When the Gods Died

Chapter 1

Whenever the wind blew, Ishkurbani would get a big head. His eyes would sparkle, his chin would lift, and a touch of self-admiration would creep into his demeanor. Adlusar often noticed that at such moments, his friend would start to get carried away. But he thought that, in time, Ishkurbani would realize that the wind actually had nothing to do with him. So he was indulgent toward his friend’s weakness and often pretended not to notice anything.

Dawn was breaking over Sumer. Friends and acquaintances called Adlusar “Adlu” for short. The teenager sat atop the ziggurat—a massive temple whose shape resembled a pyramid. From that height, the sunrise was even more beautiful. And the boy loved to come here to gaze at the cypress forests bathed in the golden light of the morning sun.

Access to the top of the ziggurat was forbidden to mere mortals. But Adlu was allowed to come here because his father was the high priest of the moon god Nanna. His father held so much power that in status he was second only to the king.

The ziggurat was the main temple and the heart of the ancient city of Ur—the capital of the Akkadian Empire, which the Sumerians themselves called Kiengir. The city was surrounded by a river to the north and west. Ur had several harbors where merchant ships docked, and next to the harbors was the commercial district—a market where merchants from various countries traded.

The city itself was situated on a hill that towered over the plain. At the very top of the hill stood a sacred ziggurat. It was surrounded by walls, within which lay the high priest’s residence and the royal palace. Adlu spent his entire life in this fortress; he saw nothing around him but wealth and luxury, and met no one but the nobility.

Life in the palace weighed heavily on Adlu. The nobles were interested only in power and wealth. They were constantly scheming and plotting, thinking of ways to increase their fortunes. That is why Adlu often spent his time alone. He would leave the palace and sit atop the ziggurat for days on end. From there, he had a good view of the city. The teenager watched the people on the streets. Looking at their clothes, he found them unpretentious. The townspeople weren’t dressed up like the viziers and nobles did. For Adlu, this was a breath of fresh air. These people were not surrounded by entourages or servants, nor were they carried on litters. And in this, he saw freedom from conventions.

As he observed the city’s residents, Adlu got to know some of them so well that he had a sense of their way of life. His imagination filled in the gaps for what he couldn’t hear from a distance. For example, from their gestures, he could tell whether people were simply talking or arguing. The boy found the townspeople to be simple in character. And he wanted to be among them. He wanted to visit the town at least once.

He suggested that Ishkurbani go into town. But Ishkurbani was afraid to leave the fortress. Adlu had no other friends besides Ishkurbani. On the day Ishkurbani was born, a strong wind was blowing—there was a storm, which in Sumerian was called “ishkur,” and the word “bani” meant “to create.” Translated from Sumerian, the name Ishkurbani meant “created by the storm.” His parents named him that because they believed their son had been given to them by the supreme god Enlil. “The Wind-Lord himself, the father of all the gods, sent you to us,” they would say time and again.

And at that moment, Ishkurbani’s face would begin to glow. When a storm arose, his mother would stroke his head and say, “These are your brothers, the sons of Lord Enlil, demonstrating their power.” From the very cradle, at the slightest stir of the air, Ishkurbani’s father and mother instilled in him a sense of his divine heritage. That is why Ishkurbani was arrogant. Adlu inspected the fortress walls, but there was not a single loophole in them. But once a week, laundry was taken from the fortress to the river in a cart large enough to hold two teenagers.

The head of the royal household was an Egyptian named Kemi. He loved Egypt dearly and often said it was the most progressive nation. Kemi revered the Egyptian goddess Maat and the god Ra. Another of his weaknesses was his love of candy—presumably partly because it had been invented in Egypt.

One day, Adlu asked Kemi for permission to jump from the roof into the cart carrying the dirty laundry. He and Ishkurbani were fooling around in all sorts of ways. So the palace servants weren’t at all surprised. To be on the safe side, Adlu treated the Egyptian Kemi to some candy. Kemi took this gesture as a sign of respect and placed the largest cart right up against the roof.

Adlu and Ishkurbani hid in this cart and drove toward the river. From there, they passed through the city gates and entered the city. When they reached the market, Adlu was stunned by the chaos unfolding around him. Hundreds of voices, shouts, the jostling, and the crowds on the sidewalks were almost enough to make his head spin. But suddenly, his attention was drawn to a man who had fallen. It happened as if he’d been knocked off his feet. The man hit his head on a stone. He tried to get up but couldn’t. There was blood on his face.

People continued to walk by as if nothing had happened. This surprised Adlu.

“Help! He needs help!” he shouted.

But no one paid any attention. Adlu walked over to the man and tried to help him. Soon, guards arrived at the scene, and to Adlu’s even greater surprise, they asked the teenagers to step away from the homeless man. The soldiers did so politely, because the teenagers’ clothes indicated that they belonged to the nobility.

“Don’t touch him, sir!” said one of the guards. “This is his sacrifice.”

Adlu could clearly see that the man felt unwell. And suddenly, even the homeless man himself pushed Adlu away and demanded that he not touch him.

“This is my sacrifice,” he rasped.

At that moment, Adlu caught a foul whiff of alcohol. It turned out that the man had fallen to the ground because he was drunk.

The teenager felt sorry for the poor man. He took a few coins out of his pocket and gave them to him. When he and Ishkurbani walked away, several vagrants ran up to the man. They beat him up and took his money.

“Guards!” Adlu shouted and ran back to the homeless man.

However, the vagrants were not afraid. And when the soldiers approached them, they bowed and said:

“This is his sacrifice, eni! May the goddess Ninkasi fill him with delights!”

And the guards stood there, not lifting a finger.

“Yes, yes!” the homeless man himself nodded in agreement. “My sacrifice for the well-being of the people of Kiengir.”

Adlu was outraged. He tried to take the money from the vagabonds. But one of the guards stopped him:

“Sir… eni… Don’t do that. It would be an insult to Ninkasi!”

Adlu didn’t want to get into a confrontation with the guard, because if his father found out about their escape from the fortress, the teenagers would face punishment. So they returned to the fortress. But Adlu was surprised by what he saw in the city—both the passersby’s indifference to the man who had fallen and the fact that the soldiers didn’t react at all when the vagrants beat him up and took his money. He was even more puzzled by the fact that even the homeless man himself pushed him away, even though Adlu could clearly see that he was in pain.

A question arose in Adlu’s mind: What is a sacrifice, and why is it more important than a human being?

The trip to the city was a memorable event, but it soon faded from Adlu’s memory. He had almost completely forgotten about the incident near the market when, suddenly one day, a certain circumstance caught the teenager’s attention.

As usual, Adlu was playing at the top of the ziggurat and glancing down at the city from time to time. And suddenly he saw a man lying unconscious in the very same spot where the teenagers had found the homeless man.

Adlu recognized him right away. The man was apparently very drunk. But Adlu didn’t like the fact that when he tried to protect the homeless man from the vagrants, the man started claiming it was all his own fault. So he decided that the man was to blame for his own misfortunes. And he decided to ignore him.

But from that day on, the homeless man lay unconscious near the market all the time. It looked bad to outsiders. But again, none of the passersby paid any attention.

Sometimes the homeless man would come to his senses and sit down by the side of the road to beg for food. Occasionally, someone would toss him a crust of bread. But then the vagrants would immediately pounce on him and take even that away.

The homeless man grew thin and weak. He looked terrible.

One day, something extraordinary happened. A passerby gave a homeless man a worn tunic because he was naked. The homeless man was immediately attacked by a group of vagrants. He tried to keep the tunic from them, and they began beating him for it. Adlu saw that their blows were very hard. They struck the homeless man in the face, causing it to run with blood. And even when the man fell unconscious, the crowd continued the beating. They kept kicking and kicking his naked body, causing a heavy thudding sound to echo through the market, as if someone were striking a log.

And what outraged Adlu once again was that the guards didn’t make a single move.

The teenager’s heart tightened with pity at the sight, but from the top of the temple he couldn’t help the unfortunate man. In the morning, Adlu saw that the man had more or less come to his senses and was sitting in the same spot again.

That day, Adlu once again persuaded Ishkurbani to go into town. He gave some food to the homeless man. The man gushed with gratitude. And once again, Adlu heard him mention the sacrifice. “…in the name of Kiengir’s prosperity…” the man muttered.

After he had eaten, Adlu gave him a piece of cloth to cover himself. Then Adlu decided to help the homeless man leave the market—far away from the vagrants. After escorting him into an alley and making sure that those who had beaten him were nowhere to be seen, the teenager gave the homeless man a few coins.

“What’s your name?” he asked him.

“Ashum,” the man replied.

“A” meant “water” in Sumerian, and “shum” meant “to give.” The meaning of the homeless man’s name suggested that his birth was somehow connected to water. Now Adlu could see clearly that Ashum was suffering greatly. In addition to scrapes and bruises, he was in agony from an illness that was apparently the result of severe alcoholism. Ashum’s hands were barely warm, as if the blood in them offered no warmth at all. His body was pale, and the smell of alcohol reeked from his mouth.

“Why did you push me away last time when I wanted to help you? It’s very obvious to anyone watching that you’re suffering,” said Adlu.

“This is my sacrifice. I’m making it so that the gods will have mercy on the people of Kiengir. I’m making it for the sake of good young men like you,” he replied.

“But how can you do good by drinking beer to excess?” the teenager asked in surprise. “How can you do me a favor by getting drunk half to death and rejecting my help?”

“This is my sacrifice. This is my sacrifice…” Ashum muttered again, “Ninkasi, the Light-Streaming One—may the god Enki honor her might—let her bestow delights upon noble young men. May she fill their lives with joy and bliss, sweetness and ecstasy…”

Adlu could clearly sense that Ashum was reciting memorized phrases. The teenager was now absolutely certain that drunkenness caused Ashum torment, which he refused to admit. He simply repeated over and over that he was making a sacrifice.

They needed to return to the fortress so that no one would notice the teenagers were missing. But just as Adlu and Ishkurbani were about to leave, a group of vagrants from the market came around the corner.

“Don’t you dare touch him!” Adlu warned them.

“This is his sacrifice—let him deal with it himself!” one of them replied.

“Yes, it is my sacrifice,” Ashum agreed.

“Just try it,” Adlu declared resolutely, clenching his fists.

“What are you going to do to us? Are you really going to defy the will of Ninkasi?”

With that, the villain rushed up to Ashum and began to snatch the item Adlu had given him. Adlu leaped at the vagrant and punched him in the face. Both of them tumbled to the ground. A brawl broke out in the alley. Ishkurbani watched it all unfold from the sidelines.

“Ishkurbani!” Adlu cried out. “Help!”

The attackers hesitated. And the one who had first pounced on Ashum—apparently their ringleader—said to Ishkurbani:

“Surely the son of Enlil isn’t going to stand up for this drunkard? Is that befitting one whose lineage traces back to the divine?”

And by some coincidence, at that very moment a light breeze blew across Ishkurbani’s face. This made his heart swell with vanity. Ishkurbani thought that Enlil, the god of the air, had sent him a sign: one who is connected to the divine must not stoop to associating with all sorts of vagabonds like Ashum. Ishkurbani’s chin lifted, and his eyes sparkled… In truth, Ishkurbani was terrified of the fight. Fear paralyzed his will. And the breeze that brushed his face merely pushed him toward a decision. So he walked away, slowly at first, then with increasing resolve.

No matter how much Adlu called out to his friend, he kept walking. After beating up the teenager, the vagrants called the soldiers and told them that Adlu had allegedly spoken insults against the goddess Ninkasi. And the guards took him away to the dungeon.