Chapter 5 - Tyrant
Abzu’s house on earth, Engur. SW Asia
The causeway into the city is crowded when Arrapu crosses it. Here, the stone age slowly transitions towards a future bronze age. The noise and smoke of their new industries rise to fall onto the spreading residential districts, where courtyards of mudbrick compounds face one another across the narrow, crowded streets of a flintstone township.
Above this urban wonder, rises the mound of a religious sanctuary. The E-engur, temple of the god named Abzu. Arrapu approaches the foot of its wide ramps.
Council
The sanga stands inside the hall of Abzu. Although Arrapu has visited this building many times before, its marvel still delights him. He stares down to the far end of the hall where he sees the ĕs of Abzu. Arrapu has gazed on the face of the aquifer god. A mermaid from the lagoon below this temple, with exaggerated genitals of both conditions. Until recently, this intersexual effigy had been on public display for all to see. Veils have recently been raised around a red plastered podium to facilitate the restful privacy of a god.
Columns of expensive, imported masonry hold up a tall ceiling. These columns have been decorated with a mosaic of clay tiles. Arrapu cranes his neck to stare up at Engur’s architectural wonder. Built in a prehistoric age that is only now, slowly emerging from its stone age. At his own level, he sees citizens of this infantile civilisation, as they make their offerings at an altar. By sacrifice they buy divine favour, and seek to appease potentially wrathful gods.
Wild savages have spirits in everything of the natural world, but the gods of the citizens are not equal even among themselves. Some are becoming more important than others. I think this is a mirror image of their brave new world, where some citizens are more important than others. Yet sacrifice, and feasting, persevere to play important roles in this religion. The temple is a place not only of worship, but of giving and sharing. The ethos of barbarian commonwealth remains important here. A gruff voice interrupts his meditations. It beckons him by name from the entrance to a chamber,
‘Sanga-En Arrapu. The hereditary protector of Nammu. Her servant on Earth. Priest-chieftain and spirit-talker of Nammu’s ancient commune in the delta marshes’.
To this prompt, Arrapu enters the long room. Bales of reed cut from the margins of the lagoon, line this clay brick room. The council of Engur sits on these bales. Many of these citizens are elders, sangas, senior priests of any gender. Mostly, they wear little but the kilts and skirts as worn by those of religious office. Arrapu’s own kilt has been tailored from scraps of a hoary goat skin that have been roughly dehaired then sown with sinew. These priests of Engur wear waist-height skirts of lavish sheepskin. They don their expensive sheepskins with the woolly fleece combed out into decorative tufts.
The contrast between the rural sanga of ancient office, and these citizen-priests of a new civilisation, doesn’t end there. The brothers and sisters of the E-engur are decorated with many trinkets hanging from wasted arms, others over swollen bellies. These trinkets are not the beads of clay, as worn by gardeners of Eden, but precious stones from foreign worlds.
The demented old chieftain of Engur, NinShudapa, slouches on a wooden throne. Abzu’s bride on Earth is dressed in a long skirt of bleached fleece draping to her useless feet. A linen shawl has been wrapped over her bare shoulders, and on her head she wears a leather band of high office. Arrapu is saddened to see her decline. A dampened patch of phlegm has drooled onto the linen, which she uses to wipe her hairy chin.
Although Arrapu bows down in submission to her office, from the edge of his vision he sees NinShudapa’s eyes have grown vacant. Patiently, he awaits her permission to speak. It doesn’t arrive.
A stranger who’d been sitting on a bale directly behind the high priestess, rises up. He is swarthy, tall, full bearded, and his figure is portly. Dressed in expensive robes of fine textiles. This stranger leans over to whisper a cue into NinShudapa’s ear. At first, Arrapu doesn’t recognise this citizen. A proud and prominent nose juts out of a jet black, bushy beard. His patterned robes flow like a tent around a generous torso. Arrapu spots the circular seal matrix of black stone hanging from a copper chain around his chubby neck. He recognises this stone to be the seal of the chief treasurer to the E-engur, so this is Uguli, the infamous rogue who Babatu and others gossip about?
Prompted by her puppet master, the ancient wife of Abzu mutters her permission, ‘Please speak, Sanga-En of Nammu’.
Arrapu had made his promise to Babatu and intends to keep his business in this hazardous chamber, brief and inoffensive. Quickly the village sanga showers the E-engur with tribute from his barbarian commune. He pays homage to their god, ‘Abzu, giver of sweet waters, protector of all Eden…’ This homage, although brief by the standards of the citizen’s brand of faith, is far too long and formal for our ears. I shall not bore you with it all. Let us move on to when Arrapu falls down to his hands and knees to display deference. There he awaits the acceptance of the high priestess. If she can remember how to deliver it.
Once more, the drooling dignitary doesn’t respond. Following a brief pause, it is Uguli who stands back up, and requests permission to speak. NinShudapa hears this and grunts her approval as if she'd just been asked if she would like bread for her broth.
The gravelly voice of a temple official loudly announces, ‘The honourable Uguli accountant and engineer of Engur to take the floor’.
This dumbfounds Arrapu, that a lay-person should be granted permission to speak, while a sanga of ancient office remains bowed in submission. He recalls Babatu’s warning, and hides his disdain.
The black beard of Uguli expresses gratitude for all of Arrapu’s gifts, so briefly as to cause further offence.
Arrapu quietly surmises in thought, in the circumstances of weakened leadership, this accountant has access to the granaries, and he feeds these priests from his hand.
The words continue to flow out as Uguli’s oration, ‘the signs are clear. Pestilence from the north. River levels have been perilous. The soils of southern flats have failed to produce fat yields. Our sorcerers have used divinations to confirm this displeasure. They tell us our gods grow weary of humanity. We must appease.’
Ignoring the painful cramp in his knees, Arrapu ponders and dismisses these claims. The thin red lips of Uguli continue to move within the black beard, ‘... now is the time for action. Tear down the old walls of this house, and build a new, more worthy palace for our gods’.
Ah, there it is, Arrapu thinks silently to himself. What this is all about. This engineer desires a new temple on this hill. Arrapu recognises greed in Uguli’s eyes, as they stare across the rows of bales with accusation,
‘Some here have doubted the scale of my plans. Some have suggested they are too ambitious?’ A brief pause before he barks out, ‘Too expensive? For our immortal lord of sweet waters?’
From the edge of his limited vision, Arrapu catches the faces of the councillors, as they stare down to their own feet to avoid contact with those of the speaker.
Uguli rebukes them, ‘Fools who underestimate the wrath of Abzu and of the demon Enki-Du’.
The tyrant briefs on plans to fund his own immortality,
‘Tithes will be levied not only on our citizens of Engur, but across the all estates and communes across our dominion. All will be given the opportunity to sacrifice clay, grain, and their sons to the build of a house fit for Abzu. A temple which will tower to the heavens above’.
Prematurely, some fawning councillors rise up to cheer. Uguli has a hunger to seek out dissent. He wants to make an example of a holy man who’s popular with the poor. Despite provocations, the village priest has no more than shuffled uncomfortably on his sore knees. This doesn’t serve Uguli’s purpose, and consequently, he launches a more personal attack,
‘Arrapu, This wise council has requested I speak to you on matters of religion’. A layperson, permitted to preach to an ordained sanga? Arrapu’s jaw drops at this insult.
Uguli presses on with ever more disrespectful words, ‘The Mother Nammu will be better served by moving her idol to the renewed E-engur. A space in a proposed side chapel of the new building has been reserved. No longer should Nammu be held hostage, in a chapel constructed of reeds and cow dung, set in a swamp edge camp populated by fishermen’.
Finally, he provoked Arrapu to anger. The sanga rises up to his feet, his face flushed red with rage. In a temporary silence, Arrapu’s eyes dart from side to side, searching along the bales of the council for any sign of support. They fall only onto faces of shame.
Forgetting all caution, Arrapu’s anger finds its voice, ‘Not one of you brave enough to stand with me in condemnation of this outrage? No one is willing to defend my ancient office and temple against this threat by an accountant?’
More silence follows as the faces of priests continue to avert his stare. Their dumbness fuels Arrapu’s fire,
‘I know you all. Not one of you has lifted the waters, milked the beasts, nor scratched the dirt. You dare to sit here with your jewels and your bellies fattened on sacrifice, having never laboured? You expect the hard working farmers to dig your clay bricks and mortar, and to give to you their sons, while you feast?’
Arrapu’s voice raises even higher. He yells aggressively, ‘This isn't the divine will of the gods, but the greed of vile elements in this corrupted house. Damn you!’ He catches his breath as blood recedes back from his cheeks. Immediately he feels guilt for his outburst, but it's too late, he has released a blasphemous curse inside a temple.
Arrapu scans the faces in the chamber. They stare back aghast. Some have raised their forearms as if to shield their spirits from his curse. The demented NinShudapa screams out protests and sobs like a scolded child. Uguli leans over her from behind, and tries to console. Briefly does this devil stare back up directly at Arrapu. A sly smile forms on thin red lips within a great black beard. Arrapu understands he has been played as the fool.
In the decline of rage, fight is replaced by the desire of shameful flight. Arrapu turns his back on the scene of carnage, marching back out of the chamber, into the hall of Abzu. From behind veils, he guiltily senses the displeased eyes of an aquifer god, as they fall upon his spirit. His crime cannot be undone. It takes little time for Arrapu to stomp across the causeway to the trading station of Babatu.
She is wise enough not to delay his departure. Rather, she has her boys quickly ready his oxen for a hasty departure from Engur.
Flight
The hooded traveller steers two unladen oxen back along a dusty trail. They arrive at a fork in the trail. To the right would lead Arrapu back to his marsh-edge commune of Nammu. He could be home tomorrow. To his left leads to the more distant township of Babba, the home of the Sun-god called Utu, and to a wealthy citizen named Niginna, his daughter’s future father-in-law.
Arrapu makes a decision. He steers the oxen to the left. He can reach Babba in four days. Once there, he could negotiate with Niginna, to bring the wedding forward. Arrapu fears that following his mistake today in Engur, he might need to get his beloved daughter Ittidu to a safer place than Nammu,
‘Sidura, just in case anything unthinkable was to happen’ he openly tells her late mother, ‘Just in case’ he tries to reassure himself.
Regrets leak to Arrapu’s lips, ‘Oh Sidura, I’m such an old fool with my temper. What have I done? What have I done?’ he repeats.