NINSHUBUR AND THE THIEF OF NIPPUR
Outside time. Across worlds. Between rivers. Two children in ancient Mesopotamia become unwitting emissaries to heaven and the underworld, as gods and humans go to war over honour, love, and destiny. This work of historical-fantasy fiction contains period morality which may unsettle some readers.
PART ONE
OF THE SERVANT GIRL’S TRIALS ABROAD IN ACCURSED LANDS
CHAPTER ONE
Ninshubur was the daughter of a travelling merchant. While the child’s lineage had been called into question on numerous occasions, tiresomely by their talkative Uruk neighbours, it could not be confirmed through what counted as science in the fifth year of the reigning king. But, regardless of idle theorising by washerwomen, the girl loved the man her mother assured Ninshubur was, indeed, her blood-patriarch.
“Is it certain that you are really the woman who gave birth to me?!” Ninshubur had said, with a cynical frown.
The following slap across the nine-year-old’s face had closed the subject once and for all.
Due to the nature of her father’s occupation, Ninshubur would regularly travel abroad with him, not only as an extra set of hands for offloading and the tedious counting of stock, but simply as company on the long cart ride between town and village.
The two had become somewhat close over Ninshubur’s sparse years, which, she had since learned, was something of a rarity between father and his offspring. Children were usually there to tie-up loose ends after a man’s death and carry on his business, nothing more.
Ninshubur and her father’s most recent wanderings had led them to a land beyond Sumer, in the north-west, called Kemet, a place which, whilst sharing the warm climate, mud-brick homes, and community of quarrelling gods similar to their homeland, was very different in terms of its prosperous people. The city, in which they now found themselves, was in the northern, or “lower”, half of Kemet. It was a very isolated metropolis, far from any visible human settlements. It also seemed to have its own religion and customs, which apparently were not popular with those outside the strict perimeter. Ninshubur had noted that, even though it was the seat of Kemet’s all-powerful ruler, hardly a soul came and went from the city walls. She wondered whether the rest of Kemet even knew the place existed at all.
Along with its geographical isolation, the people in the city seemed rather absent-minded, as if emotionally withdrawn from the world as a whole. It was like they were in a permanent daze. There seemed very little structure to their lives, preferring to laze about in the sun, rather than going about the daily routines and rituals that the rest of Kemet, and indeed the world, undertook.
While they had enjoyed the leisurely pace of the strange city, Ninshubur and her father had come to the end of their stay. You see, the king was dead. Indeed, Ninshubur herself had found the man’s corpse as she prowled the reclusive ruler’s empty palace. She had found the man collapsed in front of his throne, bathed in unassuming silence. In the past, Ninshubur had met the king’s living-self slumped there, basking in the glow of the sun’s natural rays. Apparently, his god of the sun, Aten, and all its yellow warmth, was all the man desired in life. And possibly the next. It had taken many minutes for Ninshubur to track down any servants and raise the alarm. As was their character, the inhabitants of the city showed little interest or concern at this dramatic turn of events. Even after being told their king was died, a calmness seemed to pass over them, as if a great weight had been lifted.
As we meet Ninshubur in person, she is travelling in the royal caravan. Over the past week since the ruler’s passing, it had been decided that the seat of the king should return to its old, and well established, location of Men-nefer to the south. Ninshubur’s father rode his merchant cart at the very rear of the five-hundred-strong caravan of vehicles, while his daughter rode with Kemet’s new ruler, a shy but serious boy her own age, and the boy-king’s new queen.
“We also share a father.” The boy-king said. “We have consummated our union, but our visir says we will not be able to issue an heir for some years yet.”
Ninshubur nodded, unsure how to respond to such a level of personal detail volunteered by a stranger. She had found, however, that this bluntness of speech was common amongst the determined people of Kemet.
“We are to continue trying.” Said the queen, folding her husband’s hand into her own. “We are to create a traditional dynasty, far from the troubles of the place we leave behind.”
The boy-king’s head bowed in shame.
“What troubles?” Said Ninshubur, resting a caring palm on their entangled hands.
“Our father, the last nesut, he cast away the old gods to worship Aten and Aten alone.” Said the queen, a glimmer of shame flickering in her own eyes. “But we are never to speak his name again, our visir has commanded it.”
Ninshubur looked confused.
“What is a ‘nesut’?” She said.
“My husband.” Said the queen. “Our ruler and god here on Earth. I am his hemet weret, or ‘great wife’ in your tongue.”
Ninshubur nodded. She was still acclimatising to the unique ways of speaking throughout all the alien lands she and her father had found themselves passing through. Trade seemed to be the only international language.
“Oh, we call such a person a ‘legal’.” Said Ninshubur, squirming with peasant modesty.
“I am now reborn as Amun here on Earth.” Said the boy-king. “Will you not stay with us once we reach Men-nefer? You may live out the rest of your days as a concubine within my harem.”
Ninshubur retracted her hand and inched back on the regal length of rug beneath her slight frame. Being the daughter of a merchant, she quickly and quietly estimated what the rug might bring at market, then calculated how much room it would take up in her father’s cart, then deducted the cost of damage caused to the vehicle as father and daughter were chased out of the country by Kemet soldiers.
“I need to continue on business with my father,” she said, as diplomatically as possible, “he will not be able to carry on without my assistance.”
The royal couple exchanged a knowing glance.
“You will not be harmed in my service.” Said the boy-king. “Instead, you will be showered with the brightest jewels, the sweetest perfumes, the most delicate fabrics, and achieve great respect amongst the women of Kemet.”
Ninshubur’s expression froze.
“I am very sorry.” She said, now somewhat reluctantly. “But thank you for the wonderful proposition.”
The boy-king suddenly sprang forward and kissed Ninshubur softly on the lips, but only for a second. Ninshubur was speechless for a moment, behaviour she was not known to express. She was also not one to be kissed by boys, royalty or pauper.
“Very well.” Said the boy-king, satisfied with Ninshubur’s commitment to family and duty. “If you will not join us, will you deliver something or great importance to us?”
The great wife revealed a clay tablet from beneath her many layers of finery. Ninshubur took it and looked down at its familiar writing style. She could not read or write, but her intention had always been to learn at her own Uruk’s eduba.
“What is it?” She said, turning the tablet around and around, unsure whether she had it the right way up.
“It is a letter to our brother-rulers in foreign lands.” Said the boy-king. “We both fear that, should the people of Kemet not accept us on our return to Men-nefer, our lives will be in danger.”
Ninshubur gasped as her gaze shot back up to the royal couple.
“We believe our father was assassinated by our visir,” said the great wife. “and that he is merely biding his time before dispatching us in a similar manner.”
Ninshubur’s face became masked with uncertainty.
“I am sorry,” she said, “but what does ‘assassinate’ mean?”
“Murder.”
Nothing.
“End life.”
“Oh dear!” Said Ninshubur, the tablet dropping to her lap.
“Yes.” Said the boy-king. “We intend to muster support from Punt, Kush, Kadesh, Nippur, and Hattusa. They have been our enemies in the past, so our hope is to open Kemet’s borders to them, so that our visir and his followers will be put down!”
Ninshubur, who had begun conspiratorially leaning forward, sank back onto her legs and brushed a tear from her cheek.
“I cannot imagine anyone wanting to kill you two.” She said, secreting the tablet amongst the folds of her own tattered rags. “I will have my father divert his cart to where you ask.”
The royal couple clasped hands again.
“You have saved our lives!” Said the boy-king, offering a small cloth bag tied off at the top, which jangled with precious stones. “Here, take this as payment for your errand of mercy.”
A hand shot up from Ninshubur’s side.
“There is no need.” She said, through slightly gritted teeth. “Keep it, in case you should find reason to flee on foot.”
The merchant’s daughter kissed the boy-king and the great wife, before shuffling to the canvass flap at the rear of the coach and springing down.
Outside, the caravan moved in a slow but unfaltering procession. Ninshubur ran back along the convoy, each vehicle becoming less and less significant to Kemet’s rigid social structure. When she finally came to her father’s cart, it now looked old and rickety in comparison to the lavish royal coach she had spent the last three hours on. Her father, a perpetually-smiling idiot of a man in his mid-twenties, sat with one of the temple priestesses, gifted to him on loan as entertainment for the long road ahead.
Ninshubur, irritated by her father’s ignorance of his daughter’s presence, wafted the girl from the cart.
“Begone, harlot!” Ninshubur said, much to the priestesses dismay. “Your nesut needs you in the royal coach to work your charms, his sister has a headache!”
The priestess, once she had dusted herself off from being suddenly ejected into the dirt road, bowed and ran forward towards the head of the caravan.
“What on Earth has gotten into you, child?!” Said the merchant, his erect member, visible beneath his bunched-up tunic, sagging to the driver’s bench.
“Father, we have a new destination to add to our journey home!”
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