Isimud brought me the news.
Enki had decided: Dumuzi would marry me now, and we would go north, and rule Uruk together. The city at the centre of the earth.
“But Uruk belongs to An,” I said.
“That’s all over,” he said. “An has left the city. Uruk goes to Dumuzi now.”
“And you, I mean,” he added, but I took no offence.
There was to be a formal betrothal ceremony, in Enki’s own temple, with all of the Eridu gods there, even Ninhursag and her daughters.
“You will marry here, and then travel north, to set up your temple,” Enki said. He did not mention his father, An, whose city it was.
“Yes, my lord,” I said, smiling up at him.
“Yes, Father,” said Dumuzi, his face a blank.
Dual preparations went on. Firstly, I must be dressed for a holy wedding. On my head I would wear the famous shugurra, the gold crown that had been Nammu’s, in the first days. I would wear a chest plate moulded from bronze, and etched with the famous wild bull of Heaven. I would wear a great necklace of lapis lazuli that I had brought with me from Ur. I would carry a quiver carved from ivory. My wings would be fashioned from the feathers of giant eagles. The thinnest cloth must be found, the finest turquoise, the softest leather. My lions would wear special headdresses, studded with carnelians. It is not every day an Anunnaki gets married.
Secondly, I must be prepared for the sacred marriage bed. This was done in private, in Enki’s temple. Two priestesses were tasked with ensuring that I did not disgrace myself on the day. The senior priestess supervised; the younger priestess took the part of Dumuzi, with a stick tied round her waist, as a pretend penis.
“You need to show emotion,” the older priestess said. “They won’t know what to expect, whether you will be nervous, overwhelmed, excited. But they will expect something.”
“I will give them something,” I said.
“And when he enters you, you should shout out,” the young priestess said, climbing off me to better make her point. “Scream, moan, make a big fuss.”
“Yes, scream out,” said the senior priestess. “As if you are going to die from pleasure. You cannot be too loud. You must shout and shout, scream all you like. No one will ever think it is too much.”
“I was raised for this,” I said. “I know what my duty is. I have seen the sacred rites done, perhaps a thousand times.”
“But it is different when it is you,” the priestess said. “It’s easy to forget your part. That is why we practise.”
I climbed on top of the younger girl. “Oh, my gorgeous vulva!” I roared. “Oh, my tiny breasts!”
The priestesses both burst into laughter. “But that is very good,” the older priestess said, wiping away a tear. “Very good. Do it just like that but push your chest out more.”
“You will do well,” the young one said.
“I know that,” I said. “I am not afraid.”
* * *
My brother the sun god came south for the wedding. He had some business first with Enki. But afterwards he came to look at me in my green garden in the palace.
Utu had grown even more grand since I had last seen him in Ur.
“I think this is a good match for you,” he said, “as good as we could expect.”
“Kind words, brother. I thank you.”
He looked down at my lions, both now long-legged and half grown. They were trying to nip at his ankles, but found themselves clawing at empty air, and tipping backwards, each time they leaped towards him.
“Is that one of your mees, protecting you?” I said. “Is that why they can’t bite you?”
“Of course it is,” Utu said. “One would think you were brought up in the wilds.”
“I have never seen a mee doing that before,” I said.
“And yet every god in this city wears a mee that can do this. Enki must have roomfuls of them. You might try asking for one.”
“I do not need protection from my lions.”
He shook his head. “Inanna, there are other dangers in this world, far more dangerous than lions.”
* * *
Utu came back to Enki’s rooms after dinner that night. They seemed to know each other well. Enki pressed Utu for news of the war in the north, and Utu told us that Akka continued to put out farmers onto land that was Anunnaki, and that violence continued to flare in towns along the front.
“Akka no longer believes in the supremacy of the Anunnaki,” Utu said. “He believes that if he is clever about it, he can absorb all of Sumer into his empire.”
I waited as long as I could bear to, and then I asked after my cousin Gilgamesh.
My brother frowned at me. “He was always a hero to you, that awful boy.”
“I heard he was taken hostage,” I said.
“She has sympathy now with hostages,” Enki said, laughing.
My brother watched Enki laughing, but did not laugh himself. “He’s no longer a hostage. The last I heard he was at Marad, with King Akka almost at the gates. I imagine he’s dead. Akka has sworn to kill him.”
“That’s a shame,” Enki said. “He had a flair that one does not often see in a mortal.”
“And how your brother Enlil does love him,” Utu said.
Enki put on the face that he always put on when anyone mentioned his brother: a polite half smile, one eyebrow raised. “Yes, my brother does love him,” he said.
I saw him weighing up whether to say more, and then giving in to the impulse. He said to me: “One day you will meet your grandfather Enlil and think him a very fine man, Inanna. But when you do, try to remember that it is only because of Enlil that we are all here.”
“Here in Eridu, Grandfather?”
“No, here on Earth, of course.” He sat back in his chair. “You still see him, don’t you, Utu?”
Utu took a deep swig of wine. “I keep close to all my family. There are so few of us left.”
* * *
The great day dawned: the wedding of Inanna and Dumuzi, goddess of love and the shepherd prince. The drums began before dawn. Across the water, I felt the old and familiar pull of my parents, drawing ever closer.
Dumuzi and I were carried down to the quay on a litter to meet them. Dumuzi was obliged to put up with my lions leaning up against his knees. “You should have left them in your rooms,” he said.
“They have special headdresses,” I said. “They are part of the ceremony.”
I found it difficult to think of anything except my crown; it seemed to push my neck down into my spine. But I dreaded the moment of seeing my mother again after so many months apart. I felt shame, for how angry I had been when we said goodbye, but I also still felt angry, for what had happened. Would she be angry with me now in turn?
But as soon as my parents came off their barge, so resplendent, and so full of false smiles, I saw at once that there was something wrong. My mother and father were upset and angry, but with each other, not with me.
My mother, the moon goddess Ningal, was in the full costume of the moon gods: cloud-white linen and her bronze chest plate, ornately carved with reed knots, the symbol of her temple. On her left arm, she wore her ancient mee. She tried to put warmth into her greeting to me, despite her upset.
My father, behind her, was equally glorious, but he had no warmth at all for me and did not try to pretend. I had never known him so cold.
My parents were carried up to the Temple of the Aquifer on a huge litter bedecked with jasmine, and Dumuzi and I followed on together in our smaller litter. We each held on tightly to a lion, for fear they might jump out into the crowds.
I tried to shake off the gloom that had descended on me. “I hope you enjoy ploughing me today,” I said to Dumuzi, very quiet, and all the while smiling out at the crowds. “I hope you make my vulva very happy.”
Dumuzi only grimaced at that. “I suppose someone might as well enjoy this.”
I looked around for his sister, Geshtinanna, but could not see her in the royal procession. “You are my honey-man,” I said, leaning into him with a grin. “You are the one my womb likes best.”
“Laugh away,” he said.
Enki’s enormous temple was lit up bright with candles and bowls of fire. I saw Enki was already there, most awe-inspiring with all his mees of death and violence on display. He gave me a friendly wink.
A bed had been set up in front of the altar: a huluppu frame, a straw-stuffed mattress, the whitest bedding. I saw my mother and father being seated beside Enki, right out in front. A priest came to take my lions from me.
The drums beat faster, and the sukkal Isimud read the marriage rite.
The chief priestess, very solemn, stripped me naked.
I had worried in advance that I might be scared – that my hands might shake, or I might shiver.
When it came to it, though, I felt strong and steady.
Dumuzi did his part well enough, grim though he was.
But I was wonderful.
“Oh, my insides!” I screamed. “Oh, my outsides!”
I writhed around on top of him as if I had been poisoned. How I roared!
“Well, well,” Enki said afterwards, when he came up to give me his blessing.
* * *
“You’re a good girl,” my mother said later. Had she thought me a virgin before the temple rite?
I was in my copper bath, up to my neck in warm water and rose petals, and she was sitting on a stool beside it.
“You did well,” she said.
“Thank you, Mother.”
We held hands over the edge of my bath, and swapped our stories, always with an eye on the servants going in and out. She seemed upset still, but determined to shrug it off. “We will talk again tomorrow,” she said. “But I am glad to find you so well. I’m so glad, Inanna, that you seem to be thriving here.”
“I am quite well,” I said, unable to meet her eye for a moment. “But, Mother, I would do anything for you to be with me, for you to be coming north with me.”
“My love, so would I,” she said. “But I’m not sure Dumuzi would agree.”
I did my Dumuzi face, mouth turned down, nose crinkled.
“I ought to go, my darling,” she said then. “I will see you in the morning. Sleep well.”
She kissed my damp forehead. I look back and I realise that she was nervous. But then I had no forewarning. Only the cool of my mother’s lips, and the swirl of her white skirts as she pushed open the door of the bathroom door and left.
* * *
I woke up and Enki was standing over me in the near-dark. It took me a moment to understand that something terrible was happening.
“Search everything,” he said, “every box, every pillow, under the bed.” Behind him I saw his sukkal Isimud, holding a torch aloft, and my new husband, Dumuzi, and men in armour, kicking at my lions.
I sat up in my bed, and stayed perfectly still.
They searched everything, in my bedroom and also my little dressing room and my bathroom, tipping all my things on the floor. Servants, their eyes cast down, took the lions away.
Dumuzi came over to me, not meeting my eyes. When he tried to take my mee of love from me, he found it would not come. He kept pulling at it, trying to get it over my wrist, but it seemed to be glued to my flesh.
“We could cut her arm off,” he said to his father.
Enki looked down at the mee, considering for a moment. “We can take it later,” he said. “Leave it for now.”
Then Enki turned to me.
“No more time in the green garden,” he said. “All that is over. From now until you go to Uruk, if you go to Uruk, you stay here.”
“Yes, Grandfather.”
When he got to the door he turned and said: “Inanna?”
“Yes?” I looked up.
“You will be lucky to survive this,” he said.
Then he closed the door behind him and pulled the bolt across.