2250 BCE

Urim, House of the Great Light, Giparu of the En

Two nights ago I saw again my nephew, the king and the god. He is making a state visit to Urim to discuss business with the new Lugal, but also on behalf of his daughter, whom he would groom as my successor.

I sat with the daughter of Naram-Sin until late, talking of my Enship and my life’s work. Her mother is of the Black-Headed People, and the girl, though she is a bit skinny, has the true black hair of a Southern lady. Her Emengir is very fine: her tutors in Akkade have even contrived to teach her a bit of Emesal. She does not remind me of any of the men in our family, but her reserve puts me in mind of my mother Tashlultum. Then again, I was always good at playing the proper princess in public when my mind was thinking otherwise, so perhaps the girl is not so mild as she seems. Perhaps she has a little of our family’s fire, tempered, I hope, with a little of our compassion as well. She did not speak much last night, but she listened, and for that I am forever grateful. I talked until I did not realize I was still talking, and as I talked it brought back to me the ones I have lost: both the people I once knew and the people I once was. Child, maiden, woman, crone, priestess, princess, outcast, triumphant. I wondered how many of these things she would become in time.

Her name is Tanittu-kullatu, Praising Everything, but that is Northern-talk and the priests will wash it away in a flood of perfume down the nape of her neck when she takes the holy orders. Dutiful girl that she is, she has already chosen a sacerdotal name: after I die she will become the En Menanna, High Priestess Silence of the Moon. It is a name that suits both her and him, for I have rarely encountered a better listener than either my husband the god, or my grandniece his future bride. She has a markedly long neck and the round cow’s-eyes that any maiden would be envious of. There are young men in Akkade whose hearts are already breaking for her, I am sure of it. But it will be easier for her than it was for me. Her father is no founder or conqueror but the fourth of a dynasty, its kingdom and its ways established. King and god both, Naram-Sin is well-loved and well-feared. The people of Urim shall not begrudge another Northern En, and the future En Menanna was raised in Akkade knowing she would die in Urim. I have even heard that her sisters are to become High Priestesses in other cities. It seems the precedents set by my family and myself are already being followed. If Naram-Sin’s throne has been comfortably warmed by father, uncle and grandfather, perhaps my little grandniece’s throne, if such it can be called, has been warmed for her by me, her way made easier by my own. Perhaps that has been the whole purpose of my Enship, and when I thought I was doing a thing for myself, really it was for her. Let it never be said I did not care about my family. Let it never be said I am not Sharru-kin’s daughter.

Tanittu, my successor. The closest to a child I will ever have, in truth. She has been granted a gift that I never was, for I would have liked to know En Galusakar, and heard about her duties, her trials, her life. I would have liked to know what it was to be En before I was En, but that is the power of Inanna, who changes us from one thing to another before we even realize the change has been made.

I lie down in the giparu among the bodies of dead Ens, not so different from my own body except that mine breathes yet, and theirs do not. I lie down attended by the dry-wind gidim of my past, and think of my own death. I do not fear it. I have faced it a thousand times, I have seen the deaths of others, I have heard Lugal Anna scraping the door of my bedchamber. I shall never know fear of death again.

When I die, I will see them all who went before me. Dubsang, Baranamtarra, Ugunu. My sweet Igiru, who was like a mother to me. Manishtushu, proud, aching, and Rimush with a dagger in his chest and pain in his eyes. My mother, overgrown with weeds. My father will be seated at the right hand of Gilgamesh himself, I do not doubt, or else as a judge among the Anunnaki, the Elder Gods enthroned in the Underworld. But I shall look on them with your fire and make them scatter like scudding bats, and I shall have no fear of them.

I will embrace the women I meet. En Galusakar whose face I never knew will thank me for my offerings and introduce me to the numberless Ens who slept beneath my bed, and I will kiss them in turn and call them sister. I shall take mighty Kug-Bau by the hand and ask if she was really an alewife before she was a queen. I shall walk with Puabi and speak to her as an equal, and I shall ask her fifty ladies if they drank poison and lay down in her sepulchre, or if a lamentation-priest crushed their skulls. I can scarcely imagine there are galaturra in the House of Dust, for their joy and their strength seems immortal, but I know that they grow old and die like men and women do. And when I see Eresh-gunu and Inanna-shudug and my Garashang, I shall dance and clap my hands as they taught me. I shall take the hands of all of them and we shall dance as if we were young, dance until the Great Above crushes the Great Below and Ereshkigal is Inanna and the dead are the living.

When I die, Great Lady, only my poems and you will remain. Let them be sung forever. Let them still be sung when the sea draws back from Urim and the House of the Great Light is darkness and dust, so that everyone will remember who I was. Let it be remembered that I was she, En Kheduana, a thousand things, and two, and one, and that I loved a thousand gods in my time, and two, and one, only one. Let it be remembered that I was a woman. You understand that better than most gods. For I am old, my Lady Inanna, and weary with the weight of hymns and miracles, prayers and sacrifice, wars and dying. I hear Your sister’s wings beating on the wind for me. But the stylus fits easily in my hand nowadays, and my bed feels soft and warm, and I am not afraid.