Ur
How Terah wished he had a torch! It might have held off the dogs, but it also would have enabled him to see the full dimensions of the cave. Just by feeling about in the inky blackness, he could tell it was huge. Small cavaties here and there opened to larger areas—so many that Terah had to be careful to retrace his steps to find his way out.
When he finally returned to the mouth of the cave, he hesitated before emerging, listening for danger and assessing his injuries in the moonlight. No part of his body had been spared. He may have broken a left toe. The tops of both feet were deeply scraped. He worried that right ankle might be broken. The wounds on his shins now had counterparts on his calves. The first dog had bit deep into his left backside, drawing blood that stuck to his tunic. Each time he pulled the material away brought a stab of pain.
Terah’s lower back ached as if it had taken the brunt of the blows on his fall to the cave floor. His arms bore nicks and tears that oozed. His shoulder had suffered the deepest bite, and a circle of blood on his garment had already grown as large as his head. Terah also felt pain in his neck, and his skull bore too many sores to count. Both cheekbones felt bruised, and he gently touched lacerations at his chin, both cheeks, and near his ears.
Terah crept out of the cave, steadying himself with a hand on the edge of the opening for as long as he could. Once free, he found himself favoring the painful ankle and knew he would not get far unless he found something to use as support. He prayed the moon god Nanna would stay free of the clouds so he could search as he labored along.
The scarce vegetation consisted largely of scrub, nothing that would yield a walking stick. Terah mince-stepped in agony, vigilant for anything he might use. If only he were closer to the river, he might find driftwood. Grateful as he was to the gods for having spared his life, he began to despair of reaching his own estate where he might receive help from his servants. At least he had diverted the marauding dogs from his own animals.
Terah’s goal became to reach home before Belessunu rose so he could use her polished copper plate to evaluate and begin repairing his face. If Gula, the goddess of healing, led him to the right concoction, he could lessen his wife’s shock at the very sight of him. He vaguely remembered that Nimrod, who suffered a face wound in an early battle, had been treated with a solution of turpentine from two types of trees, ground daisy petals, and tamarisk. The king’s physicians had pounded the ingredients into the flour of inninnu and poured the mix into beer and milk. They applied this to his cheek and wound cloth around it. When the binding was removed a few days later, no hint of his injury remained.
Belessunu herself had treated the minor wounds of their servants with a solution of honey and myrrh mixed with alcohol. Surely Terah could rustle up something while his wife slept. But who knew when he might reach home, inching along in the desolate wilderness?
About two hours into his excruciating journey, Terah reached the halfway point between the cave and his house. The small fire his servants had built outside the livestock pen came into view, and he focused on it the way he would an oasis in the desert. He couldn’t imagine enduring another two hours limping along, but neither could he consider the alternative.
A couple of hundred feet farther, Terah finally happened upon what appeared to be a post that may have once been part of a crude fence. How it got here was a mystery, but Terah chose to thank the gods. It proved too long to fit under his arm as a crutch, and he was too weary and sore to try to shorten it. Not ideal as a walking stick because of its weight, it was better than nothing. He couldn’t swing it in cadence with his steps without gripping it with both arms, and his damaged shoulder made that impossible. So Terah trudged along, using his left knee to help push the post ahead and then carefully catching up to it.
That slightly increased his speed, and exhausted as he was, he kept his eyes on the fire in the distance. Stopping even to rest would render him unable to move again.