Gilgamesh Immortal

Chronicles of the Nephilim
Book Three

By Brian Godawa

GILGAMESH IMMORTAL

5th Edition b

Copyright © 2012, 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: 9798710814321 (hardcover)

ISBN: 978-0-9859309-4-3 (paperback)

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

PROLOGUE

In the time before the Great Flood, the War of Gods and Men raged in the desert of Dudael. Methuselah ben Enoch had led the armies of man, undefiled by genetic manipulation and idol worship, to gloriously defend a last stand of righteousness against the rebel Sons of God called Watchers and their demonic minions of hybrid soldiers and giants called Nephilim. And then the Deluge came and washed the land clean of the corruption that had infested it.

Noah ben Lamech and his family of eight were spared by Elohim in a large box of a boat, along with a multitude of animals, to repopulate the land. Everyone else and every land animal perished. This floating barge carried Noah and his wife Emzara, and their sons, Shem, Japheth, and Ham. Shem’s wife was named Sedeq, Japheth’s wife was Adatanes, and Ham’s wife was Neela. Neela had been pregnant on the ark and had given birth to the first child of the postdiluvian generation. He was named Cush.

The Nephilim were giant hybrid offspring of the Sons of God and the daughters of men. Though the mortal flesh of these chimeras perished in the Deluge, their divine element remained as demonic spirits that now roamed the earth with an insatiable hunger to inhabit human flesh.

The lead Watchers, Semjaza and Azazel, and their two hundred defiant Watchers, had taken upon themselves the identities of a pantheon of gods to accomplish their scheme. Semjaza became Anu, the high god, and Azazel was Inanna, his consort, the goddess of sex and war. 

During the War of Gods and Men, Anu and Inanna, and many of their fellow immortal Watchers were bound by archangels and imprisoned in the heart of the earth until judgment. 

But not all of them. 

Seventy leaders of the Watchers avoided capture, along with a contingent of their subordinate mal’akim insurgent angels. Just how many, no one was sure.

• • • • •

The ark had come to rest on Mount Nimush near the river Tigris in the mountains of Aratta, that are now called Ararat. After the flood waters receded, Noah left the boat and offered a sacrifice of thanksgiving to Elohim, known by his covenant name of Yahweh. Yahweh made a covenant with Noah and his descendants to never again kill all life on the land with water as he had done. The rainbow in the sky became his signature of that covenant promise.

Yahweh commissioned Noah with the original calling of Adam, to multiply and fill the land. Yahweh had started all over with a new creation and new human race. Humanity was created in God’s image and as such was a holy representation of that ruler over creation. The first murderer, Cain, had violated that sacred image by slaying his own brother, and thus starting an evil spiral of violence that dragged the original creation into the very depths of Sheol. Now Yahweh gave Noah the charge to uphold the sacred image of God in man through just recompense. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image. 

After some time, Noah and his family descended from the mountainous region into the Mesopotamian plains to start anew. They found a sight horrible to behold. The waters had washed over everything, burying the once beautiful fertile terrain in layers of mud and silt. The land was wiped away, leaving a vision of barren ugliness and death. The cities were piles of flooded rubble. The thought of so many people drowned to death sickened them. Noah would often say that all of humanity had been turned to clay.

Even so, life had already begun to break through the graveyard before them. Vegetation quickly sprouted from the seedlings buried in the soil. Elohim had created a resilient earth. 

The family of Noah began to multiply and fill the earth. They rebuilt civilization by passing on their acquired knowledge to their descendants. It would take time before cities, culture, and technology were reconstructed to the level they had been before the Flood. But just like the vegetation, civilization would return speedily, because the seeds of such knowledge lay in the accumulated experience in the world before. The growing population pushed forward with a hunger to pick up where it had left off.

Noah had been a warrior before the Deluge. Now he started anew and became a tiller of the soil. He felt weaker, and he was not getting any younger. He set his mind to develop agricultural growth. Emzara his wife taught him what she had learned in her time at Erech. His crowning achievement was a vineyard that sported a vast array of grapes for the fermentation of wine. 

But in his heart, Noah was not at peace. He felt the depression of despair over him like the shadow of an Anzu thunderbird. He could not shake it. He had been the Chosen One to end the reign of the gods, bring rest to the land, and bear the Seed of Eve that would war with the Seed of the Serpent. He had faced death too many times to count, fought with gods, survived torture, and even looked into the Abyss of Sheol. It had been terrifying to experience such frightful extremes, but it also had invigorated him. It had charged through his veins like a drug that fueled intense awareness of every living moment. It made him know he was truly alive. 

But now, he was relegated to the position of an old patriarch in the background, as his children spread out and built cities and history. Grandpa Noah, Great-Grandpa Noah, Great-Great-Grandpa Noah. It now seemed to be his only identity. He wondered if anyone would even remember his great journey and exploits in the hands of Elohim. And what of the adventures of his Grandfather Methuselah and Enoch the giant killers? Already fading into the mists of legend. He would have to write down what he remembered, if he could only get around to it. In the meantime, he kept telling his stories to the little grandchildren and great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren at his feet. In these were the future.

Emzara was not so sadly disposed. She had been a slave of the priest-king of Erech, living a long time without her husband. She was just happy as a pomegranate to have the rascal finally settled down and with her every day. She determined to make up for the lost years. The making up was not merely friendly companionship and functional interaction, it was oneness. 

Noah was a passionate man, but unfortunately, his current despair became an impediment to their union. He had pulled away from her and her heart was breaking. She had led a palace staff, raised a family, defied the gods, but she still found her sense of identity and personal security in being loved by the greatest and truest man she had ever met. If he was in pain, she was in pain. If he was unsettled, she was unsettled.

His drinking concerned her the most. Noah had begun to imbibe too much of the fruit of the vine to wash away his sorrow. He would get drunk and stumble into their bedroom weeping and fall asleep. At least he never got violent. He was too morally upright for that. She knew he had to wrestle with Elohim in his own way. She trusted he would find his way, as he always did. Noah was not a sinless man, but he was a faithful man, a man who had stood righteous in a wicked generation. Now he wrestled with his feelings of unworthiness of such a privilege, and inadequacy as patriarch of the new creation.

Another thing that concerned her as much as Noah’s drunkenness was her grandson Cush’s oddity. He had been born to Neela and Ham. The firstborn of the new world. He had come out normal and healthy enough. But as he grew up, she sensed a difference in him. He was not like all the other grandchildren or great-grandchildren that were multiplying. He was a bit tall for his age, and had sparkling blue eyes. He was a little delinquent who always seemed to get into trouble with his curiosity. It was not the curiosity of a naïve child. It seemed cold, detached, and calculating. One time Cush sat on the edge of a river bank watching with intense interest as another child was drowning only a few cubits off the bank. He did not run for help, he did not yell for help. He simply watched the child gasping and flailing. The other children screamed for someone who could swim to help the poor thing. 

What Emzara could not understand was very simple to Cush. He was not like everyone else. Not even like his mother Neela. As he got older, Cush became more distant from the family. He was the first to leave the greater tribe and start a new people of his own. He named the first of his cities Kish, as a self-tribute alteration of his own name. He called it “the first kingship that came down from heaven” after the Flood. 

The ambitious Cush traveled to the south to help rebuild the other cities wiped away by the Flood, including Erech. When one of his children was born a giant, it all became clear to him. Cush surmised that he himself must have been the seed of his mother’s union with a god and that she had kept his true identity as a Nephilim from him. He secreted the infant away to protect that identity.

Since Cush was not a giant, the thought had not occurred to anyone that he was anything other than Ham’s offspring. Only Emzara asked digging questions which Neela barely escaped with her half-truth answers. The Watcher gods had achieved their goal of suppressing the giantism as a recessive gene that would only manifest in succeeding generations. Their plans of conquest were not over yet. Neela knew none of this. She was simply a damaged woman who hid her shame from her tribe.

But the dishonor of Cush was surpassed by the horror of Emzara’s own son, Ham. 

Before the Flood, Ham was born and raised within the pagan world of Erech because Emzara had been captured and enslaved when she was pregnant from Noah. Ham had been taken from her, renamed Canaanu, and raised to be a priest of Inanna. His head was elongated according to royal custom under the pressure of wooden slats. He was shorn of all hair by the application of special herbal concoctions. He had been tattooed with the mark of Inanna, a mark that would be a regret the rest of his life. He looked strangely unlike his own brethren, which made him feel even less like them. He never truly fit in. 

Though he repented of his pagan upbringing and embraced his true father Noah, when he was rescued from the city, Ham continued to harbor a grudge against the man who had not been there to protect him from the corruption of evil. Ham had converted to Noah’s god Elohim, a god who saved him and his immediate family, but had drowned every other living thing in the land to accomplish that elective purpose. It puzzled Ham. How was this any different from Anu’s wrath, Inanna’s capriciousness, or the oppressive tyranny of the other gods of the pantheon? He had lost more than a dozen close friends and confidants in the waters. They had not been cruel or evil people to him. They had been innocent. They were born into their position just as he had been. Now they too were gone, and he felt all alone in the midst of a family that sought to care for him, but ultimately did not understand him. He wished his mother had never taught him about his past. He wished he had just been completely separated from her, to spare him the tension of two opposing worlds in his soul. He wished he had just been drowned with all his friends.

But he was not drowned. His contempt for his pathetic father and doting mother grew with each passing year. He saw Noah’s increasing drunkenness and weak resignation to be the worst form of cowardice. Ham considered his father unworthy to lead their growing clan as patriarch. Whatever heroic deeds Noah may have done before the Deluge were now but distant memories, phantoms of legend. They meant nothing to a new generation that had to move forward into a progressive future of change. Their task was a monumental one. They had to carve, hack, and dig their way through a harsh new world sprouting from the clay and mud of the old. Noah was a symbol of that old clay world, but he would not abdicate his leadership to make way for bolder progressive visions. 

In order for the collective to advance, Ham thought, Noah must be deposed. Who else would have the forward looking ideas to carry them into the future? Who else would have the courage and the power to bring progressive change? He remembered Anu’s intent of fundamentally transforming humankind. That was what they still needed: hope, change, transformation. Not the old ways of thinking.

Emzara became determined to help shake Noah out of his depression. It crushed her to see him so sad and dispirited. She knew it went deep. He was a hearty man who worked hard, fought hard, and played hard. He often said that his favorite place to be in the whole world was with his beloved. But lately, he had not expressed affection toward her. It was as if his wine was another woman stealing his vitality, smirking at her.

She resolved that tonight, she would surprise him. She had never forgotten that his favorite dress had always been a bright red dye linen dress from Egypt. The original dress was long gone now, so she set about carefully recreating it from the cloth supplies they had accumulated. She used red dye made from a madder plant and stitched together a garment. She was sure it would please him. Old age had lessened her beauty, but it did not weaken her spirit. A little heavier make up and some jewelry would get his attention.

She made his favorite meal: steak from a steer’s flank, fresh bread, onions and fruit, topped off with a gourd of wine. He was a simple man with simple needs and easily pleased. 

Night fell over the tents of the tribe. Noah stumbled into their tent from a day in the fields. Her spirit deflated quickly. He had been drinking, and more heavily than usual. He could barely stand up. He almost took down the whole table of food when he caught himself from falling to the ground.

He saw the food, looked up at Emzara, and blurted out, “You are so — gorgia — gorgiaya — gorge…” He was trying to say the word gorgeous.

Emzara started to cry. She did not know what else she could do, what else she could be for him.

Noah saw her tears. “Oh, do not worry,” he gurgled. “I may be jrunk, but I am still your love angel.”

Noah finished off his gourd of wine and threw it to the ground.

Emzara walked over to their bed and sat down with deep sadness.

Noah struggled to take off his robe and tunic. He fell to the ground, mumbling incoherently.

Emzara broke down weeping. She cried out to Elohim, “Lord, bring me back my hero. Give him back his hope.”

A rustling sound drew her attention to the entrance of the tent. She looked up to see Ham step inside and close the flap.

“Ham ben Noah, your father is in shame. Leave this moment.”

Ham did not leave. He walked over to Noah and looked down on him with disgust. 

“Is this my father?” he said.

“I told you to leave this moment. You shame his name,” she barked.

“I shame him?” he responded. “No, mother, he shames himself. He shames the family name. He shames the clans, the future. He shames his god.” 

“How dare you!” she huffed, standing angrily, ready to throw him out with her own hands.

Ham slithered over to her and stood inches away from her face. She tried to stand up to him, to counter his defiance with her own. But he was too powerful. His reptilian glare chilled her. She shrank inside and sat down on the bed, defeated. She could not look him in the face any longer.

“What have I birthed? Have I so completely failed Elohim?”

He knelt down to her level. “No. You did the best you could. Maybe it was Elohim who failed you.”

She stared at him in shock. She slapped him hard across the face. “How dare you question Elohim’s purpose. I do not understand his ways, but he is true to his promise.”

Ham stood back up, glaring at her. His expression melted into a smirk. He gestured at Noah, still on the ground unconscious. “I find that a promise unworthy of praise. And I, for one, will no longer sit back and let a floundering drunkard lead the only group of humanity down into the waters of the Abyss.” He gestured again at his father. “If that is Elohim’s promise, then I will not submit to such deplorable foolishness. I will make my own promises. I will take the reins of power. I will be the new patriarch.”

Emzara looked up in terror at Ham. His eyes had become like a serpent, ready to strike her.

Shem and Japheth had been looking for their brother Ham. He had not worked the herds all day and they were a bit angry with his increasing irresponsibility. They felt that he was acting more like an entitled king than a servant leader of the people of Elohim. Unable to find him, they decided to go to their father’s tent and see if their parents knew his whereabouts. 

As they approached Noah’s tent, they saw Ham leaving and fixing his tunic. He gave them a snide look and walked right up to them.

“Ham, we have been looking for you,” said Shem, always the elder brother with a tendency to chastise.

“Well, you have found me,” said Ham. But his countenance was disturbing to both Shem and Japheth. 

Then they heard the weeping inside the tent.

“Is that mother crying?” asked Japheth.

“Where is father?” added Shem without pause. 

“Drunk on the ground, where else?” said Ham.

Shem knew that something was deadly wrong. “What have you done, brother?” he said.

Ham responded with a diabolical casualness, “I have uncovered father’s nakedness. My child’s name shall be Canaan.”

The words ripped into Shem and Japheth like a dagger. The meaning of the saying “uncovering a man’s nakedness” was the abuse of his wife. In a patriarchal society, it was the ultimate humiliation and usurpation of a leader’s authority. Ham had contested his father’s tribal power. 

Shem and Japheth raced to the tent and tore back the flap. Noah sprawled passed out on the ground as Ham had said. Emzara lay brutally battered, weeping into the pillow.

Before they could see her nakedness, the brothers averted their eyes. They grabbed one of Noah’s cloaks from the ground where he dropped it. They walked backwards with the garment on their shoulders toward their mother and covered her. 

In the morning, Noah awoke sober and learned what Ham had done to him. He called for the elders of the community. As the displaced patriarch, Noah no longer had the authority he once wielded. 

But Ham’s crime could never take away Noah’s special relation to Elohim. He stood before the tribe and pronounced a curse. Not a curse on Ham, but a curse on his offspring. Noah had learned that Ham had abused Emzara, so his sins would carry down to his own children and their children’s children. 

Ham had declared that his next child would be named Canaan.

 “Cursed be Canaan,” said Noah. “A slave of slaves shall he be to his brothers. Blessed be Yahweh, the god of Shem; and let Canaan be his slave. May Elohim enlarge Japheth, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem, and let Canaan be his slave.”

It shocked the elders. Noah had used the covenant name of Elohim in his curse: Yahweh. As Patriarch he had the authority to do so, but it was an authority rarely exercised. Why did he curse the son instead of the father? Canaan was not the offender, Ham was. Should a son suffer the wages of a father’s sin? Does Elohim visit the iniquity of a man upon his succeeding generations? 

But what Noah had done was not personal vendetta. It was an act of protection for the sacred and social identity of the family and the community. Without moral taboo, civilization would fall faster than it could rise. 

The community’s response illustrated the power of internal evil to divide and conquer a people. Ham’s evil act caused a rift in the clans. The sons of Shem supported the call for judgment upon Ham. They wanted nothing less than his life for the violation of his parents’ sacred honor. Japheth and his tribes considered it wicked, but not worthy of the penalty of death. Banishment or exile, but not death. Yahweh’s covenant with Noah after the Flood included the justice of a life for a life. If any man would shed another man’s blood, by man should his blood be shed. The desecration of man as the image of God marked the rejection of the Creator and the beginning of the end of civilization. But did this crime rise to the level of shedding blood? They could not agree.

Meanwhile, Ham prepared his sons to leave for the south and west with future hopes of sea exploration of distant lands. He was already exiling himself. Perhaps the issue of his punishment was moot. He had made claim to the position of tribal patriarch, and now planned to leave the tribe. What drove a man to such levels of depravity? It seemed more an act of ultimate defiance of authority than one of claiming it.

Ham’s actions started an avalanche of reactions with far reaching repercussions. The elders conferred at length and came to the conclusion that it was time for all of them to spread out over the Land of the Two Rivers. This event became the catalyst for something they should have done from the start. Only fear had kept them from fulfilling Elohim’s command to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.

The sons of Shem settled the central and eastern region of Mesopotamia. The sons of Japheth migrated to the northern reaches. They built their new cities on the ruins of the old, changing names as language changed. Erech became known as Uruk and the land of Shinar became Sumer. 

Noah and Emzara waited until Ham’s son Canaan was born, before they left him in the hands of his brothers. They then traveled down the Euphrates to the Southern Sea. They sailed for the magical island of Dilmun. It was known as the Land of the Living, where the sun rises at the mouth of the rivers. It soon inspired a host of legends about the gateway to the underworld. For Noah and Emzara, it meant a chance to start a new life away from the shame. Since their family had spread to cover the known lands, the only place they would be untouched by their painful memory would be a distant unknown location. He became known as Noah the Faraway or Utnapishtim the Distant. 

So the sons of Noah spread out along the river basin and multiplied. But the dispersal would only serve to delay the inevitable, for the evil that is in the heart of man goes with him wherever he goes. 

As generations passed, the memory of Noah faded into legend and lore. The rightful lordship of Elohim over the earth was too soon replaced again by the old gods of the pantheon. Everyone had forgotten the past. Everyone had forgotten who they were. Everyone had forgotten Elohim. They had become futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened. They exchanged the truth of Elohim for a lie. They worshipped and served the creature and creation in place of the Creator. 

And Elohim gave them over to their depravity.

CHAPTER 1

The great feline moved through the tall grass of the plain. It crouched low, muscles tensed and senses alert to every sound and smell. Unusually large, the size of seven men, it inched forward in the stealth of predatorial approach through the wavy brush. This uncanny skill in the kill had already brought long life to the wily hunter. Its mane was kingly, its musculature lean and taught, its claws and teeth, protracted and sharp. 

It smelled blood.

At the end of the grassy area near the river’s edge, the daunting cat froze. It saw a group of several humans in a clearing, cleaning the carcasses of animal prey hanging from the trees. Twenty gazelles, some wild boar, and a dozen ibexes dangled enticingly from the low limbs. A feast for the king of beasts.

But the great lion was not looking at the fresh meat. It stared at the large figure laying the animals onto a cart for transportation. He was clearly the alpha male, towering above the others. He was mighty, picking up the bodies of the animals with muscular ease. He sported a full but manicured beard of dark hair and wore a chignon cloth band around his head that kept his long locks from obstructing his view. A tunic hung about his waist, exposing a naked torso and an animal skin draped on his shoulders like a small cape. If the predator had been human it would have been struck by the charisma and handsomeness of the Hunter. 

But the predator was not human. It saw a challenging guardian keeping the lion from its meal. 

Strangely, the beast had no fear of the Hunter. Though the human was extraordinarily large, the lion had killed many men, demonstrating its ability to stay alive for so long. Fear would not stop it from seeking prey, but fear was a necessary element in producing increased strength and heightened awareness for battle. But this time, it was as if there was a spell on the beast. The lion prepared to kill, but with the lack of fear that might accompany the killing of a strong enemy on the plain. 

The soft breeze carried the musk of the sweaty Hunter’s scent to the lion’s nostrils. It licked its lips with hunger. It crouched low to the ground waiting for its moment to pounce. 

The Hunter threw a gazelle on the pile of others in the cart. The four other men with him were servants. All the animals they were cleaning and preparing were victims of the Hunter’s skills. He used sport to distract his restless spirit. 

He also had preternatural senses. Those senses awoke and he stopped what he was doing. He sensed something watching him. No, not merely watching. He was being preyed upon. 

The Hunter looked about and saw the men cleaning the animals from the trees, oblivious to their impending doom. He scrutinized the brush mere cubits away from himself. But then he glanced behind him. He set his spear beside the cart and pulled out his dagger and axe. In front, and behind, there were two of them. 

No, wait. Three. It was an ambush.

Before he could yell out a warning, the lions attacked. 

The lion that stalked the Hunter leaped out of its hiding. It covered the short distance in a mere couple of strides. The other two lions were female, a large one and a small one. They surprised the men in the rear and ripped them to shreds with relative ease.

The Hunter was ready, and he was very good. His fear had spiked his strength. He caught the giant beast in the belly with his blade as it pounced on him. His other arm caught the fangs and claws of the monster in his copper forearm band. He pulled the dagger upward and sliced open the lion’s underside. The lion howled in pain and released its grip on the ax-wielding arm. The Hunter rolled on top of the lion, raising his axe high. It would take a few more moments before the lion died, so he took no chances. He swung down. The attacker went limp.

The two female lions finished off the four servants and turned to face the Hunter. Their mouths and claws dripped blood. The big one stayed back, sizing up its prey. The smaller one was not so cautious. She slunk forward, eyes mad with rage. Smaller than her companions, she was still clearly more vicious and experienced. Without a bulky mane to get in her way, she was streamlined for killing. Her mate was dead. She prepared to maul this large human and lick its bones. 

But the Hunter was not merely a human. He was also part god. He had been wanting to rid the land of these menaces. The lions had killed too many people of his city for too long. 

The lioness did not care about the Hunter’s heritage. It jumped at him. The Hunter ducked and the lioness rolled on the ground in a pile of fangs, claws, and dust, hitting its head on a tree. The Hunter only had his dagger, so he dashed to the cart and grabbed his spear. 

Dizzy from the head injury, the lioness tried to shake off unconsciousness. The harsh bark of the tree ripped off a patch of skin and hair above the eyebrow. Blood dripped down into its blinking eye. 

The Hunter raised his spear to pierce the lioness, but he felt the approach of the other one from his rear. 

He whirled. The large cat was already in the air. 

The Hunter barely got the spear point up as the lioness came crashing down upon him.

The spear ran right through her jaw and up through her brain, killing her instantly. The shaft broke under the weight of the monster. The mass of dead animal bore the Hunter to the ground. 

He got up as quickly as he had fallen. He knew that the worst of the fight lay ahead. Once the bruised female had gotten back its senses, it would be more ferocious than its companions.

The Hunter glanced around. The lioness escaped into the brush. Its head wound must have been bad after all. He noticed that his animal skins had come off his body in the fray. This lioness was a vicious killer, but she was also an intelligent killer. When her fear came back, so too did her senses. She would not fight with the disadvantage of a bleeding, dizzying wound against so mighty a hunter. So she left to live another day. To kill another day.

The Hunter dusted himself off. He sighed at the sight of his dead servants. It was not sentiment for their lives that moved him. He would have to bury them, finish the cleaning, and bring everything back to the city himself. 

He picked up the animal skins that had fallen from his shoulders onto the ground. They had been a special gift from his mother, a goddess. She had assured him that they bore the magical property of removing the natural fear of animals toward the wearer. The skins allowed him to get closer to his prey for easier kill before they bounded away. They also threw off the senses of predators like lions. 

Some might think this was an unfair advantage. He was a mighty hunter, a powerful warrior, but he was not stupid. Victory was superior to honor. If wearing a magic pelt gave him advantage, then so be it. Glory would only be increased by survival, not defeat. He was victor and that is what mattered most.

The Hunter approached the entrance of the vast walled city. He led the cart alone through the seven-fold gate, before entering the public square. He even helped the donkeys to pull their overloaded cargo of animal flesh with his mighty strength. On the top of that load were the bodies of two immense lions. The sound of trumpets announced his presence. A cheering crowd heralded him in the streets. 

He approached the entrance of his palace, to be welcomed by the smiling queen mother and high-priestess of Shamash, the goddess Ninsun.

She crowed with pride to the Hunter, “Welcome back, Scion of Uruk, Wild Bull on the Rampage, one third mortal and two thirds divine!”

The crowd cheered again.

The Hunter smiled at the grandiose exaltation. It was formal, but it was appropriate. He was Gilgamesh, Lord and King of Uruk.