At first he was put to work as a kitchen slave, carrying the great masses of bread from the oven, cleaning the floors and even learning to milk one of the temple goats. But his active mind often strayed from such tasks. He did not always remember to remove the bread from the oven in time, so that it burned and tasted bad. When he brought in a pail of milk with fresh droppings in it the priest in charge became very upset for no good reason. But he did not beat Enkidu, strangely.
Instead, the priest talked with him, inquiring the reason for his carelessness. This was not the one who had taken him slave in payment for his father’s debt, but a gentler man. Still, Enkidu did not dare tell him about his odd shedu, that had come to him amid the ruins of Nineveh and bade him find Aten. Aten was surely a rival god, and that could anger Marduk. But he did confess his ambitions: to have fine clothing and to be a literate man, set apart from the common peasants.
Intrigued, the priest brought a tablet bearing lines of sharp-pointed imprints. “Like this?” he asked softly, and Enkidu nodded, abashed at his own presumption, for not even his father could read. But the shedu was nagging him again, suggesting his answers. The kind priest questioned him further, then led him to another part of the temple, one Enkidu had not seen before. Here clay block-benches were fixed to the floor, and beside each was a large earthenware receptacle. Boys of various ages sat on these benches and worked busily on soft clay tablets before them, while a schoolmaster stood in front and barked directions.
“These boys are learning to be scribes,” the priest explained. “It is a very difficult trade, Enkidu, and many years will pass before they graduate. Some will fail to learn well enough and will be sent home in disgrace. Tupshar here is a hard master. But he will treat you fairly if you try hard. Do you wish to undertake this training?”
Enkidu stared wide-eyed at the jars containing clay, at the little water-troughs set in the benches, at the busy styli. He saw a boy sharply reprimanded for an inconspicuous error. Another snickered, and was rapped smartly on the arm. He heard loud instructions: words read by the master, that the boys struggled to record just so in their soft tablets, carefully imprinting the little wedge marks on the surface. He saw the sweat gleaming in the faces of many, though they were only sitting still and the room was cool, and he knew that they were tense and afraid of Tupshar. He had had no idea that literacy was so difficult to achieve.
The shedu prompted him. “Yes.”
“Then remain here,” the priest said quietly. “I will inquire again in a few days. It is a demanding school, and none of these boys is slave.”
Indeed they were not. Wealthy men had sent their sons to this school attached to the temple of Marduk at Calah, and these boys did not fancy the equal company of a branded slave. But Tupshar tolerated no inequalities; all felt the weight of his discipline alike.
Enkidu realized that his shedu was on the job. He had asked it to repay his family’s debt, and the debt had been paid. He had asked it to make him literate—and here he was, in training to be a scribe. He had supposed the gifts would be granted outright, if at all; now he understood that they were given only when he was willing to work for them. The shedu merely showed the way. In time it would make him free and rich, also—and then he would go in search of the god Aten.
Beside this dream, the taunts of his fellows were as nothing. He applied himself with gusto to writing and mathematics and all other studies deemed essential to men of quality. Enkidu learned rapidly and became, in time, Tupshar’s star pupil.
And the shedu was ever there, guiding him through the moments of crisis, nagging him to do better. He cursed it frequently, but in the end obeyed, for when he did what it wanted it left him alone. Without it, he realized grudgingly, he would never have come as far as he had.
As a young man he was given leave to return to his village for a visit. He remained a slave, while the villagers were free—but he wore rich robes now and spoke with eloquence and had a personal attendant, while the villagers were ignorant and poor. His father was dead and his mother and one sister had been sold outside the village in cancellation of new debts dating from the year the barley harvest failed. His other sister was now big with her third or fourth child and barely remembered him.
Enkidu was almost unable to converse with anyone in his home village, for no one there knew anything of mathematics, astronomy, economics or other civilized disciplines. They only knew how to irrigate their fields (incompetently), cultivate their grain (wastefully), and patch their squalid huts (leakily) with palm boughs. He observed the thriving lice that inhabited their hair, the snakes and rodents that shared their sweltering sun-baked domiciles, and their ubiquitous naked and hungry children. He turned away.
Even his old home was gone, the sundried bricks dissolved in one of the floods. He had all his childhood wishes, now—but he had lost the world he had known. Nothing remained for him but his quest for Aten.
When his host was twelve years old, NK-2 took note of a shift in the balance of contemporary power: Cyrus the Persian threw off his Mede overlord and went on to conquer the Mede empire itself. Four years later Cyrus also conquered Lydia, to the other side of Babylonia. Now Cyrus was considering new conquest. It was time to locate A-10.
CHAPTER 3.
A newly impaled criminal kicked away his life beside the road to Babylon. The vertical pole on which the naked man was mounted dug slowly into his intestines. Enkidu paused to look, for he had not seen many such executions. This particular punishment was less common now than during the generations of Assyria—but specialists still knew exactly how to mount a felon so that he would not die too quickly, despite the pointed shaft that supported his torso via the anus.
A child dashed up to tug at one of the hanging feet. The mother hauled him back, scolding; she was afraid her baby would get tainted blood on his hands and be contaminated. Genii were always present, looking for a chance to take over the body of a careless person.
Enkidu realized he had led too sheltered a life. He was sickened by this display. Surely a quick death would have sufficed; why make any man suffer so deliberately?
He turned south and put the matter out of his mind. He had to, lest it torment him unduly. Executions were not his business.
The road to Babylon continued southward from the left bank of the Euphrates River, straight through the open gate of the invasion-proof outer ramparts and on into the ground between the walls. Enkidu was footsore and short of temper, and that roadside scene had not improved his outlook.
It was later than he had planned to arrive at this city at the center of the world. He would barely have time to seek out Aten’s temple before nightfall. But Enkidu was glad to be so nearly there. His spirits rose as he passed through the outer gates. Surely it would not take him too long to find it. Once he got on the Processional Way…
He discovered with new wonder that the road stretched ahead for more than a thousand paces before reaching the walls of the city-proper. Already it was clear that Babylon was vaster than he had imagined. Open barley fields, great groves of palms—within the outer walls!
He thought of Cyrus the Persian, whom Babylon had expected for some years now. When he came—if he came—Cyrus would find the walls stout. If he should actually succeed in breaking through the outer wall, he would still be excluded from the city proper. This entire area could be flooded at will, Enkidu had heard, though he had not realized the scope of the project. He saw that ground level was scarcely higher than the river here, and a large canal cut through the center of the enclosure.