Abraham Allegiant

Chronicles of the Nephilim
Book Four

By Brian Godawa

ABRAHAM ALLEGIANT

5b Edition

Copyright © 2013, 2014, 2017, 2021 Brian Godawa

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without prior written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews.

Warrior Poet Publishing

www.warriorpoetpublishing.com

ISBN: 9798710828694 (hardcover)

ISBN: 978-0-9859309-8-1 (paperback)

Scripture quotations taken from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. Wheaton: Standard Bible Society, 2001.

Chapter 1

The mighty hunter, Nimrod, stepped off his four-wheeled chariot and looked into the thicket of reeds before him. He was the giant king of Sumer and Akkad, the land of Mesopotamia. At nine feet tall, with a closely cropped beard, piercing eyes, and hunter’s armor, he was terrifying. He was a Naphil, one of the Nephilim, demigods born of the sexual union of god and human, which explained his towering height and massive strength.

A contingent of forty other huntsmen and trappers supported him. They waited on their chariots, equipped with nets, throwing sticks, clubs, and bolas. They did not carry their bows, swords, and javelins because they were not hunting to kill, but to trap. And they carried neck and hand bindings rather than cages, because they were not hunting animals. They were hunting humans.

“We spread out from here on foot,” said Nimrod to his two captains. “Rendezvous at the target point at nightfall.”

The captains nodded and took their squads of six men each into the thick forest of reeds before them.

The chariots were useless in the marshy wetlands. They were in the southernmost part of Mesopotamia, the marshes and waterways outside the huge city-state of Ur on the coast of the Southern Sea. It stood where the great Tigris and Euphrates rivers emptied into the Gulf after traversing the vast alluvial plains of Akkad and Sumer.

This delta area was quite different from the rest of Mesopotamia. Because of its location near the sea, it contained a myriad of shallow lakes and narrow waterways winding through dense thickets of reeds. The vegetation often grew taller than men, creating a natural maze of protection for the rustic inhabitants that lived in its midst. They were pastoralists who avoided urban life and sought independence, living off the land.

And that is why Nimrod wanted them as slaves.

He had left Uruk and moved to the central area of Mesopotamia to establish a new kingdom. He had to build a city to match his ambition. Such a massive undertaking required manpower, more than he had. So he built a slave force by conquering outlying rural tribes and transporting them upriver to his home base, now called Babylon.

In a very short time, he had controlled Mesopotamia by starting the communities of Akkad and Babylon. His mighty army consisted of hundreds of his own giant progeny. It quickly became feared and respected in the region. These were the giant offspring he had produced when he was king of Uruk and had claimed many of the city women as his own. He ultimately abandoned the practice because of the consequences of a populace that resented their king. He had sired hundreds of giant sons and daughters that he had brought with him to build his future.

Nimrod established a beneficent vassal kingdom through a treaty coalition with the tribes of the sons of Noah. Sippar, Nippur, and Kish were all allowed their own local rule without hostility under the condition of tribute and military support to Nimrod. He also started his northern expansion into the foothills of the Zagros with his newly established cities of Nineveh, Asshur, Rehoboth-Ir, Calah, and Resen.

In southern Sumeria, Nimrod’s son Ur-Nungal ruled Uruk and helped him to consolidate his power over Eridu, Larsa, Lagash, and Ur. Ur overtook Uruk as the largest cosmopolitan metropolis in Mesopotamia. Its trading location on the Gulf and the surrounding vast agricultural regions of rich soil gave it the advantage. Hundreds of acres of villages, hamlets, farming land, and irrigation canals encircled Ur, all controlled by the government for the good of the people. At least, that is what they said to maintain the illusion of civilian participation in the collective. Beyond the city-state boundaries lay the marshlands where Nimrod now quietly stalked his human prey.

It was near dark. 

The villagers of the marshland had settled down for their community meal. The food cooking on the fires consisted of boar and water buffalo, along with vegetables and some grains. They were a peaceful people who preferred to be left alone to care for themselves. They traded with the urban dwellers of Ur, but usually did so under the table to avoid the oppressive taxes of the city. Their village huddled beside a channel deep in the marshland. Their economy relied on the staple product of the perennial reeds all around them. They cut the strong flexible stalks down with sickles and used them for nearly everything, including fodder for livestock feeding and fuel for cooking. They even built their homes and boats out of reeds, covering them with a layer of pitch for waterproofing.

The reed houses went up in flames all around the village. Nimrod’s hidden trappers, surrounding the village, set alight the pitch covering of the houses. 

Some women screamed. It was too late to save the homes. They were burning to the ground.

Nimrod’s men burst out of the shallows. They threw nets over whole families of villagers, pummeling the fighters, and chasing down stragglers. 

Bolas and throwing sticks flew through the smoky chaos that enveloped the village. A woman bolted for the darkness of the marsh. A bola whirled through the air after her. The rope hit her legs, and the weighted iron balls whipped around, smacking hard. She tumbled face down into the soggy ground. A sturdy villager brought down a hunter with a large stone. He stood up, looking for another target, but became one himself. The flat, crescent moon shape of a hardened gopher wood throwing stick whacked his head. He crumbled to the ground. The hunters clubbed others into submission. 

Men, women and children were chained up for transportation. The men who fought back with weapons were usually killed, if they could not be disarmed.

It took very little time before the entire village was captured, wrangled and bound for transport. Nimrod strode along the line of about seventy-five captives as he announced their destiny.

“People of the marshland, you are now slaves of my kingdom. I am the mighty Nimrod of Babylon. You will be brought to my region up north, to help build my city and temple for my name and glory. If you submit and obey, you will be treated fairly. If you do not, you will suffer and die. I will not tolerate insubordination.”

One of Nimrod’s warriors brought the chieftain of the village to him, bound, gagged and struggling defiantly.

Without pause, Nimrod drew his sword and cut off the head of the chieftain. The prisoners knew that their future would not be a hopeful one.

Nimrod said with deadpan frankness, “I am now your king. I am your god.”

Chapter 2

As a port city with the prime location on the gulf of the Southern Sea, Ur became rich in transport taxes. All trade shipped in from abroad went through its harbor on the Euphrates to the other cities upriver. It would become known as “Ur of the Chaldees” because of the growing influx of Chaldean people in the region.

Ur already had a reputation for its elaborate funerals and the royal tombs of the deceased. The king, Urnanna, obsessed over bureaucracy and administration. He had constructed a voluminous library of laws and decrees in his perpetual quest for godlike control of the province. The urban landscape within Ur’s walls could only be described as cramped and suffocating for its city dwellers. The city planners designed small and tightly-packed homes in order to create a dependent citizenry and minimize freedom of movement. Urnanna was Nimrod’s vassal king; Ur, a tributary of his rule.

Nimrod rode his chariot at the head of the procession of newly captured slaves through the main street up to the temple district that stood at the height and heart of the city. He always performed triumphal entries with fanfare and grandiosity, in order to impress his subjects and reinforce his godlike authority. It helped that he was nine feet tall, a Naphil, born of Watcher god and human mother. He had discovered that the more theatrical and godlike his rhetoric and display, the more fear he garnered. His ultimate goal was deification.

The real deity rode beside Nimrod in his chariot as his personal bodyguard and emissary from the pantheon of gods. This was Marduk, a huge eight-foot muscle-bound hulk. He wore a hooded cloak and stood quietly in the shadow of Nimrod so as not to draw attention to himself. He was a fierce warrior, a master of many weapons. He had been waiting patiently for his moment to step out of the shadows and execute his own secret plan, a plan he kept hidden from even the assembly of gods. 

But his time had not yet come.

The parade ended at the foot of the Great Ziggurat of Ur, a brick temple tower so large, it could be seen miles away, rising above the plains. It was named Etemennigur, which meant, “House Whose Foundation Creates Terror.” It was about two hundred feet square and about one hundred feet high and was made of mud bricks that created a solid structure, the top of which was a shrine to the moon god Sin, the patron deity of the city.

Nimrod gazed upon the edifice with awe. The step pyramid, a man-made mountain, served in the minds of the people as a ceremonial staircase for the gods to descend from heaven. He knew the people believed the ziggurats connected heaven and earth. He thought to himself, The temple I build for myself will dwarf this pile of bricks as a mountain dwarfs an anthill.

He had been planning his temple structure for some time, along with the city he was building to house it in grandeur: Babylon. It would be more than the most glorious and mightiest temple. It had been commissioned by the assembly of gods to be a cosmic mountain to replace their current residence far in the west at Mount Hermon. 

Their goal was that Nimrod would become the first world potentate, residing in Babylon. The gods would consolidate their heavenly power with his earthly rule, for an ultimate unity between heaven and earth. The Babylonian temple would be dedicated in an occultic ceremony of sorcery that would establish it as the new cosmic mountain of the gods. A portal would open to the heavens that would allow easy access for the gods to this “land between the rivers,” the origins of civilization after the flood.

Nimrod had finally acquired the wealth and manpower to begin his building projects of both city and temple. He had only a few things left to take care of before returning to his home base upriver. The primary one was to have a private meeting with a sorcerer of Ur, an idol maker by the name of Terah.

Chapter 3

Terah ben Nahor’s reputation extended from Sumer to Akkad. His fame grew from his innovative discoveries in astrology, and the art of divining the future and the will of the gods from signs in the heavens. He had started as a humble idol maker. His house idols, called teraphim, had become well known for their exquisite carvings. They were mostly small terra cotta statues of deities, both human and animal shaped, up to a foot tall. They were often lime-washed or painted in red and black. They were set in the doorways of homes or buried under the threshold to protect the inhabitants from malignant spirits. But they were also worshipped in private family chapels and buried with family member’s bodies in graves as afterlife guardians.

Soon, the king commissioned him to craft larger-than-life idols out of imported stone for the royal palace and temple. His interest in deity expanded into divination, and so he studied texts on extispicy, hepatoscopy, and lecanomancy, the arts of divining from animal entrails, livers, and liquid movements respectively.

His interpretation of omens became legendary and he was appointed an official diviner, called a baru. But that was short lived as he began charting the heavens for horoscopic portents. It was believed that the heavens and earth were united in cosmic oneness and that celestial events were signs that foreshadowed earthly events of kings and kingdoms. Terah’s study of the “heavenly host” carried a double meaning reference to both the stars in the heavens and the assembly of gods because they were considered interchangeable.

Urnanna had appointed Terah head sorcerer because of his vast knowledge of heavenly secrets. Terah was also a strong asset because he had been very amenable to the king’s wishes. Terah sought to please Urnanna at all costs. This quality made Urnanna concerned as he led Nimrod and Marduk to meet Terah. The men marched up the long ramp of steps that approached the Great Ziggurat’s temple of Sin at the top. Urnanna suspected that Nimrod wanted to build his own institution of magicians and sorcerers. Urnanna was sure he was about to lose his treasured Terah.

Either that or lose his head.

They entered the temple at the top. Pillars lined the white marble structure. An exquisite, black obsidian idol of the moon god stood before an altar in the center of the temple. 

In a corner, Terah hunched over an astrolabe, a device that computed the mathematical text of astronomical observations and calculations. Nimrod and the others realized he had fallen asleep in his reading position. He snored away, oblivious to his new visitors.

Urnanna cleared his throat loudly. 

Terah snapped awake. He noticed the king and stood with a bow. “My lord,” Terah blurted.

“Terah, you need to go home and get some rest,” said Urnanna. “You cannot live, eat, and sleep in the temple. You have a family and a life.”

“Yes, your eminence,” said Terah. Then he noticed the very large hooded muscleman, and the king looking closely at the statue of Sin.

Urnanna announced, “Terah, meet King Nimrod, your suzerain.”

“Your high majesty,” said Terah and bowed again.

Nimrod did not look down at Terah, but continued to examine the idol as he spoke.

“You have quite the reputation for a diversity of talents,” said Nimrod.

“At your service, my king,” said Terah.

Urnanna winced. 

Nimrod said, “You may leave us, Urnanna.”

Urnanna bowed and left the temple for the stairway descent. It humiliated him to be ordered around like a servant. But he knew that any show of pride or independence would result in punishment, if not instant death from the blade of Nimrod himself.

Nimrod returned to his examination of the idol once Urnanna had gone. He said, “You have crafted an amazing likeness out of this black obsidian.”

“Thank you, my lord,” said Terah.

Nimrod said, “Your terra cotta house idols are known all over Mesopotamia. One could say you have cornered the marketplace with your expertise.”

“I pray my excellence honors the gods,” Terah replied.

“How are your skills with coarse stone?” asked Nimrod. “Sedimentary or igneous rock.”

“Competent, your majesty.”

Nimrod said, “How would you like to have your own institute of astrologers, sorcerers and magi?”

Terah stuttered, “Well, I, uh – that would be – an undeserved honor, my lord.”

Nimrod continued, “I want you to be my head sorcerer, Prince of the Heavenly Host. You would be fully supplied with everything you need and would answer only to me.”

Terah could not think of what to say, so he repeated himself, “I am at your service, my king.”

He paused and asked, “Shall I gather my wife and belongings to return with you to the north?”

“Not yet,” said Nimrod. “Your first duty will be to accomplish a secret task for me down here and then travel up to Babylon at an arranged time in the near future.”

“As you wish, my lord,” said Terah.

“What would be the stone that has the largest deposit nearest Ur, and the best balance between hardness and speed for sculpting?” Nimrod asked him.

Terah thought for a moment. “I would have to say your best bet is limestone. It is the perfect medium between gypsum and granite. There is a significant region of it just west of here not too far into the desert.”

Nimrod nodded. “Good. I want you to establish a guarded quarry there. Keep it out of sight of the cities. I have hired dozens of stonecutters from the Zagros and the Levant to provide you their services. They will arrive this week.”

“I do not understand, my king,” said Terah. “What would you like me to make out of the stone?”

Nimrod was looking again at the idol. “An army of limestone golemim. Stone Ones in the form of soldiers. Ten thousand strong.”

Terah gulped. “Forgive me, my lord, but I still do not understand. Of what use will this ‘army’ of statues be to you? And how will I transport them all upriver?”

“You will not have to transport them,” said Nimrod. “They will march up to Babylon for my command.”

Shock kept Terah silent, leaving the obvious question unasked.

Nimrod moved close to him. He pulled a battered piece of parchment paper out of a pouch at his belt and handed it to Terah. The sculptor read it.

“This is highly sophisticated sorcery,” said Terah.

“That is why I wanted the best sorcerer I could find,” returned Nimrod.

“Its purpose is to animate the non-living. Where did you get it?”

“I stumbled across it on a journey I had long ago.” Then Nimrod added, as an after thought, “In another life.”

It was indeed another life. Nimrod had been the infamous Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, before he changed his identity and his life. He had stumbled upon the animated Stone Ones while seeking his great-great-grandfather, Noah the Faraway, remembered as Utnahpishtim. The written spell, placed into the mouth of a golem, brought it to life as a slave to do the bidding of its master. These Stone Ones had no life, no breath, just animation. So they could not be killed and were almost impossible to stop. Nimrod had almost been killed fighting several Stone Ones on his journey to Noah. He had commandeered the current spell from one of the mouths of the defeated golemim.

Nimrod explained, “You will keep the sculpted Stone Ones in the desert, hidden from the cities until you have completed their numbers. Then you will duplicate this spell on as many parchments, and place them in the mouths of the golemim. As you said, the spell will animate them to do your bidding. You will arm them with weapons and march them up to Babylon at a coordinated time. Then you may take residence in my city and begin your institute as you desire.”

Nimrod obviously planned to have an invincible army to rule over all of Mesopotamia. It was also obvious why he wanted it done in secret in the desert. He needed the element of surprise to accomplish his purpose.

Better to be on the side of the conqueror, thought Terah, than on the side of the conquered.

“It will be my honor,” said Terah.

Terah knew it was more like a lack of honor. But he was driven by self-preservation, not virtue. The pursuit of secret knowledge, of any knowledge, had created in him a fear of death. The more he learned, the more he realized how much more he had to learn. He suffered a dreadful awareness of how little time he would have left in his life to satisfy his craving. He would not live forever, so he sought to cram as much into his short life as he possibly could. Whatever maintained his survival would take precedent, so that he could continue his pursuit of more knowledge. 

He served too many masters, all demanding his allegiance.

He did not have any children yet, so it would be relatively easy to pick up his minimal possessions, along with his wife Amthelo, and make the trek up to Babylon when necessary. Until then, she would be able to stay in Ur, while he accomplished his labor of mining and sculpting the sedimentary rock. He could make visits back home whenever he needed to.

“I will need the army two new moons from now,” said Nimrod.

Terah gulped. He knew not to complain to this king. He could see there was no compassion in his eyes, only power. He could tell that hesitancy of any kind would provoke wrath. He would not see his wife for two full months after all. He would be working morning, noon, and night, carving an army of ten thousand soldiers and bringing them to life with the duplicates of the spell he held in his hand.

Terah said with bold confidence, “You will have your army of golemim in two new moons.”

Nimrod grinned and slapped Terah’s back.

“Now that is what I like to see, a willing attitude. You and I will work well together, Terah. As you can imagine, I have very big plans. And I want you to be a part of them.”

“I am at your service,” repeated Terah.

“Of course,” said Nimrod, “if you reveal any of the details to anyone, I will torture and execute your entire family in front of your eyes, before I do the same to you.”

“Of course, my lord,” gasped Terah. “Of course.”

Chapter 4

Nimrod had chosen the middle of Mesopotamia for his city of Babylon. The convenient location lay between the north and south where the Tigris and Euphrates bent their courses in close convergence. The location controlled the waterways of life that doubled as the main thoroughfare for trade. From Babylon, Nimrod had equal access to both his newly created northern cities as well as the conquered southern ones. He had found a plot of land well suited for his plans of a mighty city and had settled the area in preparation. He placed pillared boundary markers with serpent and scorpion curses engraved on them as guarantors of his oath to destroy trespassers.

Of the three clans of the sons of Noah, Nimrod had risen to become the leader of the Hamitic tribes. Joktan ruled the Shemites, and Phenech the Japhethites. As Nimrod extended his power, he did so through a beneficent suzerain treaty with Joktan and Phenech. They were allowed to engage in the local rule and administration of their cities, as well as their tribal traditions, so long as they paid tribute to Nimrod and supported the building of Babylon with some conscripted slave labor.

It was an uneasy alliance.

While Nimrod pursued his plans of building a city and temple, the goddess Ishtar had developed her own plans. The City of Nineveh was being built up north, and it would be her very own city of patronage. She would be called “Ishtar of Nineveh.” It was her spoils acquired by a secret deal with Nimrod back in Uruk.

Ishtar was the unruly and defiant goddess of sex and war. The pantheon of gods had rejected her for her megalomaniacal rebellion. She had a real problem with authority, unless she was the authority, so they ostracized her from their hierarchy. When she discovered their plans to unite with Nimrod in a scheme of global governance, she blackmailed them into giving her some territory and freedom, in exchange for her promise not to undermine their goals. Each party would agree to live and let live.

Ishtar did not like the idea of letting anyone live. She had no intention of being shipped up north to be out of the way of the action. She had other plans. She did not seek to overcome the assembly of gods, for that was not a likely possibility, even for the goddess of war. Rather, she would outdo them with a scheme so monumental, she thought it might even rival the originality of her previous idea for the War on Eden. At least in this postdiluvial world it would.

The heart of her plan was a person. A single person whose identity was crucial for accomplishing the long-term goal of Nachash, the Serpent of Eden, the Shining One whose attention she craved. Before she set off for Nineveh, she summoned the services of Sinleqiunninni, Nimrod’s ummanu, or king’s scholar.

As chief ummanu, Sinleqiunninni’s responsibility covered the scribal and academic duties of Nimrod’s kingdom. He was principal of the school of scribes and oversaw the accounting and library archives. Anything that had to do with writing on clay tablets and storing of information came under the ultimate authority of Sinleqiunninni. He was an introverted man who spent more time with tablets than with people. Thus, he possessed a lack of sociability and a poorly developed body. His obsession with details and correcting everyone in conversation drove Nimrod up a stone wall. Only one thing kept Nimrod from exiling or executing him. He was the only one who knew how and where to access the information needed for important decisions, from tax records to king’s proclamations to ancient charts of stars. His memory was impeccable and useful for the king’s control of his realm. His knowledge kept him alive.

While Nimrod had been down in the Ur province hunting humans for his slave force, Ishtar employed Sinleqi, as he was called for short, to scour the genealogical archives of the local cities. He was to look for a single person from the lineage of Noah’s son Ham. Because the population had expanded rapidly after the Deluge, during the time she had been bound in the earth, it was quite a task to track down her target. Records were scattered and incomplete because it had taken some time for the early postdiluvian generations to become organized.

Sinleqi had begun his search in Shuruppak, Noah’s city of origin. But he found what he was looking for in the labyrinth of chronicle archives at Kish, the first city of Cush, son of Ham.

Before the Flood, Noah’s pregnant wife, Emzara, had been captured by the god Anu and the goddess Ishtar, who had been called Inanna back then in her Sumerian incarnation. Emzara had a son in that captivity whom she named Ham. Ham was seduced by the culture of his captors and was drawn into their idolatry. He became a priest of Inanna/Ishtar and had been initiated into the occultic secrets of the Watchers.

The Watchers were Sons of God, members of Elohim’s divine council, or heavenly host. Two hundred of them rebelled and fell to earth during the ancient days of Jared. Led by the mightiest of the Watchers, Semjaza and Azazel, they had taken on new identities as gods of the Mesopotamian pantheon. They were referred to as gods, Watchers, or even Watcher gods. Semjaza had become Anu, the most high father god of the pantheon. Azazel had become his consort Inanna. Ishtar snorted in disgust at that memory.

They established a hierarchy of four High Gods over the rest of the pantheon, and Seven Who Decree the Fates. They had no idea that an insignificant scrapper, the Watcher called Gadreel, would bide his time, build his strength and perfect his fighting technique to become the mighty Ninurta of Uruk, and now Marduk of Babylon. Ishtar had to admit that he had been clever about it.

She stood before her tent, watching the puny humans labor on her fabulous temple, musing on the Plan of the Watchers. They had taken on the disguise of divinity in order to draw worship away from the Creator, who was known in antediluvian times as Elohim. He had other names, such as El Shaddai, which meant God Almighty; El Elyon, which meant God Most High; and the secret covenant name of Yahweh, the eternally self-existent one.

Ishtar smiled to herself. Drawing worship away from Elohim was not all the Watchers were after.

Following the Fall in the Garden of Eden, Elohim had promised he would one day provide a seed of royal kingship that would restore creation to its intended glory and humanity to its intended identity as the family of Elohim, true Sons and Daughters of God. The Watcher gods sought to corrupt that seedline by mating with humanity and violating the heavenly earthly divide. The result of their crossbreeding were the Nephilim, unholy hybrids of angel and human, giants who became known as the Seed of the Serpent at war with the Seed of the Woman, Eve.

When Ham was under the spell of Anu and Ishtar, they had secretly experimented on him through occultic sciences that were beyond the knowledge of mankind at the time. They had altered his body by splicing their own genetic makeup into his. But they also violated his wife, Neela, impregnating her with a newly developed genetic implantation. One that would carry the recessive genes of the Watchers without resulting in immediate gigantism. They hoped this would spread throughout the population with more efficient results.

When Elohim sent the Deluge as punishment for mankind’s wickedness on the earth, part of that evil was this miscegenation or cross-breeding of human angelic hybrids. With those waters, archangels came from heaven and imprisoned many of the Watchers in the earth to await their final judgment. Seventy of the Watchers remained free.

And so did one of their abominable Nephilim offspring.

The eight family members of Noah who were saved on the ark included Ham and his pregnant wife.

Cush, the supposed son of Ham, carried the tainted bloodline of Neela. Nimrod sprang from this lineage. 

But Nimrod was not Ishtar’s interest. She had failed to persuade him to join forces with her. So Ishtar sought another child created by another abomination. After the Flood, Ham in his vile wickedness contested his father Noah’s patriarchal authority by raping his own mother, Emzara. When Emzara gave birth to a son, he was hidden away out of shame and disgrace. Ishtar had heard that Noah cursed that son to be a servant of his other brothers. He was cut off from his inheritance. Of the three sons of Noah; Shem, Japheth, and Ham, the lineage of Ham would never be the Seedline of Eve. Shem’s was the chosen line.

That abominable offspring of Ham was the man that Ishtar was after. As the cursed son of Ham, he would be the perfect vehicle through which to breed the Seedline of the Serpent in opposition to the Seedline of the Woman through the chosen son of Noah.

When Sinleqi was granted an audience with Ishtar, he approached her with trembling. She was known to kill servants in impatient fits of rage if she did not get what she wanted. She seemed particularly impatient as he drew near to her throne in the vast tent in the north section of the Babylon settlement.

“You had better be the bearer of good news, Sinleqi,” snapped Ishtar, “for I have had a vexing hair day.” Ishtar fancied herself a kind of divine fashion plate, who prided herself in a diverse wardrobe of beauty and pain. She would often combine exotic dresswear with accessories of violence in order to stress her ironic juxtaposition of identities as the goddess of both sex and war. Today, she had burned her hair trying to dye it white. It was frazzled and unruly. She simply could not do a thing with it. She decided to cut it all off and kill a few servants to use their hair for a wig.

Sinleqi bowed and said, “O Queen of Heaven, I have traveled far and wide and have borne the weight of many sleepless nights in genealogical research of the archives of the cities of man.”

“Get on with it, hog nose,” interrupted Ishtar. Sinleqi had an upturned nose that seemed to accentuate his pig-like endomorphic body.

Sinleqi turned and retrieved a tablet from one of the two servants who accompanied him. He handed it to Ishtar. She read it as he spoke.

“You are holding in your hands the tablet that I would argue contains the information you are looking for. I draw your attention to the colophon at the end of the tablet. It states the toledoth or genealogy, ‘These are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Sons were born to them after the flood. The sons of Ham were Cush, Egypt, Put, and Canaan.’ Now by careful exegesis of the tablet text, I noticed that there was an unusual repetitive reference to ‘Ham, the father of Canaan.’ Hermeneutics, or the art of textual interpretation, would tell us that such repetition points toward an unusual identity of the object.”

Ishtar interrupted again, “Get to the point, scholar!”

It always amazed Ishtar. This brilliant ummanu scholar had such a droning voice that she actually started to get sleepy. Watchers did not sleep, but they could fall into a hypnotic trancelike state that simulated sleep. She considered striking him dead, but then thought better of it. She realized there could be some utility in the future of multiplying these scholars and using their hypnotic effect, perhaps as a means to control the youth through mass indoctrination in schools of learning. The young were the most easily manipulated, because their minds were the least developed and, therefore, the most open to suggestion. She smiled. How deliciously ironic that something so apparently beneficial to the mind as education could be twisted into a tool of power to lull young minds into thoughtless adherence.

Sinleqi jumped to the conclusion with a faltering voice, “The text emphasizes Canaan’s lineage from Ham because the patriarch Noah placed a curse on that son.”

A fangy grin spread across Ishtar’s face as she read the tablet. “So Canaan is my man. Where is he?”

“Actually, he is on our slave rolls,” said Sinleqi, offering another tablet to Ishtar.

She ignored the offer and barked, “Well, go get him and bring him to me!”

Sinleqi cringed at the outburst. “Yes, your highness.”

She added, “And Sinleqi, remember what I told you.”

“Yes, your highness,” he repeated.

Ishtar had commanded Sinleqi to maintain the utmost of secrecy in his pursuits. No one was to know what he was doing, not even Nimrod. In fact, she had ordered that he was to have everyone who helped him in the process clandestinely killed, including the two servants with him, obediently holding the tablets. 

She wondered whether or not she should kill Sinleqi afterward as well. But she came to the conclusion that it would not be prudent to do so. It might draw too much attention, since he was the king’s scholar.

Maybe I will just torture him instead, she thought.