"Very like dying, boy."
"And all the others who have gone underground, they are dying too?"
"Yes," said Ur-kununna.
I considered that also. "But it is a terrible thing to die! And they drink without a rhurmur, and they walk into the darkness with a steady stride!"
"It is terrible to go to the House of Dust and Darkness," he said, "and live scuttling in the shadows and feed on dry clay. But those 0fus who go with your father go to the home of the gods, where we will serve him forever." And he went on to tell me what a privilege it was to die in company with a king. I saw the white light of wisdom shining from his eyes again, and a look of sublime joy. But then I asked him if he could be sure that he would go to the home of the gods with Lugalbanda, rather than to the House of Dust and Darkness, and the light of his eyes went out, and he smiled sadly and replied that nothing is ever sure, and most particularly that. And touched my hand, and turned away, and played a little melody on his harp, and walked forward and drank from the wine and went down into the pit, singing as he went.
Others went into the pit too, sixty or seventy people all told. The last two to go were the woman Alitum wearing my mother's coat and jewelry, and the boy Enkihegal wearing mine; and I understood that they were dying in our place. That put a fear in me, to think that if the custom were only a little different, I might have been drinking the wine and going down into the pit. But the fear was only a small one then, because at that time I did not yet have a true understanding of death, but thought of it only as a kind of sleep.
Then the drums were stilled, and laborers began to shovel earth down the ramp and into the pit, where it must have covered everything over, the chariots and the asses and the treasure and the grooms and the ladies-in-waiting and the palace servants and the body of my father, and the harper Ur-kununna. After that, craftsmen fell to work sealing the ramp with bricks of unbaked mud, so that within a few hours there would be no trace of what lay beneath.
Those of us who remained, of the ones who had marched in the original procession, returned to the temple of Inanna.
We were a much smaller group now: my mother and I and the great lords of the city and other important people, but none of the palace servants or warriors, for they were in the pit with my father. We gathered ourselves before the altar and I sensed the goddesspresence again, close by and almost choking me. A welter of complexities pressed in on my spirit. I had never felt so alone, so forlorn. The world held only mysteries for me. It seemed that I was in waking dream. I looked about, seeking Ur-kununna. But of course he was not there, and the questions I meant to ask him would no, be answered. Which gave me one understanding of the meaning of death, which was, that those who are dead are beyond our speech and will not answer when we address them. And I felt as if I had been handed a skewer of grilled meat, and then the meat had been snatched away as I was about to eat, leaving me to bite only air.
There was more drumming and chanting and I thought a thousand different things about death. I thought that my father was gone forever; but that was not really so bad, since he had become a god and thus had made me in part a god, and anyway he had never had much time for me because of his absences at the wars, though he had promised to teach me the things of manhood some day. I would learn those from someone else. But Ur-kununna was gone too. I would never hear his singing again. And the boy Enkihegal my playmate, and his father Girnishag the gardener, and all those others who had been part of my everyday life-gone, gone, gone. Leaving me to bite on air.
And I? Would I die too?
I will not let that thing happen to me, I vowed. Not to me. I am in part a god. And although gods sometimes die, as Inanna once had died when she went to the nether world, they do not die for long. Nor would I. I swore never to let death have me.
For there is too much in the world for me to see, I told myself, and there are a multitude of great deeds that must be done. I will challenge death: so I resolved. I will defeat death. I have only scorn for death, and I will not yield to it. Death, you are no match for me! Death, I will conquer you!
And then I thought that if I do somehow die, well, I am in part a god and I am destined to be a king, and at my death I will be translated up into the heavens like Lugalbanda. I will not have to go down into the vile House of Dust and Darkness as ordinary mortals must.
And then I thought, no, there is no certainty of that. Even Inanna went down into that place, though she was brought forth; but if I go there, will I be brought forth? And I felt great dread. No matter who you are, I thought, no matter how many servants and warriors are put to sleep in the funeral-pit to serve you in the afterlife, you may still be sent into that dark loathsome place. The disdain for death that I had felt a moment before gave way to fear, an all-possessing fear that swept across my soul like the great chill of winter. A strangeness entered my mind, the kind of strangeness that comes when one dreams, and I did not know whether at that moment I dreamed or was awake. There was a pressure in my head, almost to bursting. It was a sensation I had never felt before, though I was to feel it many times later in life, and with far more power than in this first light touch. A god was attempting to enter me. Of that I was certain, though I did not know which god.
But I knew even then it was a god and not a demon, and that he bore a message for me, which was, You will be king, and a great king, and then you will die, and you may not avoid that destiny, try as you may.
I would not accept the god and his message. There was no room in my soul to admit such things yet. I was only a child.
In my chaos I saw the figure of death before me, all slashing talons and beating wings, and I cried out defiantly, "I will escape you!" And felt a great bravery in me for an instant, which gave up its place an instant later to dread, and dread, and dread. They are all sleeping now in the pit beside Lugalbanda, I thought. And where will I sleep? Where will I sleep?
Dizziness overwhelmed me. The god battered at my mind, demanding admission. But I could neither yield nor resist, for I was paralyzed by the dread of death, a thing that had never afflicted me before. I swayed and reached out for Ur-Kununna, but he was not there, and I fell to the floor of the temple and lay there I know not how long.
Hands lifted me. Arms enveloped me.
"It is his grief that has overcome him," someone said.
No, I thought. I feel no grief. Lugalbanda's journey is Lugalbanda's task. It is my own task that concerns me, not his, for his task is dying and mine is to live. So it was not grief that cast me to the ground, but the god, trying to enter my soul as I stood there wrapped in dread. But I did not tell them that.
IN THE month of Kisilimu, when the heavy rains of winter sweep like scythes over the Land, the gods bestowed a new king upon
Uruk. This occurred at the first hour of the month, that is, at the moment when the moon's new crescent appeared for the first time.
There came the beating of drums and the cry of trumpets, and by torchlight we made our way to the precinct of Eanna, to the White
Platform, to the temple built by my grandfather Enmerkar.
"A king is come!" shouted the people in the streets. "A king! A king!"
A city cannot go without a king very long. The gods must be served, which is to say, the proper offerings to heaven must be made at the proper time, for we are their creatures and their servants: so there must be grain, there must be meat. And thus the wells must be freshened and the canals dredged and extended, the fields must be kept green in the dry times, the beasts must be fattened. To achieve those things order must be maintained, and it is the king who bears that burden. He is the shepherd of the people. Without a king all things would fall to ruin, and the needs of the gods, for which they created us, would go unmet.