Ur is an oven in the summer, and on the hottest days I was allowed to go up onto the roof of the moon temple. They would set up a shade and chair ready for me, so that I could sit in what breeze there was and watch for dolphins. Sometimes there would be a ship coming in, and I would be eager to see what came off it, if only to tell my parents about it at dinner. But on this day, as soon as I came out on the roof I heard a strange noise, rising up from the gardens, and instead of sitting I went straight to the balustrade.
There they were, far below me, three children, laughing and running, in and out of the cedar trees. They were perhaps about my age, although I was too high up to see their faces. A moment later a woman emerged from the palace buildings, holding a wooden spoon up in one hand, and the children ran past her and out of sight.
“Oh,” I said, although I had not meant to speak.
My guard was standing in the narrow doorway behind me.
“Little goddess, are you well?” he said.
At first, I could only nod.
“I would like to see my mother,” I said.
* * *
As we climbed slowly down the twisting staircase, my guard kept glancing back at me in the gloom.
“What was it that you saw, Inanna?”
They were meant to call me Lady Inanna, but they dropped that when no one else was listening.
“I am quite well,” I said.
I made a show of concentrating on the steps, one hand on the cool wall.
* * *
I had seen children before. In pretty costumes, in temple, their faces plain, their eyes cast down. I had seen them lining the route into the holy precinct. I had seen them at table, when our chief ministers joined us for dinner, although even at table I had never heard one speak. And I knew of the concept of children playing, from temple stories, from things I had overheard. Yet I had not grasped what it would look like, or sound like, or how it would knock the insides out of me. The wildness of it, striking at my soul.
“Did you have too much sun, Princess?”
“I am quite well,” I said again. “I only need to see my mother.”
* * *
I knew where to find her; I felt the familiar pull. And there she was, in the long south-facing room at the back of her temple. The shutters onto the courtyard had been thrown open wide so that the scribes, sitting cross-legged upon dusty rugs, could see to do their work.
My mother had a taste for finery, but for the scribes she wore only a plain linen smock, because she was certain to come away with clay on her. She lifted her luminous face to me in greeting, but then went on with what she was saying to the scribes. “Read it all back to me,” she said.
A scribe stood, head bent, and read out a list of grains and other goods, and the amount of each, and the price paid.
When I saw that I must wait for my mother’s attention, I lifted up my skirts and sat down next to her. She patted my right knee with one hand as she listened with great intensity to the list of goods being read out.
“What is it, my love?” she said, when the scribe’s story of barley, and silver ore, and the best saffron, was finally over.
“Mother, I would like a friend,” I said.
She gave me her most playful smile. “Am I not your friend? Am I not the best friend anyone could hope for?”
I crinkled up my face. “I do not mean an adult friend.”
My mother’s smile faded. “My darling, we will talk about this at dinner.”
* * *
We three moon gods ate outside in the summer, on the terrace that looked out over the river. I saw at once, from my parents’ set faces, that they had been arguing.
My father took the lead. “Inanna, there is no one suitable to be the friend of the princess of the moon.”
“Who would be suitable, father?”
My mother leaned forwards. “An immortal, Inanna, would be suitable. Someone who will live a lifetime alongside you, not die in a handful of decades. But the only children in this city are mortal.”
“You cannot get attached to them,” my father said. “It will break your heart, over and over. I have told you this before, but I do not think you listen to me.”
“We have worked so hard to protect you from this,” my mother said. “You are so precious to us. We only want to keep you from the pain that this will cause you.”
I looked from one to the other of them, silent.
I had never been refused something before. But perhaps I had never asked for anything.
* * *
I began to see children everywhere. Four boys lying together on the grass in the palace gardens, throwing something between them. A little girl with her hand in her mother’s, walking with great seriousness along the street that traced the outer wall of the temple complex. I watched one small boy walk brave as an eagle along the top of the city walls, six cables high.
I went back to my mother, and I asked again. But she only grew firmer.
Then I stopped speaking to her.
“Inanna, this is beneath you,” my mother said. “We do this because we love you.”
I only lifted my eyes to her, and then looked back down at my lap.
After this, I began to push my food away at mealtimes, and I spent long hours with my chin upon the windowsill in my mother’s bedroom, looking north towards the marshes.
In the end they could not withstand me.
* * *
The moon gods met in council with their priests and chief ministers, and finally they settled upon Amnut.
She was not suitable. She was a mortal.
But she was the least unsuitable child in the city. She was after all a royal princess: her father had been king of Ur for forty years. And although her family served my family, as every family in Ur did, they were deemed fit to eat at our table, at least on feast days. I was by this time eleven; Amnut was twelve. It would have to do.
The great day finally came, and I was led into the smaller state room in my mother’s temple, the one with ochre-painted walls and a smooth granite floor. They had lit the fire and set out games there on a little ebony table, and sitting at this table, with her hands flat in front of her, was a small girl with long black hair.
“They will bring in some cakes,” my mother said. And then she left us.
My parents had never left me anywhere without a guard to stand over me. But now it was just me and the girl.
Amnut was wearing a crimson dress and matching cape, and white kidskin boots. She stood, and smoothed her cape. She held her chin high as she did so, and I saw how delicate her nose and mouth were, and how sulphurous yellow her eyes.
I found I could not think of one single thing to say to her.
This was nothing, though, to Amnut.
“I am collecting ants,” she said. “They fight each other.”
“Oh,” I said.
“I collect different kinds, and then watch what they do when I put them all in a box together.”
There was a pause.
“You can see them if you want,” she said. “But I was not allowed to bring them. We will have to go back to my palace.”
But then, feeling that only complete honesty would do on such an historic day, I said: “Although I am not sure perhaps that I have ever seen an ant.”
* * *
Attempts were made to keep some distance between us. But only one Inanna had conquered two moon gods, and now Amnut and I combined were too powerful for the gods and their priests and the heaving ranks of the royal family. Soon enough we girls lived a life where we were only separated at bedtime, and for official business in temple. Outside those bleak hours we were allowed to roam together as much as we saw fit.
Each morning, from daybreak, the two of us could be found outside the soaring clay-brick walls of the city, in the grasslands that led to the marshes. I had become a passionate collector of crawling things, not just ants but also beetles and spiders. We had grown also to love flowers and trees, but it was the creeping things that were our first shared love, and these we continued to insist upon entrapping, and bringing back with us into our palaces.
These excursions beyond the city walls had at first been flatly refused, then furiously refused, and then just one expedition had been allowed, as an exception.
Now we went out through the griffin gates of Ur each day as if by ancient right, and our guards, long-suffering, rambled out after us carrying with them with our collecting boxes and nets.
On the morning of my twelfth birthday, Amnut and I were out even before dawn.
My brother Utu, the god of the sun, was born in Heaven; he was centuries older than me, and had his own city in the north. But once a year, on my birthday, he would visit us in Ur. So today there would be a state dinner, much fuss, much bathing, and formal dressing, and Amnut and I were determined to enjoy some freedom early, while we could.
As the spring sun rose full above the marshes, we abandoned our observation of a funnel-web spider, and sat down upon a rock to eat our figs and cheese. Our guards made a camp on a sandy bank nearby and doled out their barley mash.
Careful to keep our voices low, Amnut and I turned to the grave and private subject of our shared bloodline.
My eyes were black, not yellow, but that one thing aside we two girls might have been twins. We had the same long, black hair, falling like water down our backs, and the same skin, sickly olive in winter, but already in the early spring a deep brown, and we were both fine-boned, and unusually short. The idea had come to us that my father might also be Amnut’s father.
It would not be so unusual if he was. It was my father’s sacred duty to spread the godseed in the people, to raise them up with his Anunnaki blood. Very often he would take a bride to temple, before she went to her husband.
Oh, how wonderful if we were sisters!
“So did you ask her?” I said.
“I felt awkward asking my mother,” Amnut said. “But I asked my grandmother.”
“And?”
“Your father did take my mother to his temple on her wedding morning, and they did the rites, but she cannot be sure whose child I am.”
I let this sink in. “I wonder how one can even tell.”
I stretched out my feet, to look at them next to Amnut’s. I have never been vain, but I have always liked the look of my feet. They are little triangles, wide at the toes and narrow at the ankle, and each toe neatly formed, and very evenly placed. I saw that Amnut’s feet were longer and thinner than mine, and her toes less neatly arranged. I tucked my feet back into my skirts.
I was about to say more about my father, but then the captain of my guard approached us, tugging briefly at his copper-covered cap. “They’ll be looking for you now,” he said, addressing himself to me. Behind him, the soldiers had finished their breakfasts and were preparing to go. “My lady,” he added.
I stood up and looked out north along the great river. I felt upon the horizon a point that was heavier than all the other points, that seemed to tip in on itself, and I knew it to be my brother.
“Yes, he’s coming,” I said. “Time to go in, Amnut.”
* * *
At midday, when the spring sun had real heat in it, and the rolling chorus of the cicadas had begun, I stood out on the dock in all my finery. On state occasions, we moon gods wore snow-white linen robes, embroidered with countless pearls, and over our smocks the bronze chest plates of Ur. On our backs we wore wings fashioned from white eagle feathers.
Oh, we were the vision of Heaven, we three, with all our priests and priestesses standing behind us, also in the white of Ur, and behind them, lining the walls of the docks, the people of the city.
A shadow amidst the reeds on the shimmering horizon, and then one barge came into focus, and then another, and another. Eight great barges in all, each with a vast sail of saffron yellow aloft, and each with a hundred rowers lining its decks. As they drew close, the oars rising and dipping in perfect unison, we saw that Utu’s fleet was decked in palm fronds and lotus flowers, as for a triumph. He had been in the far north, in the war against the barbarian king.
“I wonder that he thinks it a triumph, his progress in the north,” my father said. “He killed a few camp followers, and retreated, is how I heard it. Is that a triumph?”
My mother frowned at that, but said nothing.
Utu’s gleaming barge of state touched to, and after its coiled ropes had been strung around the bollards along the quay, and pulled taut, two hefty slaves helped my brother clamber up onto the marble, careful he did not stumble.
The sun god wore a dress in saffron yellow, the colour of his temple. Over this he wore many gold necklaces, and on his head, a gold crown in the shape of a rising sun. After he had kissed our mother, and nodded to our father, he tipped his face to me.
“Inanna.”
“Hello, brother,” I said, my smile wide.
“Twelve today.”
“Yes.”
“I’m told you spend your days grubbing around for insects.”
“Yes,” I said, my smile fixing in place.
“I do wonder that they allow it,” he said.
* * *
The big banquet table, carved from one enormous slice of a cedar tree, was carried out onto the terrace, and we four gods ate our dinner in a pool of candlelight, with a half-moon overhead. I was made to wear my leopard-skin cloak over my dinner dress, in case the spring evening grew too cold.
We were served lamb, roasted whole and carried into the light on a huge platter, and also buttered samphire, and little fish, fried and then tossed in salt. Afterwards, the first of the apricots, grown in the palace gardens.
In the first days, Utu lived with my parents in Ur. He helped them build the city, and dig out the canals. For a hundred years, its business had been his business. Yet now he seemed to have no interest at all in it. He spoke at length about his city, Sippur, and about the war, but had no questions for my parents.
I was seated upon his right at dinner, and to me he said: “Is the mee working yet?”
“No, brother.” My right hand moved to cover it.
“Why would An give you something that didn’t work?”
“I do not know, brother.”
After that he had no more questions for me, and I retreated into my own thoughts, very grim.
* * *
It was a constant source of worry and embarrassment to me, that my mee, the great weapon of my godhead, only sat upon my wrist, drinking in the light, good for nothing else. It was said that my father could strike down men dead with his mee. I knew that my mother could settle great disputes with hers, that people walked many leagues for her to end vendettas that had lasted generations.
Yet my mee did nothing. My mother’s priestesses had scratched at it, and pulled at it, hurting my wrist, but it could not be made to come alive. What sort of a goddess would I be, with no mee to give me power?
* * *
And then: a name.
Gilgamesh.
The name pulled me back into the flow of talk around the table.
I had never met my cousin Gilgamesh, but I loved to hear stories of him. As did everyone; he was famous up and down the land. Was there a table in Sumer where he would not be spoken of this night?
“Any news we get of him comes in scraps, from ordinary men,” my brother said.
“Gilgamesh?” I said. “Is he safe?”
“Undoubtedly not,” Utu said.
“Why do you sound so disapproving of him, brother,” I said, “when he bears arms against our enemy?”
My parents and Utu cast glances at each other but did not answer me.
“Time and time again, he breaks his father’s heart,” Utu said.
“It’s hard for Gilgamesh,” my mother said, taking an apricot.
“Why?” I said. “Why?”
“Because his parents are gods, and he is not.”
I looked at her, at how bright and young she was, with the sacred melam glittering through her veins. I tried to imagine how it would feel if I myself was soon to wither, while my mother went on, strong, glowing, constantly renewed by the magical blood of the Anunnaki.
“Everybody makes excuses for Gilgamesh,” Utu said. “But I for one have run out of patience with him.”
* * *
I had a moment alone with my brother as he was helped back onto his litter. “My brother,” I said. “I wish you were here more often. That we might know each other better.”
Utu’s men at that moment heaved him up to shoulder height, so I found myself looking up at his round face, framed by turquoise sky.
He frowned down at me. “They coddle you.”
“What do you mean, brother?”
He shook his head. “They do you no favours by it. This is a hard world to be a young girl in, and they ought to be better preparing you for it.”
After only the briefest pause, I said: “But I am not a girl, brother. I am a priestess of Heaven.”
Utu raised one finely arched eyebrow. “Do you think that will make a difference, Inanna?”
Despite myself, I found myself swallowing. “I suppose I do think it will make a difference.”
“Did it make a difference for our sister?” he said. “You should think about that, Inanna, as you collect your insects and act out your games in this world of fantasy that our parents have built for you. You should think about Ereshkigal.”
* * *
As my brother’s barges pulled out in the late morning, I did think about my sister, Ereshkigal. She was only a child when the Anunnaki descended, and she grew up in Ur. But she had been taken away many years before I was born, never to return.
The priests said she was queen of the underworld now. They said she had a palace in the Dark City. They said it was her decision not to come home. But who would choose to give up this world of brightness, for the screams and unending dark?
“Inanna?”
I blinked up at my mother.
“Do you want to see Amnut this afternoon?”
“Yes,” I said. “Thank you, Mother.”
And then we made our way back inside the great clay walls of Ur, that had withstood barbarian armies, and even the Great Flood, and I thought then could withstand anything.