Lying in my fine bed on this sleepless night, Inanna, smelling the soft perfumes of the giparu, knowing that Elamitu sleeps nearby and that tomorrow will bring a breakfast of porridge after the morning prayer and another audience with my great-niece, it is not easy to remember that moment when I lay in the dust, clutching my stomach in the place where Lugal Anna had kicked me. For in this moment I am En, but in that moment, I was not, could not be, because I had no god.
I had prayed to Nanna as I had never prayed to him, begged and pleaded for his intercedence, and though I was alive yet, it was not in any way that I recognized. My power had been stripped from me. I had no place to turn, my temple ruined, my people scattered, my god torn from me as easily as a garment under rough hands. I was no En, no princess, nothing. I can only liken the feeling to a person who has lost their vision or their hearing. I, too, had lost one of my senses, had been deprived of one of the ways in which I understood the world. What was left was a raw, throbbing place of emptiness, a painful new landscape to navigate, and I did not know if I had the strength for it alone. I did not want to know this new Urim, this Urim that had no Nanna in it. I did not want to walk forth into a night without the moon. No tears came from my eyes, but my body shuddered with sobs so heavy I felt them in my face and breast and belly. A thin wheezing escaped my lips. I who had prided myself on my powers of poetry and song was rendered speechless, a keening and insensible thing, like Lilitu when she fled the smashing mace of Gilgamesh.
For a time I lay where he had left me, but the sun was scorching and I knew that even if Lugal Anna’s men did not harm me, Utu would. I crawled into the shade of the giparu’s walls, but no sooner had I found a spot that seemed safe than I heard the voices of men, far too close. Then, flinging the last of my strength into my quaking legs, I ran from the giparu. I ran until I was at the very gates of the temple complex, and only then did I turn back.
The air was so choked with smoke I could barely see, and I did not know any longer if my eyes stung from the fire or my own tears. The shouts of men and women were more faded and distant than they had been, but I did not know if that was good or bad. All I knew was that I had to leave. Even if Lugal Anna had forced me to this point, at least, I thought, I was choosing to leave for myself. I tried not to think of what had become of the temple’s people, especially the ones who had chosen to stay. I promised I would return as soon as I was able, that I was a daughter of Sharru-kin and I would not be afraid. Then, with my back to the House of the Great Light, I began to walk downhill, away from the temple, clutching in my right hand the dagger my enemy had given me in hope I would use it.
I realized that I held not just any dagger but a temple’s ritual dagger, the same sort used for sacrifices and mourning mortification. I did not want to know where the Lugal had gotten it from. Why had he given it to me? Why had he not taken my head as he had taken Garashang’s? Was it cruelty, or compassion? Or was it fear--did Lugal Anna still have some fear yet of what my brother might do to him if I was harmed by his hand? No, I thought. My brother is dead. Naram-Sin is king now, my brother’s eldest son. But when I closed my eyes to imagine him coming to my rescue I saw only the bawling baby in Manishtushu’s arms.
As I walked through the streets of Urim, quiet and empty in a way that disturbed me, I considered my options. The first was that which Lugal Anna had offered me, and that I would not take. If I stayed in Urim I was certain he would find me sooner or later, and in any case I did not know where in Urim I could be safe. Unug was no place for me either, and with no supplies and little to protect me from the sun I would not survive overland travel to Borsippa or one of the other nearby cities outside Lugal Anna’s control. If I could reach Urim’s docks I might be able to board a ship, use my gold earrings as payment for my passage, but where would I go? There were not likely to be any ships sailing North when Lugal Anna had declared open rebellion against Akkade. Might I seek asylum in a foreign land, in Gubla or some Elamite city? I spoke only the two languages of our own land, and besides I did not think any Elamite would be welcoming to the sister of the two kings who had warred against his countrymen for decades. Perhaps, I thought grimly, I should never have left the temple at all. Perhaps I should have gone down to the grave of En Galusakar and all the others and laid myself across the earth and admitted defeat. But I could not do that. Desperate though my situation was, I would not allow Lugal Anna, who had disrespected gods and kings alike, to be the cause of my death.
“I know you,” someone said from behind me. I felt a momentary burst of fear, but when I turned it was no soldier but a scrawny young boy, no more than ten. He held a heavy-looking stick made of bundled reeds in one hand. A dead lizard dangled from the other.
“You are the En,” the boy said. He did not bow or place his hand at the level of his nose, just stood there with his lizard and killing-stick, regarding me as curiously as if I were a creature in a menagerie. I realized I must look very little like an En, without my aga and with my hair and robes in disarray. Yet still, he had recognized me.
“How do you know my face?” I asked the boy.
“I saw you at the temple about a week ago,” he said. “My mother and I had come to lay an offering on Greatmother Ningal’s altar for my brother Urun. He was in bed with fever after a mashkim stung his heel when he was swimming. You stopped to talk to us. You said you would name him in your prayers to Nanna.”
I nodded, though there were so many names in my prayers night after night that I did not remember this one. “What became of Urun your brother?” I asked gently.
“He is recovered,” said the boy. “We were planning to go back to the temple soon to thank you and the gods, but now--” His voice trailed off. “Has the temple been destroyed like the one in Unug? Is that why you’ve left?”
I hesitated. “War has come to the temple, yes,” I said. “Just as it came to all of Urim. And many of the priests have left there, not just me. But I know that the temple will be rebuilt soon.” What I did not say was that it might be Lugal Anna who did the rebuilding, just as he had promised.
“Then where are you going?” he asked.
I could not lie to a child. “I don’t know,” I said.
The boy nodded. “Would you come home with me, then?” he asked. “My brother has been wanting to meet you. We have bread and beer, and once I bring home this monitor there will be meat, too.” He added the last with no small amount of pride, lifting the dead lizard to show me more clearly.
Perhaps it was the plainness of the boy’s speech, or the hunger in my belly or the pain in my breast or the heat beating down on my bare head. But with one more backwards glance to the smoking peak of the temple complex, I told him I should be delighted to join him, and I followed him down one of the narrow streets of Urim. I was not sure of where I would end up but sure at least that I had a place to go, that I should not have to use the dagger of Lugal Anna nor face the shameful shadows in the afterlife, pinch-faced and feathered, asking me why I left, why I gave up, why I did not stay to die with the old Ens in the ruins of the temple. To this day I cannot say why I fled the way I did, except that I was the daughter of a king and the sister of kings and I would take any chance I could to survive. To be kicked and spat on, to flee, to follow a little stranger into his family’s house, all this and more I could do, but to die in the sun unmourned was beneath me.
When we came to the door of a modest home, the young boy said simply, “Mother, this is the En.”
I thought the woman poking at a fire in the center of the dark and smoky room was going to faint, so wide did her eyes bulge and so frantically did she get to her knees and place her hand at the level of her nose.
“Please,” I said. “There is no need.” I beckoned the woman to stand, which she did hesitantly and without taking her eyes from me.
“But Enship!” the woman stammered. “I did not--I should have--forgive the simplicity of our home, forgive the dirt, I should have cleaned, I would have, if I had--” her single eyebrow furrowed and she turned from me to her son, fixing him with a look of rage. “Shulgi, you dumukir! You bring the Chief Wife of the Moon into my house without warning your poor mother? If your father were here he would beat you bloody.”
She took the lizard from the boy’s hands and shuffled to the back of the room where another, older boy was sitting on the edge of a bed-frame grinding grain in a clay vessel. At the sight of me he leapt to his feet and gave me a deep bow.
“A week ago I shook with fever and could not leave my bed, but now I am healed,” said Urun, beaming. “I still have a scar from the fish’s sting, but it will remind me to be careful where I place my feet in murky water. Thank you, Enship.”
I smiled. “It was not me,” I said. “It was by the mercy of Nanna and Ningal that your health has been restored. Trust in the gods and they will never abandon you.” Like water overflowing an irrigation-ditch, I could not stop the words that flowed unbidden from my lips. I had kissed so many brows and daubed at so many tears with those words that I did not even need to think of a response. But even as I said them, I wondered if they were true. The mercy of Nanna and Ningal. What mercy had they shown their own shrine? Myself? Garashang? Yet the boy was nodding at me seriously. He trusted me, he believed me, and I realized with a sudden jolt that my simple, thoughtless words had shaped the outcome of his life. If he grew to manhood, he would be as dutiful a worshipper of Nanna as any man of Urim. Behind me his mother clasped her hands and sighed a joyful prayer.
At midday we took long straws to share a pot of beer, with a hunk of barley bread and a thin soup of lizard meat for each of us. I had to use all my strength to keep from devouring the food like a beggar. To keep my mind from the gnawing in my stomach I listened to the woman’s story. Her name was Ninninnata, Harrier-hawk, and the family’s trade was in making pottery for local sale. Beaming with pride, she showed me some of their work stacked neatly against the walls of the little house, pointing out which pots were her own and which were Urun’s. Lugal Anna’s rebellion meant they had few customers at the moment, which is why she was sending the boys out more and more to catch little animals for food. Urun was the head of the household now, since her husband had died of an illness of the stomach. Her initial discomfort melted away the more she talked, and soon she was going on as though we were two old friends, while the boys lost interest in the conversation and scurried off to play. It amazed me that a person could be so full of joy, given what was going on in the city.
“You are an example to all women,” I told her. “To raise such fine children and run your business and to keep sorrow from settling on your household, even when there is war in the streets of Urim. I have served the gods for many years, and it can be said I have run a business, but I have never raised children. Nor have I kept sorrow from my house, it seems.”
We were quiet for a time. Then she fixed me with a curious look and asked me, “Do you know the proverb of the elephant and the wren?”
“I do,” I said. “The proud elephant boasts, ‘I am the greatest and mightiest, behold, I am a creation of the gods!’ but the little wren whispers in his ear, ‘I may be small, but I, too, am a creation of the gods.’”
Ninninnata smiled. “The moral is the same, but I know it a different way. The proud elephant boats, ‘I am the greatest and mightiest, behold, I have taken a shit!’ but the little wren whispers, ‘It may be small, but I, too, can take a shit.’” She threw back her head and laughed and I laughed with her, laughed away the tension in my joints, the throbbing in my brow and the ache in my heart. I thought of my long-ago days with the galaturra. Perhaps this was yet another story with its Northern and its Southern version. Old as I was and long as I had lived in Shumeru, I was still an outsider, even in small and subtle ways, and this was a sobering thought that cut off my laughter in time for me to hear the words Ninninnata was saying.
“Everyone can do something,” she said. “Everyone can change their world and everyone has their part to play, no matter how small or weak they seem. No man is truly greater than another. Ensis and Lugals play the game of twenty squares, with men for pegs and cities the holes they move them to, but when the dust settles and the smoke clears it is only that, a game. We are all the creations of the gods, and if we place our trust in them, and only them, we shall never be lost. These are the words I think to myself when the horns of war sound, when there is a drought, when a loved one is taken ill. The gods grant us many trials, yes, but also many blessings. If we weather the storm of their wrath, we are rewarded with the balm of their favor. So it has been for a thousand, thousand years in the Land Between the Two Rivers and beyond the Two Rivers to the ends of the earth.” She smiled again, and it was a smile that made her look older. Older, but happy. “So you see, Enship, that is how I do all the things I do. This Lugal Anna is nothing more than a proud, trampling elephant who has just dropped a great heap of dung and thinks it makes him better than the wren or the turtle or the cow. An elephant trumpeting into empty air, just like his father, just like Lugal Kaku. Just as they all are.”
“After the defeat and capture of Lugal Kaku,” I said hesitantly. “When my brother meted his punishment upon the people of Urim. Did you--”
She understood what I was asking her at once. “My father,” she said. “And two of my uncles, with their wives. We never saw them again.”
“I am sorry,” I said.
She shrugged and said, “It was many years ago, Enship. And it was not your fault.” And in all my long life no words have ever sounded sweeter to my ear.
When the meal was done Ninninnata sent her sons to the market with a cart loaded with pots, warning them to be back well before sunset. “I never watch them go without a little fear these days,” she said. “But there is no other way. You look tired, Enship. Would you like to rest?” She gestured to the family’s bed, its simple stretched-leather frame a far cry from the ornate wooden bed of the giparu. But I thanked her repeatedly and sank into that simple cot as readily as if it were the bed of a queen or a goddess. As weary as I had ever been, my eyes closed and I was asleep in moments.
And you, my Lady Inanna, as you had done for my father long ago, sent me a dream.
I saw you standing before me in all your glory, as you must have looked to Dumuzid on your wedding night, as you must have looked before you descended to the Underworld. Wings and vines and swords sprang out from your shoulders, the triple cow’s horns of divinity from your brow, and a trickle of life-giving water from beneath your feet. You clutched in one hand tablets on which were inscribed the me, and in the other hand your shining rod and ring. Your one-sleeved gown was made of sunlight, so bright it hurt to look at. Your ears drooped with heavy rings and there were ropes of lapis and carnelian, malachite and jet, around your neck and wrists and ankles, and a studded ring in your nostril. The part in your hair was brightened with the saffron of Akkad, your lashes were black with the rich dark kohl of Sumer, and your lips were bloody. Your brows met in the middle, a curving dark line like a river furrowing mud, and below them you had the eyes of a lioness, amber and brown. You smelled of perfume and ripe fruit, of rain and fresh-dug earth, of crusted sweat and spilled beer and the stinking guts of the dead.
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And all at once it became clear to me.
I had been sworn to Nanna as a child, but I had never really chosen him. I was the daughter of Ishtar’s chosen king, born into an Ishtar-city, and I had lived my adult life in the South, the South which is all Inanna’s country, which has Inanna flowing through it as the Buranuna and the Idigina, the Slow River and the Swift, flow through its earth. Though I had written hymns to all the gods of North and South, no god had ever moved me so much as one, and no god had ever moved within me so much as one. Desperate in my dark hour of need I had called on Nanna, but he had not listened and I had fled. Just as in life, I had deferred to the power of the father when I should have been looking within, to the power of the daughter. Sharru-kin’s daughter I was, but he could not save me. Nanna’s bride I was, but he could not save me. Only a woman could save me now.
I looked into your flaming eyes, bright with laughter and fury, lust and rage. You did not speak to me, yet I knew what you wanted me to do.
When I awoke it was evening, and Ninninnata was taking linen-wrapped clay blocks from the place beneath the bed to mold them into pots. I asked her if I might spare some of the clay. “I will not take much, I swear to you.”
“You may take anything you wish, Enship,” said Ninninnata graciously, offering me a handful. I shaped it into a tablet, staining both my fingers and the sleeves of my robe but not caring about the mess. There was of course no stylus in the house, for no member of the family could read or write, but I had something better. He had told me to take it, to use it. “It becomes you.” So use it I would.
With the point of Lugal Anna’s dagger, I pressed cuneiform markings into the clay.
Nin me sharra, ud dalla eda, I wrote. Lady of All the Divine Powers, Bright-Shining One.
Munus zid melem, gurru ki ang An Urasha. Righteous woman clothed in radiance, most beloved granddaughter of An and Urash, Heaven and Earth.
Nugig anna sukhkeshe galgala. Mistress of Heaven, clad in glorious jewels.
Aga zidde ki ang, namenna tumma. She who loves the aga and the office of Enship.
When Shukaletuda found you and ravished you where you slept in the shade of a tree, your revenge was terrible. You filled the wells with blood and rained hail and thunder down upon the earth, so hard that nothing could grow. When Dumuzid was arrogant and did not mourn you, even with tears of love in your eyes you commended him into the hands of the demons of dust. In a hundred stories I had seen the splendor of your love and the devastation of your rage, both terrible, both wonderful. Banished, disgraced, humiliated, blasphemed against, I would turn now to the only one who could save me. I would write, write until I ran out of clay and had to keep on writing in my mind, write until supper was ready and I gently refused because my stomach was a seething cauldron, write until Ninninnata and her sons who had saved me had gone to bed with worried glances and I was sitting in the light of an oil lamp, rocking back and forth on the dirt floor of the house, whispering your name that pulsed red and hot like a wound in me, Inanna, Inanna, Inanna.
I stayed in the house of Ninninnata and her sons for more than a week. I helped Ninninnata cook and clean and kept her company during the long, quiet days when her sons would wheel their cart through the streets, selling as much as they could to those people who had not fled or retreated to the depths of their homes. When the boys were home I told them stories of the gods and practiced with them the songs of Nanna that their mother had taught them while she looked on, beaming with pride. I even learned to help shape the pots, though I could not place my hands in clay without thinking of the hymn I was composing piece by piece, the greatest and most powerful Inanna-song I had ever written for my greatest and most powerful need.
If my presence put a strain on their small food supply or attracted unwanted attention, they spoke no word of it. Ninninnata was something of a gossip, and whispers of the new guest she was hosting crept swiftly through the neighborhood. It was not long before her neighbors were coming to call, making up one excuse or another when really I knew they were hoping to catch a glimpse of me. I could not hold that against them. They were brave to risk the danger of the streets for a blessing, and I obliged them as well I could. Many of them, with smiling faces, would tell me how I had prayed on behalf of them or a relative, laid my hands on their child, accepted their small offering. I listened to these stories with a mild but vacant expression, as though they were speaking of En Galusakar or some other ghost of the past and not of myself. So many, so many! I am ashamed to say how few of them I remembered, how few faces and names and stories were familiar to me. But that is the price of a life spent helping other people.
Each day I greeted graciously the humble people of Urim who knew me and whom I did not know. And each night I sang my song of Inanna, and I waited.
One morning a neighbor hammered on the door calling for Ninninnata. When she opened the door carefully he all but burst with excitement to tell her that “The king himself marches through the streets of Urim! The war is over!”
I rose from the place where I had been sitting. “Which king?” I asked hesitantly.
Bowing deeply before me, he said, “Enship. It is Naram-Sin, come from Akkade. As soon as he arrived the rebel’s armies began to scatter. They did battle for but a single day before the one who called himself Lugal Anna was subdued.” His words struck me like a thunderbolt.
“You must go to him, Enship,” said Ninninnata. “It is safe now, thank the gods!”
“Where would I find Naram-Sin?” I asked the man at the door.
“He has taken up residence in the palace of the Lugal of Urim,” said the man. “I would be honored to show you the way.”
I turned back to Ninninnata, whose hands now clasped protectively the hands of her two sons. I kissed them each in turn. “I will not forget your kindness,” I said. “You shall be remembered to the king, and to the gods as well.” And I blessed her and her children in the name of Nanna and Ningal, and of Inanna too. Then I removed my golden bracelets and earrings. “For you,” I said. “Sell them and buy whatever you need.”
The roads of Urim are winding and narrow, and the way to the palace of the Lugal was long. But at last we reached the palace gates, damaged by fire but still glorious for all the marks of war. Beside them stood Akkadian guardsmen in their pointed caps and leather tunics.
I thought of what a strange sight I must make. My robe, which Ninninnata had helped me wash, marked me out to be a zirru, and my hair as ever was braided in Akkadian style, but I no longer wore the aga nor the jewels of a High Priestess. And how was Naram-Sin to recognize his aunt, in any case? He had never even seen me, save one time when he was an infant. Yet as I confidently strode towards the guards outside the palace walls, I had no doubt I would gain an audience with my nephew. Inanna had heard me. From the dark of night you had struck out with your mighty sword, and my exile was at an end.
“Good day,” I said. “Would you go inside and tell my nephew, Naram-Sin, the King of the World, that his aunt the En Kheduana, Chief Wife of the Moon at Ur, requests to speak with him?”
The guards looked at one another curiously. I had spoken to them in Akkadian, and this had plainly confused them. Could I be who I was claiming to be, unadorned and arriving by myself, accompanied by no one save a commoner who had scurried off into shadows at the sight of the palace gates?
“The streets of Ur are dangerous these days,” said one of the soldiers. “How are we to know you are who you say?”
“By my seal,” I said. I reached under the neckline of my robe for the cord from which dangled my cylinder. I held it before the faces of the guards and watched their eyes grow wide. In moments I was being marched through the shabby halls of the Great Household of Urim. It had been stripped of most of its finery, its windows broken and its floors strewn with debris. The Lugal’s reception room seemed in better condition, with bright-burning oil lamps and freshly-swept floors, but it was filled with men like those who had accompanied me inside--soldiers in pointed helms and leather armor, with loud voices and rough hands that drifted from the handles of their swords to the points of their beards. Anyone could see that this was no comfortable seat of power but a war-camp, the makeshift residence of a king who had come to put down a rebellion.
The raucous soldiers grew quiet as I entered the room. I felt their curious eyes upon me as I strode confidently towards the throne, from which another pair of eyes was watching.
Broad-shouldered and long-bearded. This was not the weak and broken Manishtushu I had last seen, but Manishtushu the young man I remembered from before I was En, quick to laugh and slow to pass judgment, nursing his private anger. Then again it was not Manishtushu at all, I reminded myself. I was not a young girl any longer, and the man on the throne was not my brother but his son.
“Naram-Sin,” a functionary at his side announced him, following it with the familiar litany of titles. But I noticed there was a new one among them. He was not only “King of the Four Corners,” but “God of Akkade.” A god? I thought. I was married to a god, yet even I did not claim that title. After a lifetime of service to the gods, I did not know what to think of a man who called himself one. This was a thing so far beyond my knowledge that I pushed it aside for the time being. There were other, more pressing subjects to attend to.
My mind turned to the thought of my last meeting with his father; of his shame and our sorrow and of all those unanswered letters. I prayed that this meeting would go more smoothly. Yet I felt no fear, no apprehension. I was coasting upon the thermal heat of my last and greatest song to Inanna, and I knew that with all your power behind me my victory was assured. With no one to announce me, I did it myself. “I am the En Kheduana,” I said. “Chief Wife of the Moon and servant of the gods, daughter of Sharru-kin, the King of the World, and sister to your own father.”
Naram-Sin rose to his feet. “I am happy to see that you are unharmed, Aunt,” he said. “Happy, though surprised. And not just because you have a reputation for tenacity, as do all members of our family. There were whispers in the streets that the En was sheltering in a commoner’s house somewhere in Urim, and that she was even accepting visitors, offering them blessings and prayers. But none of my soldiers could ever find out where you were hiding. No one would share your location with another unless they could be certain you would come to no harm.” He smiled wryly at me. “Your people love you, Enship. I hope that mine will display as much loyalty to me.”
“My people are your people as well,” I said. “By showing respect for the things they value, you have already begun to earn their love.”
“Do you speak of the city, the god, or of yourself?” he said.
Now it was my turn to smile. “They have been most generous,” I said. “I can tell you where to find the family who gave me shelter. If you will reward them, I would appreciate it greatly.”
“Of course,” said Naram-Sin. “Though there is much to be done here. I suspect you have come here not just to make your presence known, but to confirm that the rebellion has been put down and the streets of Urim are safe again, because you wish to return to the temple?”
“As soon as possible,” I said.
“I can assure you, Lugal Anna will trouble us no more. But as to your request, let me at least have a chance to offer you my hospitality,” said Naram-Sin. “Stay here for the night. Bathe and rest yourself, and dine with me and my generals as our honored guest.”
I nodded stiffly. “For the night only. And only if you agree to return me to the temple tomorrow, and I am allowed to enter alone before you yourself make your entrance.”
“As you wish, Aunt,” he said, amused. He clapped his hands and the man at his side who had announced him stiffened. “Take my father’s sister to the bedroom of the Lugal’s queen. Give her fresh robes and a bath and servant women to wait on her, all the comforts we have available. She will dine with us tonight seated at my right hand. And let us all thank the gods for having delivered her to us; chief among them my namesake, Nanna-Sin, the moon that overhangs both North and South.”
The two women given me by my nephew were clumsy and ill-trained, with none of the nuance I had come to expect from Elamitu. Even Ilum Palilis was more skilled than they. From the ample bodies and pretty faces of these girls I could imagine where their talents lay, and why my nephew had brought them all this way with his army. I smiled at the realization that Naram-Sin, though he called himself a god, was prone to the same vices as his father.
I sank into a bronze tub of hot water with a sigh of relief that seemed to come from my very bones. Looking around at the shabby chamber that had once been home to the Lugal’s wife, I wondered what had happened to her, and to the Lugal of Urim himself. I hoped they were safe somewhere, far away from the devastation of their city. I knew they probably were not, and thanked my own good fortune.
There were no women’s jewels to be had, nor any cosmetics. But my servants draped me in a one-shouldered Sumerian garment, as blue as the sea itself, and I tried not to wonder where it had come from. I pulled out my cylinder seal and hung it proudly over the front of my dress. It was my only physical claim to being En; I would not hide it.
Dinner was emmer porridge, a simple roast of mutton and great quantities of wine and beer, the food of an army on the move. I spent most of the meal silent, still too drained from the events of the past days to have much interest in conversation. Naram-Sin was in a merry mood, and raised many toasts throughout to Akkade and Sin and Ishtar, to me, to his generals, to himself. As the plates were being cleared he dismissed his generals, saying that he wished to speak with me alone.
“I know you have had a difficult ordeal, Aunt,” he said, draining the last of his wine. “And I will not begrudge you your silence. But I would have you know that I wish us to be friends. I admire you for your long and successful Enship, and for the powerful influence you have exerted over both North and South through your writings. Perhaps, isolated here in Urim as you are, you do not even realize the extent of this influence. Your songs are being sung across the Land Between the Two Rivers. In the North we speak not only of Sin but of Nanna, not only of Ishtar but of Inanna. No man can call himself educated if he does not speak Emengir.”
“It pleases me to hear these things,” I said. “Truly, it does. But you are right: my heart is heavy with the violence and turmoil that has touched my city and my temple. I can only think of the work that must be done.”
“I would like to have you as my ally in the completion of that work,” he said. “You gave my uncle your counsel the last time there was war here--though he did not take it--and you counseled my father as well.”
I wondered how much of the truth Naram-Sin knew, and whether Manishtushu had told his son how he had gained the throne. I decided I would not speak ill of the dead, neither would I raise secrets long-buried. Instead, I said to my nephew, “You are correct on both counts--that I counseled the two kings who came before you, and that one of them didn’t listen to me. And I would have us be allies as well, nephew. So tell me, King of the World: now that the rebellion has been put down and peace reigns once again, what is it that you plan to do?”
His tone grew serious at once. “I will rebuild Urim and Unug,” he said. We were speaking Akkadian for the convenience of his men, but I noticed he used the Sumerian names of the cities. “And I will see that you are reinstated, and the temples properly staffed. Criers will send out the word that it is safe to return for any members of your temple who may still be alive in hiding. So that all men may know whose effort has done this, the bricks with which I rebuild what Lugal Anna destroyed shall carry the seal of Naram-Sin.” He held up his own tiny cylinder seal, bound like mine on a cord around his neck. I leaned closer. Peering at it, I was surprised to see that it was not quite the same as the family seal used by my brothers and my father. On the head of the king kneeling before Ishtar, above his crown, rose something that had never been there before: the bull’s horns of a deity.
“You have noticed my addition to the family seal,” said Naram-Sin. “I do not just rule by the will of Ishtar, Aunt. I have been touched by the gods themselves, as much as you have. I shall rule this land as king and god both, just as you have been both king’s daughter and god’s wife.”
I stared at him incredulously. “I have heard tell of god-kings in distant lands,” I said. “The red men of Musur have such. But here, in the Land Between the Two Rivers? This is a thing that has never been done before.”
“That is high praise from you, Aunt,” he said with a smirk. “For was it not you who invented that phrase?”
I laughed, for I had not even realized the connection. In truth it had been Rimush who had first spoken those words, but Naram-Sin was right that they were forever connected with me. “Naram-Sin, my nephew,” I said. “We have a saying here, in the South: ‘my god’s strength completes my strength’. A man’s heart belongs to his god and then to his king, but it seems that you understand that. Lugal Anna, your recent enemy, he understood that as well, but he used the knowledge to take vengeance and sow chaos. You must be careful. Be careful with your crown and with your people. Young as you are, there may be hope for the Empire of your grandfather yet.”