In those ancient days, night was not so afraid of man. Once Shamash flew between the peaks of Mashu and returned to the earth to rest, darkness came upon the land like such a revelation that it was believed that the world had no true form and that each day man took shape anew in the sunlight.

En-Kus was a man of few means and many promises. Some he made to the gods. “O gods before you shall lie loaves of fine emmer bread. On your tables I will leave stews of lamb and whole oxen adorned with clotted cream. At your feet I shall drizzle honey and date. All this I will give unto you when I find my fortune in the sands and rock. Guide me to the veins of limestone in the desert where the deep blue stones lie. Guide me to the old world wadis where Shamash’s burning quartz rests. Guide me to the base of the foothills where long-gone fires from the underworld burned and ferry into my hands such rocks that I may find great wealth unrivaled by all the merchants of Ur”.

When they heard this, The Gods laughed amongst themselves. “Poor En-Kus. He lays out a feast of nothing and asks of us the world. Should we not heed him? The man who seeks when there is little and sleeps when there is much?”

En-Kus could not know that the tables of The Gods had long been set with fine emmer bread and stews of lamb and whole oxen adorned with clotted cream given unto them in worship by the merchants of Great Ur. Men who had made their abundance without heavenly intercession.

And so, The Gods paid him no mind.

Yet En-Kus, a man of few means and many promises, could not know such things and carried on. He made promises to his children and wife. “O wife, O daughter, O son, when I find my fortune in the sands and rock you shall want for nothing. My wife will be adorned in the garments of the sea and jewelry fastened from deep blue stones. She shall wear rings of gold that dance so wildly in Shamash’s light that the men and women will whisper as she passes. ‘So beautiful is the wife of En-Kus, how heavenly her life must be.’ And my daughter, O my daughter, I can see you grasping on to your mother’s linen dress as you walk through the market. So beautiful and worldly you will seem that you will have a bounty of wealthy suitors. Princes from each city will travel great distances to curry your favor and you will have your pick of the most handsome and kind of them all. And my son, O my son, you will eat well and train so vigorously under the mightiest of warriors and most learned of scholars that by the time you are a man you will be the likeness of Gilgamesh himself. In beauty you shall have no equal and you will stand so terrible like a wild bull that when you wager yourself against the young men of the world in contest they will tremble before you.”

But when he had left into the sands and rock to secure his fortune En-Kus’ wife often giggled with her children. “Poor En-Kus who promises us the world and returns with nothing. Will he purchase my linens with the meager salt he finds in the dried basins? Will suitors travel from lands afar for his daughter’s dowry of mere barley? Will he pay the warriors of great Ur in dates to train his son? He must think us unhappy to say such things, but we have not fled from him yet.”

But En-Kus, a man of few means and many promises, never heard his wife’s laughter and so he set out each morning atop his mule in search of his fortune in the sands and rock.

The mule was a young one. An expenditure En-Kus’s family could not afford but were burdened with at the whim of a confidence En-Kus saw in the creature as it traveled through the market. When he presented the mule before his children, he bade them to look deeply into its eyes. He claimed the mule was a new soul and its pupils were a window into Nammu, the sea from which each man and each god before him were wrought. The children had stared deeply, in awe of the thing. But En-Kus’ wife, Šu-Niginna, whose looms were silent for want of wool, spat. She knew that meals foraged were meals forgotten and the days to come would fold into one another in hunger ~~like the dress of some great beauty.~~

But the mule knew not of such things and so carried En-Kus along the well-worn goat path into the sands and rock.

The two excitable pilgrims, occupied each with the churnings of their respective souls, ventured outwards from the town and descended along the well-worn goat path towards a fine blue river that bore the name of some ancient Christ and served the people of their time as a battlement against the ceaseless famine and war of the desert. On the banks of the Christ River En-Kus and his mammalian courier bore witness to a haunted procession. The masses of which proclaimed awful mourning for Dumuzi, the infant god, who was married each year before the surplus grew and slain again when the scythe threshed the last wheat from the chaff. The mule stooped low its head and grazed upon the turf as they reached the river’s verge. An imbecile’s reverence for the godly funeral upstream.

hilarion

hilarion