted firmly on Baranamtarra’s back she led her away from me. I watched them go and was surprised at how labored and faltering their step. When I first arrived at the temple so many years ago they had seemed ancient and seasoned but now I realized that they might only be ten years my senior, if that. I wondered if they were older than Igiru had been. There was strength yet in both of them, and I was thankful for it. Much as I clashed with Baranamtarra I had had quite enough of death for a while.

“I shall not accept a replacement,” I said aloud. “Ilum Palilis and Elamitu alone shall be my servants henceforth. No other woman of another’s choosing will attend to me.”

“Of course,” said Adda, and I noticed that he seemed a bit frightened. He must have known that when I said “another” I meant him and Baranamtarra. With muttered obeisance, he and all the others swept away, even Elamitu and Ilum Palilis, who were anxious to return to the giparu. Only Sagadu remained with me.

“Ugunu speaks the truth,” he said quietly. “You shall do as you see fit. No one can tell you otherwise.”

I turned to look at him, my loyal Sagadu, to search his dark face for any kind of answer. “They do not understand,” I said. “Igiru deserved better. She did not deserve to die a slave.”

“If you mourn for her and give her offerings,” said Sagadu. “Remember the lessons of Inanna. The gods who mourned her properly were rewarded for their piety, and Dumuzid was punished. You may not want to mourn but you will feel better afterwards, and the gods will smile on you.”

“You have seen the play before, have you not?” I asked.

“I have,” said Sagadu. “Several times, since I was a boy. It is very popular, but I always find it moving. Inanna is a powerful goddess, and we are all made the better for her presence.”

“She is with us now,” I said, and for a moment we stood in silence, letting the heat of you pass over us and through us, pumping in the beating of our hearts, the coursing of our blood, the rushing of our breath. All the South is Inanna’s country. Did that make us all Inanna’s creatures? Did that mean I was half Inanna, or more than half, or only a little, and where was Northern Ishtar’s fire amid the warm and sticky lifeblood of her other self?

“If there is anything I can do,” he said, and to my great surprise he raised his hand and placed it on my shoulder.

He had never touched me before. So few men had. I felt a burst of feeling, white-hot and stinging, rise in me, part shock and part surprise and part joy and all Inanna. But before I could react he drew back his hand as though my flesh had burned him. Then he flung himself on the ground, pressing his face to the dirt.

“Forgive me, Enship, I did not mean--” he said.

“Please, Sagadu,” I said. “Rise. You embarrass me.” He rose to his feet, his eyes two white pits of fear.

I will leave at once,” he said. “Ningtuku, who it seems was right about me all along, may well put a dagger in his breast when he finds out, but it is better I should be gone than he should see me in my shame.” He turned to go but I drew him back, catching him by the arm.

“Please,” I said. “I am still your En, am I not, Sagadu? And you sworn to obey my commands?”

“Of course, Enship,” he said. He was staring down at my hand encircling his wrist, the lighter shade of my skin stark against his own dark brown. I let go, and felt his eyes move up to my face.

“Then I command you to stay,” I said. “In precisely two weeks’ time, after I finish mourning Igiru, we will begin work on the hymn to the Temple of Inanna at Adab. Until then, I would be obliged if you would go over the missive from the High Priestess of Adab and our notes from this outing to Unug, and take down anything of particular import to the composition.”

Sagadu bowed so hastily he might never have been there in the first place. When he was gone, I went to the giparu and sank down onto my bed, exhausted. I took off the aga and laid it on the chair beside the bed and stared at it as though it were about to speak.

Yours, Inanna, are manhood and womanhood, the office of En and the office of scribe, writing and dictation, love and grief. These are all me, all numbered among the signs of civilization between which we mortals balance our lives. But it is one more cruel joke you gods have played on me, Inanna, that you have required me to be a woman and Chief Wife of the Moon at Urim at the same time, yet made it nearly impossible for me to do so.