Babylon's Thirst

Babylon’s Thirst

  By Jacob Magnus

  Copyright 2011 Jacob Magnus

  "Daddy," The little boy ran to him, but today he was too weary to wave his arms. Days of thirst and nights of hunger had taken the softness from his cheeks and belly. His arms were twigs, almost dry enough to be sticks for the fire. Enkidu put down his hoe and wiped his dusty hands on his rough linen tunic. The sight of his boy moistened his eyes, and he marvelled that his body had any tears left.

  "Little Enki," he said, "you should be helping your mother. Is it good to leave all the work to us ancients?"

  "Daddy," Little Enki's piping voice was broken to a whisper by his parched lips and throat, "Mother says there is not water enough to make bricks."

  "No good drinking water," Enkidu said, "but stinking water enough from the marsh," of that, he thought, we have enough.

  "But it is gone, daddy," the boy said, "taken up by Shamash. The sun has drunk it all."

  "All gone?"

  "Every little drop."

  Enkidu looked around him. The land was a scrub, once-rich fields reduced to dust and desert. His family had been rich in land, and enjoyed abundant food. Then the canals, one the pride of Babylon, had fallen into disrepair. Nabopolassar, the Chaldean invader, had forbidden all repair of the old waterways, preferring to weaken his captive nation more by hunger than by the sword. But two years without proper irrigation had reduced the farms about Babylon almost to a desert. Enkidu had sold his ancestral land strip by strip, as he strove to bring food for his family. Without water, he could not even make mud bricks, and they bought scanty lice-ridden meat.

  Little Enki shaded dark eyes with a skeletal hand as he looked up at his father. Enkidu ground his teeth and forced his face to smile. "Run on home, now, boy. I've work to do."

  "Yes, daddy..." The boy didn't move. Enkidu saw the yearning in his eyes as they flicked between his father and the earthenware jug by his feet. It held his day's ration of drinking water, a small treasure in the dry land.

  Enkidu licked his dry lips with a rasping tongue, and held back the urge to send the boy away. "Flesh of my flesh," he said, "drink your fill," and he handed the jug to the child. Enki gulped at it, but he was careful not to spill any. Still, he left little, too young to master his thirst.

  "Now go home, boy, and tell your mother I will be in the city this day."

  "To Babylon?" The boy's mouth was a circle; he had never left the farm.

  "Where else? Do you think I will walk to Nineveh?" He laughed, and tousled his son's hair. "Go home, son." Little Enki nodded, and, refreshed by the drink, set off running, but he slowed before long to the familiar, listless amble.

  Again, Enkidu found his tears.

  ...

  The vast square tower of the Ishtar gate sparkled blue in the sun. It stood much higher than the broad walls of Babylon, and Enkidu saw it from a long way off as he sweated on the road to the city. The long walk grew a thirst in him, one he couldn't slake. Instead he held a pebble in his mouth and sucked it to make the saliva flow, what little he had. He remembered when the land all about was lush green fields, and the highway a bustling throng. Today the road was as desolate as the land. When he drew closer, the pink and green of the city wall dazzled his eyes and made his heart sing. He had been born, long before, in sight of those walls, and he felt immense pride to know he was a man of the great city.

  Closer still, he came under the glower of bulls and dragons, carven guardians of the old city, gazing down with fierce eyes from every tower along the walls. The old monsters had frightened him as a child, and strengthened his heart as a man, until the invader had come and taken the city. Nabopolassar did not fear bulls and dragons, but men feared him. He was a breaker of men, not as fiendish as the Assyrians, but ready enough with the spear and the impaling spike. He was also the one man who could save Enkidu's family, and his lands.

  "What strength you have left," he prayed to the ancient guardians, "grant it me now, a son of this earth. I must face the usurper, against whom your claws and hooves failed, but please..." He choked on the words, as images burned in his mind, of his son and dear wife, lying skeletons on dead ground. "Please..."

  Past the gate, he entered on Processional Way, the broad road, paved with limestone, that ran across the city. On his left were mud-brick apartments four-stories tall. Further up on his right towered the holy ziggurat, Etemenanki, a blazing rainbow in brick. That, at least, the invader would not tarnish. Though he let the famine of Shamash stalk his subjects, he dared not risk the wrath of Marduk. But Nabopolassar had shown the gods would endure his wrath against their people; he had placed stakes in a row along the edge of the temple precinct. He had left his enemies on the stakes, stiff bodies black with buzzing swarms of flies and rank with the odour of rotting flesh. Enkidu felt bile rise in his throat, and a chill ran through his body. The sun made his head pound, and dizziness threatened to topple him. Grimacing, he forced himself to look on the decaying corpses. Before the day was out, he could be one more of them. But if he failed, if he could not persuade Nabopolassar to repair the canals, to nourish the parched land, then he, his wife, and his little son, would all of them be no better off than those impaled bodies. "If that is the price, so be it," he swore, "but Marduk, and Ishtar, and fiery Shamash, watching on high, if you are willing to see Babylon restored, see that I work not in vain."

  ...

  Brick lions, painted in red, yellow, and white, flanked the length of Processional Way, and up ahead he could see where Adad Street turned off it, heading right between the ziggurat and the temple of Marduk. If he went that way, he would come to the bridge, and the river Euphrates. The thought of it, the memory of those sweet waters, almost broke his will. He longed to forget his family and his farm, forget his task and his fate, to run to the river and throw himself in, drinking that flowing crystal with every inch of his skin. There ran his salvation, in the sparkling waters of the life-giving river. If Nabopolassar had just let it flow, had just let the canals run with water, Enkidu could have gone on with his life, raising his crops, loving his wife, and teaching his son to be a man. He would still have his lands, his neighbours would not have bargained them away strip by strip for the price of a little bread, gouging and gouging until he was broken down to scraping dead earth, eating his hope, and weeping dry tears.

  The temptation of the river passed. He bowed his head, and turned right into the grounds of the palace.

  At the gate of the palace, he was stopped. "What business have you with the emperor of Chaldea?" The guard wore a plain linen tunic, but it was unstained white, and trimmed with greased leather. He wore a leather cap against the sun, and long and sharp was his bronze spear.

  "My farm is dry," said Enkidu.

  "So are my lips," said the guard.

  "Please, I come only to beg a favour."

  "Has the dusty earth filled your ears? Has Shamash sucked out your brain as well as your sweat?"

  "Please, noble lord," said Enkidu, "I have nothing to give you, for I have nothing myself but a patch of dying earth."

  "Nothing brings nothing."

  "You are a son of Babylon," Enkidu leaned in to the guard, "not one of these foreigners. You carry his spear, now, but hands like those were born holding a hoe. Will you leave your brother to the desert?"

  The guard looked at his old sandals, and the patches on his tunic. "Water you want, eh?" He spat on the flagstones. "Drink up, farmer, that's better than you'll get from this king." He stepped aside, and jerked his head at the open gate.

  Enkidu thanked him, and hurried inside.

  ...

  Most houses were built of brick in a hollow square, with windows facing in, to catch sunlight and look on an open courtyard. The square courtyard
meant a man, his wife, and their children, could always rest in shade, protected from the fierce sun. Having their windows facing inward also protected them from thieves. The palace was built on the same plan, but on a massive scale, and covered all over with thousands of brilliant enamel beads, blue, pink, and red to ward off evil, and monstrous beasts looked out on the city. Whereas most houses were quite hollow and open in the centre, the old king had built a grand hall, with an open court on the floor above.

  The hall was lit with countless tapers, and polished bronze mirrors reflected sunlight in from light wells, shafts cut at an angle through the ceiling. They could have been replaced with simple windows, but the old king, too, had feared thieves, and worse kinds of men. The walls were covered in rainbow mosaics, and statues of warlike Marduk and seductive