Heavy thoughts, for so young a child, even a child that is the so of a king, and who is two parts god and only one part mortal. I w: filled with despair. Alone I went one day to the side Of the city b the river, and peered over the wall and saw the dead bodies floatin in the water, the corpses of those who could not afford a burial. An I thought, it is all the same, beggar or king, king or beggar, an there is no meaning anywhere. Dark thoughts! But after a time I pu them from my mind. I was young. I could not brood forever o~ such things.
Later I saw the truth within the truth: that even though the god are as ruthless and as capricious as ourselves, it is also the case tha we can make ourselves as exalted as gods. But that lesson was one that I was a long time in learning.
BECAUSE THERE is divine blood within me, I grew swiftly to extraordinary size and strength. When I was nine I was bigger than any of the boys in the little temple-school, and I had no more trouble with the likes of Bir-hurturre and Zabardi-bunugga. Indeed they looked to me as their leader, and played the games I called for playing, and gave me the first seat in everything. The only difference between us was that they had hair on their bodies and their cheeks, and I did not.
I went to a sage in the Kullab district and bought from him, for ninety se of silver and half a sila of good wine, a potion made of powdered juniper root, cassia juice, antimony, lime, and some other things, which was meant to hasten the onset of manhood. I rubbed this stuff under my arms and around my loins, and it burned like a thousand devils. But soon hair was sprouting on me as thickly as on any warrior.
Dumuzi launched military campaigns against Aratta, against the city of Kish, and against the wild Martu tribesmen of the desert. I was too young t0 take part in these wars. But already I was training every day in the skills of the javelin, the sword, the mace, and the axe. On account of my size the other boys were afraid to stand forth on the training-grounds against me, and I had to practice with the young men. When dueling with axes one day with a warrior named Abbasagga, I split his shield in half at a single blow, and he threw down his weapon and ran from the field. After that it was hard for me to find opponents, even among the men. For a time I went off by myself and studied the art of the bow and arrow, although that is a weapon used only by hunters, not by warriors. The first bow that was made for me was too weak, and I snapped it as I tried to draw it; then I bought a costly bow of several woods cunningly laminated together, cedar and mulberry and fir and willow, which better served my purpose. I still have it.
Another thing I learned was the art of building. I studied the mixing of mastics and mortars out of bitumen and other kinds of pitch, the making of bricks, the plastering and painting of walls, and many another humble thing, and in the full heat of day I labored sweating among the artisans, deepening my skills. One reason I did this is that it is our custom to educate princes in such things, so that they can play their proper roles in the construction and dedication of new buildings and walls. In other lands, I know, princes and kings do nothing but ride and hunt and have sport with women, but things are not like that here. Above and beyond the matter of the responsibilities I expected one day to have to assume, though, I found keen pleasure in mastering those crafts. To make bricks and set them in courses to form a wall gave me a powerful sense of accomplishment, as strong as any that I have had from more heroic endeavors: in some ways stronger, perhaps. And there was something altogether voluptuous about the making of bricks, the mixing of the clay and straw, the pressing of the wet clay into the mould, the scooping away of the excess with the side of my hand.
Of course, there are other and more obvious sources of pleasure, and other sensations more immediately voluptuous. I began my education in those things early also.
My first teacher was a little squint-eyed goat-herder I met in the Street of the Scorpion on a day in late winter. I was ten or eleven and she, I suppose, must have been a bit older than that, since she had breasts, and hair down below. She begged for the bit of golden braid I had wound in my hair, and I said, "What will you give me for it?" and she laughed and said, "Come with me."
In a dark cellar atop a pile of old damp straw she earned the price of the braid, tllough what we did was more like wrestling than coupling. I am not even certain that I entered her that day, so much of a novice was I. But we met two or three more times, and I know that what we did on those occasions was the true deed. I never asked her name or told her mine. She reeked of goat's milk and goat's urine, and her face was coarse and her dark skin was blemished, and she wriggled and writhed in my arms like some slippery creature of the river. But when! embraced her she seemed as beautiful as Inanna, and the pleasure she gave me struck straight through me like the lightning of Enlil. So was I initiated into the great mystery, a little earlier than such things are supposed to happen, and in a highly irregular way.
There were many more after her. The city was full of smudgefaced little girls willing to go with a sturdy young prince for an hour, and I must have sampled half of them.
Then I discovered that the same delights, minus the rank odors and the other little drawbacks, could be had from girls of a higher dass. Few refused me, and those who did, I think, said no only out of fear of discovery and punishment. For my part I could never have enough: I felt that when my body quivered with that ecstasy I was entering into direct communion with the gods. It was like being hurled straightaway into the sacred domain. And is that not the truth? The act of engendering is the way of entry into all that is holy. Until you have done it, you dwell outside the bounds of civilization; you are little more than a beast. The joining of flesh and spirit in that act is the thing that brings us close to thegods. I found myself thinking every time, in that wild instant just before the pouring forth of my seed, that this was no ordinary girl of Uruk beneath me, but fiery Inanna herself-the goddess, not the priestess. It is a sacred business.
Apart from all such lofty considerations, I should add that I noticed, very early, that coupling had a wondrous way of calming my spirit. For I boiled then, and for many years thereafter, with turbulent inner frenzies that I scarcely understood and against which I had no defense. I think that hot lust of mine sprang not only from the ordinary passiofis of the flesh but from something deeper and darker, which was the painful loneliness that assailed me like a wolf in the darkness. Often I felt myself to be the only living being in a world of chilly phantoms. Having no father, no brother, no real friendM set apart from all others by the godlike strangeness that any simpleton could see lay upon me-I found myself engulfed in a bewildering emptiness of the soul. It stung me and burned me like mountain ice against my skin. So I reached toward women and girls for the only comfort I could find. The fulfillment of passion did at least give me a few hours of respite from that agitation of the spirit.
When I was a month short of twelve one of my uncles, observing in the baths that my body had become that of a man, told me, "We will go to the temple cloister this afternoon. I think the time is overdue for you."
I knew what he meant. And I did not have the heart to tell him that I had not waited for a proper initiation.