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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.

INTERLUDE

OF THE UNIDENTIFIED WITNESS TO THE QUARREL BETWEEN UMMA AND LAGASH

A few miles north of the accursed marshlands, in which our diminutive heroine currently finds herself lost, a visitor to Sumer will notice a significant meeting of two great rivers. While they have no official designation set by an administrative authority at the time of our story, a modern reader will know them as the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. Further north and just to the west of this junction, as the two rivers fan out as separate entities, the City of Lagash once lay. The past tense of “once lay” may somewhat be misleading, as the ruins are, indeed, still present. Its peoples, however, have long since dispersed to issue five-thousand-years of descendant after descendant.

On this particular morning, an army stood before the gates of Lagash. These were the early days of large military campaigns, so the tactics and logistics of the event were very much being worked out as it went along. The army, hailing from the nearby City of Umma, had been successful in its very first assault against the City of Hamoukar, word of which had begun to spread throughout Sumer and Akkad alike.

The king of Umma, whom the author shall henceforth refer to as the “Lugal of Umma”, stood perplexed at the City of Lagash’s plain refusal to allow access to its central thoroughfare. It was not exactly a siege, in the common sense, but more of an tiresome standoff.

The Lugal of Umma, without a manual of war to conveniently refer to, shrugged his shoulders in bemusement. Close by, one of his soldiers glanced over at his king, with a look that one can only describe as pitying.

It was time for the sovereign to act.

“Solder, come here.” Said the Lugal of Umma, sheathing his impatient sword.

The soldier obeyed his king.

“Yes, My Lord?” He said, bowing his head with due respect.

“Have we tried knocking?!” Said the Lugal of Umma, his face squirming with thought.

“No, My Lord.” Said the soldier. “We simply assumed Lagash would notice us out here.”

There were a few mocking chuckles amongst the nearby squad.

“Well, soldier, please do me the honour of going hence and knocking at the mighty gates of Lagash!”

The soldier bowed.

“Yes, My Lord.”

The Lugal of Umma then turned to his scribe, clad not in the rough woollen kilt and leather breastplate of a soldier, but in the white tunic of a more thoughtful soul.

“The tablet.” The Lugal of Umma muttered, pushing the gentle scribe forward.

The scribe, stooped low in pain from his daily scribblings and poor nutrition, staggered forward and fished a hard mass of clay from a sack.

“This, young soldier,” he began, “is the proclamation of war, from his Lordship to the Peoples of Lagash.”

The young solider, without predetermined fear or hesitation, took the tablet and strode purposefully across the road, that which joined Lagash with Umma, and knocked with vigour against the towering wooden panel. 

“Yes?” Came a faint voice from behind the gate.

The soldier looked down at the tablet, then up and back to his ruler.

“Uhhh…” The soldier stammered, less at home with expressing himself verbally than gutting his fellow man with a trowel.

The Lugal of Umma sighed and, unwilling to sacrifice his beloved scribe, turned to the rest of his uncouth rabble.

“Do any of you know how to read?!” He said, with a tone that suggested he was willing to force literacy out of one of them with torture, should they not respond with haste.

A hand shot up.

“I do, My Lord!” Said an older soldier. “But only the basics.”

The Lugal of Umma nodded.

“Well, it isn’t very complicated, so try not to worry yourself.” He said, before gesturing for the second soldier to replace the first.

Once at the gates and having dismissed the young imbecile, the second man began reading the proclamation.

“‘To the City of Lagash, your officials have been accused of exploiting your peoples by levying undue taxes and embezzling funds intended for your temples!’” The soldier cleared his throat, before continuing. “‘About your walls stand the combined armies of Umma and Larsa, who have yet to be repelled or defeated on the field of battle! My Lord, the Pious Lugal of Umma, demands that you open your gates immediately and surrender to his will without raising arms or negotiation…’”

As the soldier continued his laborious reading of the royal proclamation, which largely consisted of listing gods and territories and close friends of the king, the army noticed a small boy walking along the road between them and the city. The boy seemed not to have noticed the epic horde at all, instead concerned more with his travelling from south to north. The tiny child had a shaven head and wore only a shabbily-tied loincloth. On his back was a heavy sack filled with something he must surely hold dear. To add to his unkempt appearance, he also showed signs of recent physical injury and subsequent infection.

Having almost passed by the hundreds of curious eyes that followed his meagre progress intently, the boy finally stopped and turned to acknowledge the army.

“Oh. Hello!” He said, dropping the sack from his back and stretching out his aching limbs. “Nice day for it, huh?”

There was a wave of uncertain greetings from the thousand-strong horde.

“I’m trying to get home to the City of Uruk, but I appear to be lost.” The boy said, wiping his sweaty brow. “Does anybody here know the way?!”

Heads turned and throats cleared.

“Fuck off, kid! We’re busy!” Said one particularly belligerent infantryman.

The boy did not respond verbally, but instead sneered and looked off to one side. When his attention returned to the horde, he pointed to the one amongst them who was dressed in more dignified attire.

“Who are you?!” Said the boy, stepping forward two meaningful paces.

As the army nervously retreated back a step, the object of the boy’s attention defiantly strode forward a pace.

“My name is of no consequence to you, child!” He said, unsheathing his sword. “All you need to know, is that I am the living embodiment of the god Shara, and Lugal of the City of Umma!”

The boy sniffed disrespectfully, not knowing that nervous respect was a requirement for survival on this morning.

“Shara, huh?” He said, knowingly. “The god of Uruk will be your mother then. Inanna is her name. Your god is probably due a spanking from my god, I would not hesitate to guess.”

The horde did well to stifle their laughter at the belittlement of their king.

The boy continued.

“You seem to know what’s going on around here, can you help me out with a ride home?”

The Lugal of Umma took time to consider what the ramifications might be, should he slit a child’s throat in front of his men. It could disastrously affect their morale, after all. Against every vibrating fibre of his body, he instead gave a gentle smile.

“Of course.” Said the Lugal of Umma, turning once again to his army. “Which one amongst you knows of Uruk?!”

The men proceeded to exchange glances and shrug shoulders, before one particularly pale and nervous-looking man stepped forward.

“I do, My Lord! It is on the road to my home of Ur.”

It was not and is not.

The Lugal of Umma simply tipped his head to signal the escorting of the boy to wherever he wanted. The nervous soldier bowed in obedience.

As the boy and his sack of treasures were effortlessly swung up onto the back of a tired donkey, the proclaiming soldier at the gates of Lagash finally finished his reading of the lengthy tablet.

“‘…and so your wives and mothers and sisters shall weep!’ What do you say, City of Lagash?!” Concluded the soldier, his throat now soar from excessive exultation.

“Just a second.” Said the faint voice from within.

At the very pinnacle of the tall gates appeared a citizen of Lagash, bucket in hand. The citizen tipped the bucket over the side of the gates, setting forth a torrent of burning-hot bitumen, which poured at its own viscous pace down onto the proclaiming soldier.

You see, patient reader, bitumen is a thick, sticky substance, generally used to hold boats together under great pressures. It is nigh impossible to remove from a person in a hurry, especially when it is at boiling temperature. The proclaiming soldier’s reaction, which involved screaming, begging for his life and quick death, writhing around on the ground, and tearing at his own flaking skin, is to be considered fair.

His fellow soldiery began a chorus of nervous laughter, which none of them could quite reconcile within their own tortured souls. After a genuinely unpleasant amount of time spent watching the poor soldier in unbridled agony, the Lugal of Umma rose a commanding hand.

“Oh will somebody please shoot him?! In the name of all that is good and my own damn hearing!” He said, turning his back on the nightmarish vision.

The proclaiming soldier had not been a well-liked figure amongst the horde, which should go some way to explain why twenty-or-so arrows immediately plunged into his burning body. Many of them being fired from the same hand.

Once the man fell silent into the blissful world of eternal nonexistence, the Lugal of Umma signalled to his strategist, which was a fairly new occupation still in its infancy.

“Yes, My Lord?” Said the strategist, a shameful tear in his eye at the sight of the now-smouldering proclamation soldier.

The Lugal of Umma breathed in deeply and brought forth a measured response.

“Tell me, is there a back way in?!”

Suddenly, the gates of Lagash creaked open, sweeping the dead soldier out of the way as they swung aprt. From inside rode a man on a donkey, who ambled over to whom he assumed was the head of the army of Umma.

“The City of Lagash will not surrender, oh mighty Lugal of Umma.” He said, with a slight lisp undermining his dark rhetoric. “Our own Lugal of Lagash counters your accusations with his own, namely of your stealing many lands betwixt our two great cities, but owned by our own. The forces of Lagash are ready to face your forces. If you should evacuate respectfully to the banks of the swift river hence, we shall emerge and face you in hand to hand combat!”

The Lugal of Umma slowly bobbed his head in a sign of deep contemplation, then said, more to the ears of history than his own men or the waiting diplomat.

“Well, at least events are moving along.”

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