D: None for me, thank you. Though if you let me be so indecorous as to address you first — I’d say it’s best if my lord the king refrains from inebriation, as I do.

N: Would it be best indeed?

D: If my lord the king deems it so.

N: Although to refrain like you, is to refrain altogether. You, held in nobility as you are, fed and watered nearly as well I am, refuse the fine roasted meats of my table and chew on chickpeas and legumes with the dregs.

D: Only because —

N (interrupting): Your reasons and rationales are irrelevant. You refuse to drink? Refuse away, leaves more for me and ten other myriads of courtiers.

D: Do not be wroth with me my lord, I—

N (interrupting): Actually, it is a great pity that you do not drink. The soil of Babylon makes for a poor vintage, all our wine is imported from the same place you were. If you’d bothered to try it, you might even feel a little more at home.

D: Is there a home for a man whose god is homeless?

N: No need to fret about such things, whatever’s left of him is safe here — and in good company too. Our temple is the home of every god from Elam to Egypt. Or does he find such a royal dwelling not up to his standards?

D: Woe to the him who serves his neighbour a drink, mixing it with his poison to get him drunk and gaze at his genitals.

N: Good thing you’re a eunuch then, so you don’t need to worry.

D: Woe that wine perverts the proud, making them glut their gaping maws like insatiate Death all the way to the grave.

N: I see you’re a poet.

D: A pity that you’re not.

N: How so?

D: You wouldn’t need me to tell you your dreams and their meanings.

N: No, you see you have it the wrong way round: you are functionally dead. You need to tell me my dreams and their meanings, that you might live.

D: The dead need nothing.

N: Then why, pray, are you here?

D: Because it’s not about you, my lord king.

N: My dreams… are not about me?

D: They are not your dreams. You dreamt them because you are important, and through you they are. No, my lord king, not so — you are important so that you might dream. Your kingship, your conquests, your fame, your, might, and your glory sung across the world entire — this is the cause of all of these things.

legenda:

N — Nebuchadnezzar

D — Daniel (called Balaṭ-ušuṣur in Babylon)

One day, as he returned home, an attempt was made on Ahio’s life. There was a snake at his threshold whose tail he stepped on, the snake spat and tried to bite him, but he evaded and crushed its head with his sandal. When he entered his house, he discovered that is had been broken into, though nothing had been taken. No, something had been put in. It was a tablet of cuneiform, the writing which Ahio had to learn to read, as it was the common tongue of the world (well, the closest thing to, ever since the tragic collapse of that ziggurat however long ago), and so was vital for diplomacy. Nonetheless, the hand of the writing was strange and the night was dark, so Ahio decided to leave it for the following day.

And who did he go to for help in reading the tablet? His old friends, the Kemoshites. They were, after all, his fellow Canaanites, who made sacrifices to his God, and who understood cuneiform better than any other priestly order - as all the others preoccupied themselves with the tediously silly and unintelligible hieroglyphs.

The priests heaped condolences and congratulations upon him, trying desperately to hide their guilt in the crimes of the past. Ahio presented them with the tablet, which they promptly read. On it was a threat, with curses and damnations all round - if Ahio didn’t pay back what he owed, all would know of his crime and he would be undone. It read like something a Sumerian magician would write. The priests of Kemosh were overjoyed and knew that this was their chance to finally have political power - they would blackmail Ahio and have him in their pocket, or they would reveal all and bring about his death.

On the tablet were also inscribed instructions as to whither he must go, what to steal, and whither to bring the prize. The priests sat Ahio down, told him what the tablet said, then smiled. Ahio went pale. He was caught in a trap - nearly twenty years in court make one familiar with all of the hundred-fifty-seven types of smiles a person can smile and all of their intricacies - and this time, he doubted there’d be an escape. Still, he stood his ground and boldly told the priests that he would not yield to their demands, let them do what they may. And that he would have words with Pharaoh about driving the Canaanite cult of Kemosh out of Egypt entirely.

Things went downhill from there. Ahio petitioned the Pharaoh about the Cult of Kemosh, but as much as Pharaoh herded his successor, this he could not do. There had been too many Canaanites now in Egypt, far too many, and to ban the Cult of their chiefest Deity would be to invite revolt, discontent and bloodshed. Ahio, sadly, understood, and didn’t press the matter further, out of fear of his old betrayal being discovered.

The Kemosh, enraged and spiteful, were also conniving. They went to the place indicated on the tablet: the home of a wealthy Gommorite conjurer, ex-priest of Ba’al, professional slinger, and now gangster by the name of Esh’maat. Turns out he’d an old acquaintance, and a wealthy donor to boot. He was a philanthropist of sorts, the eviceration of his city along with all the other settlements on the shores of the Salt Sea had made an awful impression upon him and he decided to use his great wealth to help out fellow Semites less fortunate than he. Why did Esh’maat loathe Ahio then, besides the empirical hatred the debauchees of Gomorrah hold for their neighbours the degenerates of Sodom? See, he thought Ahio to be a turncoat who had abandoned king Bera for the temptations of Egypt, and by being named Pharaoh’s successor had sold his soul to Sheol and actually ceased to be a Canaanite at all. In short, it was a case of late second millennium B.C. xenophobia. And who could blame him? Ahio for all his virtues was a brittle man.

And so it was, that Esh’maat laid a trap for Ahio, who was determined to see his mission through. He left the house and even pretended like he’d gone out of the country to do trade with the Proto-Midianites. But, in secret, he left one of his men there to keep watch. His best man, and personal bodyguard. A young, handsome, unbelievably agile and strong specimen, nothing like his father, the ox-cart driver Iuseneb: who was called Potiphar.

The sun was setting on Ahio’s prowess, but for what he lacked in strength of arms, or speed, he made up in determination and a mastery of gloomy facial expressions. He had thought he was a man with nothing to lose, and now he realised he was wrong. A man who has a realisation of that kind is dangerous. Men like that succeed.

He entered the house by hopping the fence and going up the outdoor stairs leading to the roof. When he was up there, he took out an axe and a hammer and with great effort, making minimal noise, he carved a hole in the roof. After the incident, many an Egyptian started thriving in the “roof-strengthening” trade. The piece he carved, he gently removed and jumped into the house.

Where Potiphar was waiting.

He grabbed Ahio’s legs and slammed him on the floor with full force. Ahio took out his dagger and swiped at him, but was immediately stopped by Potiphar’s strong arm and clenched bicep, which effortlessly snapped Ahio’s wrist.

“Who are you?” yelled Potiphar, as he decked Ahio in the face.

Ahio did not respond. So Potiphar asked again, striking him with greater strength. This was repeated a couple more times, until Ahio said, spitting blood and fractured teeth,

“A fool cursed by the Gods for leaving his King. A fool cursed by the Gods for blackmailing the Pharaoh. A fool forsaken for deceiving the parents of his beloved. A fool cursed by the Gods for abandoning his children.”

“No, it is not so old jackal,” grinned Potiphar, “you are a fool who thought he could fuck with Esh’maat, that above all is your chiefest folly. Well let this be a final lesson for a fool who never learned: he who fucks with Esh’maat, fucks also with Potiphar.”

The name caught Ahio by surprise. Instantly he thought back on his lost sons. He pictured them in his mind, and that picture looked eerily similar to the youth who was about to kill him - who by his appearance was something between an Egyptian and a Canaanite. It cane together in Ahio’s mind — this is him, really him - one of his sons! Surely it had to be! And suddenly he had nothing to lose again. That faint hope, that instant surety was good enough to die on.

And so Ahio laughed. A raspy gasp of laughter much to Potiphar’s confusion. And in his last moments he reached up to touch his son’s face. Only to feel a cold dagger slide comfortably between his ribs.

Potiphar felt something too. This old man seemed familiar, not just familiar but close somehow. The shape of his face and the look of his eyes were nearly a reflection of his own. His parents told him he was sent by the Gods and that his true progenitors weren’t worth his, or anyone’s spit, abandoning their child outside their house. They must have been rich too, living right next to the Pharaoh’s palace. Could this perhaps have been the… No. Potiphar extinguished the thought like a man pouring water on an oil lamp.

And thus, dearest reader, ended the first generation of the line of Potiphar.

Of course, the line of Potiphar is known by that name not for the sake of Ahio and his Nefersekhmet. Nor is it known by that name for the exploits of this Potiphar the first. He had few exploits. Still, it is critical to chronicle them, for it is through them that we shall come to the world inhabited by his grandson Potiphar III, for whom the Dynasty is indeed named, and under whom it would be said in the land of Egypt:

“Egypt has her Pharaoh, and Pharaoh has his Potiphar.”

Ahio, therefore, set his sights on murdering the Pharaoh in cold blood. The poor, almost innocent Pharaoh, who had already suffered so much.

Ahio waited year for this to come to pass. He plotted and planned and quietly waited. He wanted to enjoy his revenge, to make Pharaoh feel every pang of horror and pain. And he planned to do it on the very same day that his family was taken from him.

For this purpose, he took a sample of the milk his wife bathed in and rode swiftly to the borders of Egypt, where it is most frequent that the Sumerian magicians travel. There he intercepted one such man and found out what kind of poison it was that had been mixed into the milk. Further, he acquired a stronger sample of the poison, though for a steep price. This Sumerian magician had lost much of his gold, because his partner, an Aramean, had taken it while fleeing from the famine, and Ahio was charged of finding and taking the gold back. A charge he forgot about in short order.

With poison in hand, he continued to wait for the destined day. While somewhere far-off Potiphar and Potipherah waxed and waxed.

The day was finally at hand. Pharaoh awoke and was washed by a copious amount of slaves. He put on a loincloth which presented his loins for all to see — so that they may be assured of his fertility and thereby the fertility of the coming harvest. Ahio was one of the first to see Pharaoh after he donned his ceremonial garb, not daring to look him in the eyes, but fixing his gaze at the Living God’s circumcised male appendage. Then he excused himself to check if everything was prepared for the ceremony, and poisoned the oil which the Pharaoh would use to lubricate his loins, with the same deadly poison that severed the life of his beloved Nefersekhmet. He poured the whole vial in the brass bowl, so that Pharaoh would suffer indescribable pain.

The Lord of the Two Lands, Beloved of Amun, Second only to Horus and Ra, King of Egypt, King of the World, Living God, Pharaoh took off his loincloth and swigged some of the oil into his hand, with the grace of an actor performing a favorite soliloquy. He had done this ritual for years and knew how to do it fast and easy, without many complications. He reserved the most erotic, grotesque and arousing images his imagination could conjure (and Pharaohs of that dynasty were renowned far and wide for their imaginations) exactly for this purpose, thinking of the night to come, when he would act his fantasies out. He looked up at the sky, whispered a prayer, closed his eyes and gripped his flesh.

After a few strokes, he felt like he was holding a dried leather waterskin… No, a peeling dried leather waterskin… It hurt and people were screaming. He looked down to see what was wrong and fainted at the sight of his disfigured, burning organ. No description is required. One must only picture a snake shedding its skin.

Quickly the servants and the guards — chiefly Ahio himself, rushed to him and carried him away. As the people were made to leave and the year was doomed to be one of bad harvest and maybe even famine, owing to the ever increasing amount of immigrants from Canaan.

“This is my punishment from the Gods, Ahio.” quoth the barely-Living God, as he was put onto his bed by the Captain of his Guard. “My punishment for doing nothing, while you, my protector, who is most dear to me, lost what is most dear to you.”

He closed his eyes and let his head fall upon his wooden pillow. Ahio contemplated brandishing his khopesh and decapitating the man then and there. But something stayed his hand. He sat over the sleeping Pharaoh and did his duty, all the while hoping he would die.

He did not.

Though Ahio tried to act caring, saying how peacefully His Divine Majesty slept and that they definitely should come back later, the doctors and priests were insistent. And though there was blood, there was screaming and there was pain, they managed to cure the Pharaoh and save him from the Scales of Anubis. What followed was another stage of repentance, as Pharaoh blamed himself and his apathy towards Ahio for the affliction. It was a long period and one that the Captain even resentfully enjoyed, all the while plotting another attempt.

It culminated in Pharaoh’s most unorthodox and strange proclamation, after once again being assured of his new impotence and infertility. He put his head in his hands and spent many days vexed and upset, while all Egypt wept for his affliction. Then one bright day he summoned Ahio before him. And to the surprise of all the Two Lands, named him his successor. Saying it was the least he could do.

Few things can suppress grief in the heart of a wronged man. This seemed to be one of those things. Ahio put his hatred aside and even tried the unmanly (or remarkably manly, depending on who you ask) act of moving on.

And so it was written. And so it was.

Well… Until it wasn’t.

Not because Ahio schemed again, or because the Pharaoh broke his word, or some foreign invasion or divine intervention… But because Ahio, General of Sodom, Egyptian, Canaanite, Progenitor of Potiphars and Guard of the Pharaoh met a sudden and terrible end.

It is believed by many scholars that this particular psalm was indeed originally a hymn to the divine thunderer-king Ba’al Hadad, whose name was merely replaced with that of the israelite 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄.

as an interesting exercise, therefore, I decided to “translated it back” into Ugaritic and return it to its rightful owner. It turns out something like this…

on another note — our current knowledge of the Ugaritic corpus does not include the word for thunder, with the closest thing being the word “ql” — voice. This, rather providentially, makes most of this poem’s text into a double-entendre and further reinforces its connection to the cloud-rider Ba’al.

The priests of Nefersekhmet’s patron goddess Hathor refused to bless the union, saying that the couple were insubordinate, ungrateful, foolhardy sinners and that the goddess would make the pregnancy a painful and fatal one.

This was not so with the Sodomite priests of Kemosh, whom Ahio worshipped. They said that the pregnancy and the birth would be an astounding success, bearing twins, and that nothing would go wrong — if, of course, the thankful parents would offer one of the twins to the bull-headed God as a blood sacrifice.

They nodded along as their respective priests spoke, and spat at the thresholds of the Temples when they left. Still, they kept up their sacrifices and prayed to every god that they could think of, even chancing (simply out of the correct syllables spoken in the right order) to pray to the unheard of God of the Hebrew, who was long since returned to Canaan.

And Lo! Twins were born onto the happy couple. Two healthy boys — both of whom they chose to name Potiphar for reasons beyond anyone’s understanding. However, the sorrows of the couple were about to return with a vengeance.

First, the word got around about the successful birth of the Captain’s twin boys, and spread over Egypt like a plague of…never mind, that’s a bit too far ahead…and word reached the priests of Hathor and the priests of Kemosh. The priests of Hathor, instead of being humbled because their goddess did something contrary to their oracles, decided that the theology of the time, with its predictions and prophecies, had been rather a confused mess, and that Hathor helps those who help themselves. So they sent assassins to dispatch Nefersekhmet and her children. At the same time, the priests of Kemosh felt that a debt was owed to their god and sent a man of their own to kidnap one of the twins, or failing that, slaughter their mother.

Unfortunately for the priests and for the couple, the stars aligned precisely so that all the intruders showed up on the same day. The assassins sent by the priests of Hathor, let us call them Hathorites, were smarter than the Kemoshite, but the Kemoshite had an advantage above the Hathorites — he was a Philistine, and many a tale is spoken about the stature and strength of the men of that nation.

When Nefersekhmet had the worst of her skin condition — she bathed, as all respectable and responsible women do, in ass’s milk. The season was summer, and so was, as the learned will no doubt know, was the highth time of year when women bathed in ass’s milk. The Hathorites were aware of the ritual and poisoned the milk that had just been boiled, after killing the servants in charge of the bath. Nefersekhmet put her two baby Potiphars to sleep, and after taking a careless swig of wine and a few ripe dates, fancied that is was time for some me time. She took off her thin cotton dress, and stepped with her smooth, slender legs into the warm bath. It was, she thought, a bit too warm. She lay down and immersed herself. Too warm, much too warm. It was scorching in fact…

Truly it was a painful death, and a fate not to be wished upon any man, no matter his wrong against you. Nefersekhmet screamed and wailed, as her poor, sensitive, tortured skin was burning and peeling off. The servants, the guards, and the slaves could do nothing, but take her out of the bath, trembling, curling up into a ball of misery, and watch as she wrinkled alive and turned into a leprous corpse that looked like it had been mauled by carrion or half-eaten by a terrible fire. Ahio was away attending to the Pharaoh, but servants were sent to fetch him at once. Others still were sent to fetch priests and doctors.

In the meantime, one of the Hathorites moved in and stole the Potiphars. And just as he was leaving, he saw the massive Kemoshite trying to make his way into the house. The Kemoshite saw the babies and beared his khopesh. A bloody struggle followed, but he was victorious and took one of the babies, leaving the other to its fate in the street before the house. He made his way to the tiny Temple of Kemosh to deliver his prize, when the other Hathorite intercepted him. With a swing of his sword, he decapitated the unwitting Kemoshite and snatched the little Potiphar.

He raised the bloody sword over his head to kill the child when… He had a strange phenomenon come over him. The assassin, who was himself only a part time hunter for the Temple’s kitchen, and mostly just a herbalist, with ambitions to open up a shop of his own someday, who was called User-maat-resete-pen-re, had a change of heart. The death of the Kemoshite (of which, however, most naturally, he would greatly boast) disturbed him greatly, so he stole to a nearby village, with the baby in hand, and bought a wicker basket. And what happened next?

We all know what happened next.

The baby, one of the Potiphar twins — whom we shall now call Potipherah, to distinguish him from the other boy, whom we last left on a sandy street somewhere in Memphis, ended up in the Great City of Ra, the Sun’s Chosen City of Pillars — which was called Iunu… or On… or Heliopolis… depending on whom you are to ask. He floated all the way down the Nile, until he ended up in the Temple of Atum, where he was taken in by the priests, who saw him, rather fortunately and uncharacteristically so far, as neither a victim to be murdered, nor a victim to be sacrificed, but as a blessing from the gods - a child they would raise and initiate into their order.

Unfortunately, or very fortunately, that’s where the intrigue ends for Potipherah.

The servants that were sent to fetch Ahio were stopped at the threshold of the palace, but their incessant shouting convinced the two sentinels standing guard to let them through. It was, not coincidentally at all (for the Hathorites were professionals at their trade) the Day of the Seeding of the Nile. When Royal Pharaoh, Living God, Son of Ra, the Morning and the Evening star spilled his fertilising seed into the Nile, to guarantee a good harvest in the year to come. So, Ahio quite further away than he’d normally be from his house (now that he was captain of the guard, he lived not a meh nesut away from the home of his master), ran as fast as he could, to prevent catastrophe. He was, of course, too late. And not just because his wife was long since dead, but because while he was gone, something happened to the baby Potiphar who lay weeping on the street.

To understand what happened, one must first be familiar with the afternoon routine of a simple, hardworking, slightly portly, bald, big nosed, pimply, but making up for his weight and appearance in a pyramid’s worth of unbelievable self-confidence ox-cart driver by the name of Iuseneb. Who lived in a tiny house, with his barren wife and his two oxen as his companions. Fortune started looking up for him when people began flooding in due to the famine - and he helped to transport their belongings to their new homes. Through his helping hand he made connections with various traders and craftsmen who also needed their goods transported. Those connections lead to connections that were a bit less reputable and sometimes, in the amphorae of wine or the sacks of flour, he’d transport contraband and the occasional slave or as many as he could fit.

Today he was completing one such transport, and was enjoying some honeycomb whilst lazily commandeering his cart when… Lo! A baby lay on the road. A healthy baby boy, abandoned, no doubt, by his parents. Iuseneb got off his cart, took the baby, got back on and resumed his course, thanking Ra for the blessing of a child he never had. Of course he didn’t question the origin of the child, why it lay at the threshold of a house practically lodged into the wall of the palace, or why it was wrapped in a blanket that was stained with blood. As a great Pharaoh once declaimed, “When the Gods send you a blessing, you don’t ask why it was sent,” so he didn’t.

And so it came to pass that Potiphar, son of Ahio was now the son of Iueseneb, while Potiphar son of Ahio was now Potipherah, ward of Heliopolis.

Everybody knows how those things went down, so there is no need to elaborate. Let’s just say everybody grew tired of the bureaucrats that sat in their offices between the Tigris and Euphrates, while the Canaanite folk starved. What is vital to our story is this — Bera the king of Sodom would have suffered quite a defeat, because his best warrior, Ahio, fled the city in the night. He did this not out of fear, but rather because his beloved Nefersekhmet, whose father was a diplomatic envoy to King Bera, was summoned, along with the rest of Egypt’s ambassadors, back home. The Pharaoh saw the situation spiralling out of control and decided to watch from afar. So, Ahio went with his beloved, as he was gladly taken in by her father’s household as a bodyguard.

This had been a great loss for King Bera for two reasons. One — Ahio was a damn fine warrior. Two — Ahio was his lover. And if it wasn’t for the outlaw (or Hebrew, as they were called) Abram, who offered him his services, he would have taken his own life before the war. Bera was notorious for his wandering eye, and his wandering heart. So much so, that he fell in love with the Hebrew, once the war was over. And after getting his affections very angrily (and as he would later say, unjustly) spurned, he fell into a depressed pit of debauchery and hedonism. It created quite a labour crisis, as the export of salt, the city’s main source of income, was halted, as in his sorrow he deprived many a young man of the ability to walk for days at a time. Eventually it got too out of hand. And we all know how that ended for Sodom, Gomorrah and all of their neighbours.

It wasn’t any better in Egypt, either. As Ahio was swiftly taken from the secret bed of his beloved and into the royal bed of the Pharaoh. He started blackmailing the king, and eventually got his wish, and was made a full Egyptian citizen, after which, he swiftly married Nefersekhmet. The parents found out and there was a great row, as they wanted her to marry a Philistine chieftain with rising prospects in the trade of piracy. Now that the Pharaoh, his wife, and Nefersekhmet’s parents were all angry, they conspired in unison against the lovers that had wronged them so terribly.

Their plan was simple, but brilliant. Sodom was a place where people painted their bodies in very loud colours, while Egypt was a land of rings, necklaces, piercings and every other type of jewellery imaginable. Nefersekhmet had sensitive skin, and since even the most harmless of materials like urine, glue and lead which were used in the production of paints in Sodom caused her much pain and led to many reactions, for the longest time she was subject to rashes, irritations, sores, blisters and boils, which made her social life in the City of Sin a veritable nightmare. Not so in Egypt, where she wore the finest ornaments that minas upon minas of wheat could buy. It became an obsession of sorts. And it was through this obsession that the devious conspirators planned the lovers’ undoing.

On the day of the wedding, the Pharaoh bestowed many great gifts onto the couple. He filled bags with gold, and amphorae with wine to bursting. And when everybody had become drunk on the heavily fermented, lardy beer and the Minoan wine, Pharaoh bid his servants take his most precious jewels and place them into the bags of gold, while all the guests were fast asleep. They were the finest jewels — the Royal Jewels that only the Pharaoh could wear.

A day had passed and the second nuptial night was interrupted with a scandal, as a group of guards raided the newlyweds’ house. Naturally, they found what they were looking for. Naturally, Ahio and Nefersekhmet protested their innocence. Naturally they weren’t believed. And naturally, they were taken before Pharaoh to face swift and immediate justice. But before that, Ahio put up a valiant stand, subduing five guards, completely naked, using the objects he had in his room - a blanket, two amphorae of wine and a chair.

However, a day before all that, something else happened. Which would coincidentally prove the lovers’ salvation (and the salvation of a great many others, depending upon who you ask). For that was the day that Pharaoh made his own mistake. Just like Ahio and Bera, he was caught in that moist, cocooning web of love. He had, for his own part, fallen in love with a foreign girl named Sarai, who came with the Hebrew Abram, who was, in his own words, her brother. This was not true. He was her husband. Why would one lie about something like that, none can say — it’s a kind of lie that just crosses the line twixt thrift and madness. Anyway, the Hebrew prostrated himself before the Pharaoh and told him of his hardships in the famine and the succeeding war, he pleaded to be given shelter and sustenance.

The Pharaoh had no words of consolation for the Hebrew, except for a request of his own - in exchange for the hand of Sarai, the Hebrew would be given livestock, riches and servants. Abram, after many feigned sighs and protestations, which were his form of haggling, reluctantly agreed. Pharaoh entered his chambers with Sarai and untied his loincloth, while she loosed her hair. And, not a minute had passed after his “emission,” that Pharaoh fell grievously, grievously ill.

The poor Morning and Evening Star was paralysed. He could hardly speak. So, when his guards brought Ahio and Nefersekhmet before him, he was very much indisposed. Thus it came to pass that the lovers ended up spending their honeymoon in the dungeons.

The Pharaoh eventually realised that he was being played for an Apep and that his illness had been a curse bestowed on him by the cunning Hebrew. The trickster denied it, of course, claiming that it was punishment from his strange, unheard of God. Remember those words. Keep them in your mind. For it is through that very cause that Djoser’s life became “remarkable.” And so it came to pass that the Living God repented of his sins before the Living God. He let Sarai go, and even made her drink a concoction which prevented the “sewing of seed.”

He recovered immediately and became a changed man. He had felt that if a random Hebrew, from Ra knows where, can inflict upon him such a curse, what powers could a native Egyptian, graced by the Gods, wield against him. And so he became religious, surrounding himself with an ever-increasing amount of priests, until superstition became tradition, became law. As it is with all things. The most relevant part of his “new Him,” for our purposes, however, is that he freed Ahio and Nefersekhmet and even humbled himself before them with an apology. Further, he made Ahio his Captain of the Guard.

Djoser.

What is there to say about Djoser, who was born on the twelfth day of the harvest month and died exactly sixty years later — which is a sign that Ra smiled upon his life — to a common village guard and his childhood sweetheart? What is there to say about Djoser, who was named after the builder of the first pyramid? What is there to say about Djoser, who lived a good honourable and completely unremarkable life? What can one possibly say?

Ask anyone that about themselves and they will scoff at you. But in his later years, all Djoser longed for was an epitaph even more brief than the one provided above. He knew that if it was up to him, the answer to all of those questions would be a simple “nothing.”

Unfortunately, it was not.

For one, the last statement to the epitaph above is false. He lived neither a good, honourable, nor unremarkable life. Of course, in such matters there are seldom few who can even judge, therefore a seldom few to lend such a statement any credence or authority. But it is not so with Djoser. By the end of his days, everybody who ever knew him — hated him. That is to say, if anyone ever truly “knew” him. And those aren’t words I throw around lightly or wantonly. However, it is foolish for the subject of this telling to be immediately subjected to such great emotion. Though I have little doubt that whoever has the lack of foresight, or wit to read this will come to hate Djoser just as much as everyone did in his day. It’s not something one starts out doing. Rather, it is like lovemaking - it is learned. One must learn to hate. One must learn to hate our Djoser. And it is so much harder to learn to hate, than to love.

So, what is there to say about Djoser?

A lot.

It is best to start this account with its most natural genesis. By chronicling the lives of the predecessors to Djoser’s post. That of the Viceroy (or as the pretentious would call it - the wazir) to the pharaoh. However, there is already quite a Good Book chronicling that very subject, along with a considerable bit more. So, it is even better to start by chronicling the lives of the predecessors to Djoser’s other post. That of the Captain of the Guard to the pharaoh. Though even that would be foolish, as there were simply too many of them throughout the millennia before his birth.

Let us settle then with the brief account of the dynasty of Potiphar, which commences just over half a millennium before Djoser’s birth.

So… What’s there to say about Potiphar?

Five days previous to that event I parted ways with her, who at that time seemed to me the love of my life — and that night, at that masquerade I saw her again, and we danced together and reminisced about all the impossible things that could have been. We spoke amicably to one another in the language that first brought us together and there was not a breath of regret in either of our lips as we did so. Our systems, in all fairness, were a little overfilled with various kinds of alcohol from the extortionate bar that the SU so skilfully set up for our collective inebriation — so that maybe we were all of us more susceptible to strangeness and welcoming to novelty.

Very few people remained at the ball, and the evening drew to a close — my double-breasted uniform was undone, my cravat was stuffed lazily into my pocket, my face was moist with the dew of dancing’s perspiration, and my feet were tired. I started homeward, where I’d sit in the garden, smoke my pipe and say not a word to anyone but myself, when saying goodbye in Russian to my abandoned amour, I heard not her voice, but a voice far more peculiar answer me…

“Proshu proshcheniya,” slurred the voice, “no ya slyshal chto vy govorite po-russki?”

It said shyly. Both of us turned, and likely both of us nearly fainted from shock. For there dressed in a dark grey suit with a lined grey tie, stood Tsar Nicholas II, staring abashedly at us with his eyes the colour of heaven.

To our surprise, he was neither the last emperor of Russia, nor even Russian as fate would have it. He was a boy from rural America, who’d mastered the Dostoyevskian tongue and spoke to us about his love for it and a thousand other things with an earnestness and fervour only found in pure and beautiful souls. He introduced himself as Thys, and we became fast friends — that is to say Instagram mutuals, hastily putting each other’s details into our dying phones.

There is nothing to be said for love at first sight, other than the waft of mere possibility, due to the concept’s simple nonexistence. There is, however, much to be said at friendship formed in this way — for I looked at him then, drunkenly rambling about interests i thought no one else shared, eyes the colour of heaven wide and hungry, and I instantly knew that we would be lifelong friends.

Of course, the next day we forgot all about it; and beyond the occasional meme he’d post on his story, I didn’t see this Thys fellow for nearly another six months. We returned to uni in October, having a had a fair few brief correspondences over that long libertine summer. We corresponded again, strangely enough, in Yiddish of all languages, of which he had a strong grasp (at least in writing), the only person I knew (other than myself, though whether I know myself is still a mystery to me) under the age of 75, who even knew of the tongue’s existence. And I became even more convinced of our destined camaraderie.

But Thys was an elusive man, I thought — he was popular, well-liked and busy, and surely wouldn’t muddy himself with further knowledge of my upstart personage — I had to lure him into it, seduce him into my society, like Mephistopheles in poodle-shape. But how? Soon the way presented itself.

I was given the opportunity and funding by the university’s Drama Society (of which I am now become the president), to put on a play of my own composition. It was a two and a half hour long, early modern English blank verse piece about Russia’s infamous first (and infamously not the last) autocrat — Ivan the Terrible, and his Repin-immortalised filicide, “As Terrible as God”. Even before the auditions could be held, I told him about it and begged him to come try out for a part in the tragedy — and when I saw his name on the sign-up sheet, I was, lightly to say, elated. He came in, arrayed in his accustomed accoutrements: a grey overcoat, scarf, ushanka and combat boots, and read for the part of the titular Tsar. We didn’t give him the part, but cast him as the tyrant’s loyal advisor and general — Prince Alexander Shuisky: a well-meaning man crushed by his master’s spiralling reign of terror. And he accepted!

Still, I had my doubts: he hadn’t done a play since early youth, and he was busy with his master’s degree (which would later manifest into a uniquely genius piece on Sternerian Anarchobulgakovism) and was the then president of the Ex-Yugoslav society. I was afraid we’d lose him to his many responsibilities, and thought of different ways to seek the prophet’s friendship. My fears proved foolish and unfounded — and he undertook the task with such devotion and fervour, that he filled me with the inspiration to labour on in the increasingly difficult project. He always came in with a story and a smile, and his loud boisterous laugh became a sound that I longed to hear more and more the longer I knew him.

We spoke during smoke breaks, him offering me fat cigarettes from his silver port-cigar, lighting them with his vintage zippo. We’d text in mock-Old Church Slavonic, and chat shit that only we could even begin to laugh at, on the white-boards of our rehearsal rooms. He treated everyone like a true friend, and became one of the most beloved parts of the entire production. We’d walk across London and he’d tell me of his path to London and to Slavophilia, his discovery of a forgotten silent film in an old camera he bought; he wanted to do a stop-motion battleship Potemkin, and wanted to go with me to Serbia to sit in a dingy Belgrad café, drinking, smoking and enjoying life. We were alike in interests and in earnestness, and that was enough for us to eventually become inseparable. On show-day he lent me his moustache wax, and he introduced me to the wonders of the Institute — a bar where he seemed to be resident.

We’d watch Soviet films in my dorm room, drink strong liqueurs and even stronger absinthe, eat burgers and talk about love. We revived my old idea of a remake of Viy, and vowed to bring it to life. On the day after our show’s final performance, waking up hungover and happy, he was the first person I texted.

He sang Rasputin at the afterparty and fell asleep; and he sang Rasputin again at the birthday party we threw for him, after he had shed his imperial beard over the winter break. I’d think it’s fair to say that we became inseparable, even in times when we didn’t intend to be — ending up at the inaugural Artist’s cafe together, independently. We watched Waterloo, which he narrated to me, and got drunk; we watched 12 Chairs, which I narrated to him, and got drunk; we watched Amadeus… and got drunk.

I was there (on accident) on the evening when his heart was broken — and I was there all the evenings after, trying my best to brighten his (seemingly for the first time) dower spirits. We read our works to one another; and travelling back from the absinthe bar jokingly prophesied about our coming loves.

Before Easter he went sailing, as was his dream; and it was the week that I almost took my own life: but even the he was there.

“If not for anything else… Live for my sake…”

He said. Hungover, we watched the Passion of the Christ and Nosferatu on Easter Sunday. Try how I might, I can’t recognise those men — though we remain them even now. That’s when our collective love for piracy and the sea peaked its head again, we’d talk about going to crew a sailboat for a year. Then I fell in love, the day that we went to see Blazing Saddles together, I understood who would be the love of my life; though even then he prophesied, quoting the lyrics of one of the film’s songs:

“I’ve been with thousands of men again and again: they sing the same tune. They talk of Byron and Shelley and jump on your belly and bust your balloon.”

We almost became rivals over that love; but even then, we just couldn’t. Our bond was too tempered at that time, and even that (initially) complication couldn’t move it. Over the summer we remained constantly in touch, as he finished his degree and returned to the States, though we didn’t know (and still do not know) when we’d see each other again.

And now the wheel’s come full circle, he’s across the sea and helping me through the hardships of a newly-shattered heart. His advice is hard and sometimes unmanageable, but I’d rather have no one else’s. He is a prophet and one of the best people I’ve ever known. We still talk of sailing the seas and roaming the world. Though we are no longer inseparable, and our distance makes those incredible times inconceivable. But it won’t sink into oblivion, I do not think so.

It’s almost November, but the November of my soul has come early. I walk now on the plank of oblivion. I study and sail the oceans whose waves are wrought of unknown and nearly forgotten words. Yet I fear that, which I know; and her oblivion would cast me into that abyss. Abyss coming from Akkadian word abzû the primordial deep sea between life and the underworld where Enki lives — maybe that love is still afloat, maybe it won’t sink at all… Who knows…

But wherever the winds guide our sails, me and my prophet and my friend will man the same deck and sing the same shanties. I’ll come to Asherville one day, and he to Odessa. And when we’re free, we’ll take the high seas together.

Your friendship, ya šihu, is one of the surest things I have. And I know that your eyes are always fixed to a bright and beautiful horizon, with which we mean to have a rendezvous together.

Thys, my brother, I love you. Till we meet again.

There in that desert where once languages lived and reigned, where once words fought wars and sentences slaughtered their aspirations in pits of salt — a land full of stars and footsteps and dreams, without any air or water — where religion was ripped out of a latex umbilical chord and discarded still in its infantile nakedness, bloody, soaked in sweat and weeping — yes, that very desert, the one you’ve been to but never heard of. Watched by a pair of huge molten-mountain eyes of a dull copper, like the ingots sold at Ur and sent through enemy territory past watchtower ziggurats made of huge mugs pink and porcelain into the trembling hands of Nanni, who would be shattered at receiving such ingots because the copper is bad and its monger a swindler, like a seller of rotten sprat — those huge eyes that turn every sensation into a its own life and make every touch an act of endless creation that sends earthquakes across the entire desert. Don’t look into those eyes if you get there, or you are lost, and there is no more green valleys, and no man will ever have a nose again, but if you get past those eyes and enter that desert, look for a well.

It’s shaped like a shisha in a cheap cafe on a hot day somewhere a few streets down from where an archduke was shot and twenty two million perished, and then thirty three thousand more, but it’s also somewhat like a bowl of katsu-don, do not ask me how, I do not often dig wells, perhaps that is why this one turned out like it did. Girded round with red ropes and with postcards, and with still rolls of salami on slabs made of pate… no. It is lined with harsh stones and oxidised brass engraved with images fit for any Sumerian cylinder seal, do not try to take them, it’ll reek of dill and you will fall in. There are other wells like it there, but this one’s the most unexpected, it’s vast like an all engulfing Charybdis-crater, but it is minuscule, the size of lips parted ever so slightly when the eyes roll into the back of the head from pleasure. There are others like it but this one is special. The sands have taken the others for themselves as soon as they ran dry, and now only hillocks of shrapnel remain, false and missable like attention-seeking bad poetry.

But this one remains. It’s endured, and it keeps asking for more. It goes ever down even past the places where the marble people live in their marble houses and eat their marble food in with their marble spouses, even further still, past the ribs of the nethershade’s imitation of a happy afterlife, canopied by those ribs made of crispy pork skin, where all smells like fall season perfumes. And even further down, past pages and pages and pages of lost words and meaningless transcripts and fragments and clasped arms and unkept promises. Past every sleepless night, tandem step and heartbeat even to the edges of the Abzû where Enki reigns and radiates bus stops — it goes further than even the seven sages know, further even than Woland knows, and Woland’s gone very far indeed. And this well moistens it all and turns it to clay, then to ash, and becomes an inside out sandworm that left its ID back home.

If you leave your green pastures, and go through the valley, and past the oyster-shell shaped mountain, and into the desert, and avoid the eyes, and find that well, and do not get consumed by it… then… And only then will you be able to see the box. I packed something into that box. It took time, it refused to fit, it fought and screamed and bit and clawed at me and drew blood from all of my pores… but I fit it in there nonetheless. Sealed it. Held it aloft. And mumbling an endless prayer that’s still on my lips even as I tell you this, I dropped it into that well. And it fell and it stopped falling. And now there’s a box in the well. Don’t worry, you’ll see it, you must see it, it’s a categorical imperative it’s as sure as the smell of that perfume that was given to me at that dinner by those hands — yes, you smell it even now — the desert smells of it too, and of basalt, the smell’s infected everything that once smelled like Sauvage. The box will stick out to you like a willow tree next to a pond at golden hour.

If you are brave enough to extend your hand into the well, you’ll feel that box, be permeated by its priapic cardboard and the layers of tape made of endless Tolkien songs, if you survive it, then you can take it from the well with ease. Don’t worry, it’s not heavy. I’ll tell you now what is in this box in that well past those eyes in that desert behind the mountain over the valley before the green pastures. But you must promise me either to keep it in the box, or if you choose to open the box and look at it yourself, to kill it.

It’s an eššebu. And an eššebu is an Akkadian double entendre, ask anyone in Babylon for its meaning and they will explain it you eagerly and you’ll lap it up. It’s a simple game of Semitic semantics and it belongs in that well. Not even the scribes at the temple of the endless could understand it, and the prophets went mute trying to make sense of it, their tongues went hard with rigor mortis. The sages say it’s an owl, but the sages are wrong. This eššebu is mine. It flew to me, it sat on my shoulder and nibbled at my fingers, it craved me and it lied to me. All things exist so that I could exist with this eššebu by my side and rule over our creation from the mountain. But the eššebu is in the box now, and if you free it then there is no saying how many more railroads will explode and how many clean Cordobas will gain central sewage systems. There is no telling how many more myriads of deserts will be created and how many more wells their dwellers would need to dig.

It’s there and it shall remain forever there until you take it into your hands because the eššebu is sublime like destruction and evil like seduction the eššebu once had a name and a face but not anymore, now it’s the genesis-spirit over the hurdy-gurdy Tiamat chaos waters, now it’s a summer and now its unfulfillable. The eššebu is not a creature of the desert but it has made the desert its own. But it is also none of these things, the eššebu, because its shape doesn’t matter beyond the word itself, and the word itself is an Akkadian double entendre you will never understand.

Are my directions clear? I promise you, I have not been vague. Everything is syllable for syllable as it is. Are my instructions understood?

I am not there anymore. I am waiting for my eternally destined eššebu. Go on now. Bring me the box.

Пощусь я умертвлённою душою:

Я обезвожен, дико одинок

С тех пор как ты рассталася со мною

И гневным голосом поставила мне срок

Бессловного, тоскливого мучения,

И разум разрывают демоны смущения.

Влачусь в пустыне раб обета,

И жду во мраке от тебя ответа;

И режут руки дребезги разгневанной любви,

И в той жаре мираж я вижу твой,

И все мечты кланяться пред тобой;

Осколки подымая - с пальцев кровь струит.

Пропали миражи, пустыня опустела:

Осталось лишь моё разорванное тело.

2024

enough :)

Ты помнишь как у врат вокзала

Болонского меня ждала,

Как ты в руках моих пылала,

И как сплелись потом тела

Влюблённые в квартире мрачной;

Когда всё было однозначно,

Когда пугала тебя страсть,

И над собой имел я власть?

Но ты, опять холодным взором,

Коварным словом и тоской,

Мой сущий ангел роковой,

Сразишь меня своим укором;

Твоя любовь меня убьёт…

Моя душа ту казню ждёт.

2024

translation is not provided. do it yourselves.

i have fainted now twice. once when the malady began, and once again while booking rooms for a student theatre festival in the bathroom of the student union’s reception on the second floor of the Bloomsbury theatre. i am always cold, down to the fingertips cold, curled up into a ball under two layers of blankets cold, yet it is not so — and i haven’t had air for days like i’ve been locked in a sauna or in a desert for days nauseating days, locked there by my enemy: the tuna sandwich with cucumber that poisoned me, and the three shot espresso can that threw away the key.

my body is increasingly uncertain of itself. it doubts the caresses of the hands it most desires to feel, it doubts the truth in the words of the mouth it most desires to hear. it’s been tossed from one tfl vessel to another, it’s been laying on its side and squirming

“ašipu! ašipu! ašipu! servant of aṣalugi save me! for an evil eye has been cast upon me!”

every sip of water is like an insult from a trusted friend, and every want is a half-lie. now they disappear not when they’re met, but at half-way, replaced with slippery thin leeches, that i try to rip off but fail because their bodies are too malleable.

recovery from such things is to have another tend on you. and on the first day of the malady it seemed like it would pass swiftly. L and her mother in Ewell East made me tea and food and took me to the quack acupuncture specialist whose best advice was to go see a real doctor and to drink more water — admittedly the counsel is indeed very wise and would have gone down smoother if it hadn’t been for its £60 price. E even stayed for me… she didn’t go to London and even remained with me for a time… even read to me for a little while… even looked at me for a few moments…

and then the second day dawned and i was sent on my way. we parted ways coldly and i returned to London. twice i nearly got hit by a car. i ordered döner kebab and watched the Soviet Three Musketeers musical and i took a hot shower and drank fruit tea and i was renewed…

i am not renewed. and now i am discarded here in Mallory street, untended. perhaps I’m selfish to ask for the attention given to me earlier, had i written this three to five months ago, i would have dismissed it all — he would have said,

“you don’t deserve to be tended upon, don’t waste people’s time, don’t be nuisance and be useful.”

the man with hair down to his shoulders would have sought remedy in himself, he would have abandoned all things and indulged and indulged and indulged until the malady felt uncomfortable in the scarlet-tinted green room of his raving stomach, and in tears, gone timidly home. this is the same man who was so filled with self-disgust and contempt, that would have shrivelled like a lamb kidney on an open fire, at the thought of someone’s care and affection.

i feel abandoned in my little white room made of storage space, afraid again that everything everyone’s said to me recently — everything She has said to me was a falsehood and that the sweet waters of the river have gone dry. i do not think that i should have to beg for someone to sit by my side whilst i can barely walk — its a terrible labour even to string together a sentence — but with every passing minute i must, i must, i must.

but i love her to illness, and i know she has better things to do than to sit here with me, i would rather she do something that made her happy and fulfilled.

i don’t want to be Eugene Onegin’s uncle demanding to be show respect, whose reluctant carer sits there thinking with a sigh “goddamn it why will you not die?”

I’ve got another story for the godless gospel in mind — first one in three years, and it feels actually… complete and sensible and interesting…? I’m afraid of my own work… recently I feel like I’ve been shoving it down people’s throats, when they should form lines that would make any aspiring dictator take note and reassess their bread rations. i feel that the ones i love most, and whose opinions i crave for most terribly are repulsed by it, and that repulsion is nearly as debilitating as the malady that prevents me from walking.

for the past three years September has been my most productive month — but now even that golden string is severed. i wrote nothing, and that which I did write, no one read, and was called uninteresting by my lover, who helped me even come up with the name for the wretched subject of the story. i don’t want to abandon it, but all things are against it, no one wants injas of hillah… i suppose there’s no more fitting a fate for him… it’s almost exactly what I had in mind…

if i abandon injas — will you abandon me?

i want to build a world for you. one where you’re a princess who kneads perfect fruits from the ingredients she forages from her words. i want everything to look at you in awe and you to look at everything with wonder so that there are a thousand constellations dancing in your eyes. but I’d rather build a world together.

it is now the third day of the malady. it is now the second half of the seventh hour. nearly two hours since I woke up from the cold and the pain. I need to learn the Ugaritic alphabet or else everything is lost. the maqlû has yet to be sung by the exorcist of marduk in his fish-skin hat. sit by my side and drink tea while I tell you stories, and I’ll get better.

Bitumen sinews, leak away,

The hand-carved eyes — abyssal cracks —

Succumb to warm-embrace Decay.

He takes them in his hairy arms

And rubs against them from behind;

He ties them up, enslaves, disarms,

And thrusts his pleasure unconfined.

He makes them shed their oil-stirred paints,

Their words he wipes with cloths of sand;

Their stories all become profane —

Their tongues no angels understand.

Their robes they wove with djinn-spun silk

And dyed with pomegranate blood,

Their golden calves had wine for milk,

And rivers were afraid to flood.

Six-wingéd were their bird-faced sages,

Their cats were bulls with kingly heads;

Clay tablets by their priests and mages

Were writ with signs and served as breads.

The pearl-white sunshades they had hung

Were wrought from severed angels’ wings;

Iblis was lord to all their kings —

To demons were their prayers sung.

Their rooftop gardens leaked with pleasures

Of orgies endless and absurd:

All of their moans and sighs were words,

Their perfect bodies pierced with treasures.

Their altars blazed with lapis fires,

Whose curling tongues had licked with lust,

The flesh of kids and babes to dust,

Their smoke perfumed with lost desires.

In every hallowed hall a devil

Sat antic wreathed in crown of horns —

Their craven bodies were adorned

With flowers made of fleshy revels.

What love their youths had lived and known?

What joy against the night-blue stone

Their burning, thrashing bodies felt?

How many sins went unatoned?

What now remains of those sensations,

All of those passing palpitations,

Where have their splendid bodies gone?

Full lives are spouses to damnation.

Now all the statues they did trust,

Their knowledge, wisdom, passion, lust,

And they themselves, and all they had

Are level with the desert’s dust.

For they a paradise had sought —

Its simulacrum they had wrought

Upon the earth — before their time:

A hasty garden doomed to rot.

Their want for life became impure,

For they knew nothing else beside;

They ceased to want, and went obscure

And vanished in the river’s tide.

There’s naught to gather of a nation

That had no care for its salvation,

That took its share and left in haste,

Unbothered to become the waste

Whose every pauper is a giant,

Whose very epithet is “hated,”

On whom self-righteousness is stated,

Whose emptiness is now defiant.

Know that when any shuts his eyes

To think of all the bliss that waits

Past Jannah’s thin and narrow gates,

And all its promised joys imbibes:

Tis not for Heaven he prostrates,

The paradise of pleasant streams…

It is of Babylon he dreams.”

The poet’s voice danced with the spinning constellations of the firmament and the leaping flickers of the small fire which was lit whilst he sang and night fell, as if each syllable of his poem gave fuel to that fire and life to the stars. The eyes of Ibn Jabir and his companions were like the reflection of a nearly-full moon in the village’s tiny well when water is fetched there at suhoor during the fasting-month of Embers. Injas fixed his gaze far-off, there to the ruins he sang of, hoping, it seemed, to revive the half-imaginations he had weaved.

He finished and dropped his eyes, and slumped his shoulders and sat down, his body overcome by cold or abashedness. He feared most terribly the silence that followed his recitation, for he knew not its significance, and after a long time raised his eyes and asked for water.

“You are a wise man, my companion,” said the black headed comrade of Ibn Jabir, whose ear was adorned with a ring of gold, called Abu Lahiq. “For he is wise, who seeks for treasures in the trash, and knowledge in a desolate place.”

“Is your desire water, Injas al-Hilli,” asked Ibn Jabir of the youth, “is this the treasure you would demand for your work?”

“I demand nothing for sound, noble one, only that my throat is dry. There is no greater reward than to imbue the wind with colour and to give time a voice.”

“Neither do you speak like a verse-weaver of the City of Peace,” said Ibn Jabir with pleasure. “They make pomegranates of their poetry, each rhyming couplet a golden seed, for which they fetch heavy prices. They are a strange lot, the poets of Baghdad: they walk the streets downcast and silent; for so highly do they value their words, that they do not extend them in public, lest they make a pronouncement freely, from which they would have profited were it not for their passing indiscretion. Or else they are kept in the palaces of their patrons, pampered and perfumed, to amuse them as caged birds or concubines. In Baghdad passion is not priceless. Tell me, Injas al-Hilli, would you be such a man?”

“I would not, o noble one,” replied the youth, and there was both deceit and truth in his answer.

“Not even if for every syllable you have just sung, you would receive your weight in gold? Not even if the finest calligraphers bring your words gold-rimmed and dazzling before the custodian of God Abu al-Abbas Abdallah ibn Harun al-Ma’mun, and he finds enjoyment in them,” asked Ibn Jabir.

“If I am mute but for wealth, I am an idolator,” said Injas al-Hilli. “But I would be your servant in the City of Peace. And I would stand before the House of Wisdom and sing, and when men ask of me ‘are you mad, why do you waste your words?’ I will say to them — ‘Ibn Jabir is a generous man, and charity is never a waste.’”

Ibn Jabir and his companions acclaimed the poet thereupon. They said “it is God’s will!” and they clapped their hands. By the light of the fire, Ibn Jabir had the most learned of his slaves write a letter on a parchment scroll, which he rolled up, tied with a string and sealed with waxed and a pressing of his ring. The missive was put into a silken pouch of indigo and gold, which served it for an envelope, and given into the hands of Injas al-Hilli.

“Go with this to Baghdad, and show it to the custodian of my house, Abd ar-Rahman, and you will live in the city of peace thenceforth at my expense, under my patronage,” this was the instruction of Ibn Jabir. He gave the youth a camel, and provisions for the three day journey.

All of this in secret, so that envy did not grow in the hearts of the people of Hillah. At sunrise after the prayer, Ibn Jabir asked of Injas al-Hilli before he set out — the rich man going south, and the poet, north — “what is your desire, my friend?”

“I do not know. But I will find it in Baghdad,” said Injas al-Hilli and he was ashamed.

By morning he stood at the base of the desolate ruin which he had brought to life. He would never see his benefactor and patron, Ibn Jabir again…

He bid his companions to halt their progress, and sought the knowledge he desired from the folk of the settlement nearest the ruin. But they knew naught of the things Ibn Jabir spoke, or else they feigned their ignorance, and as the time of Asr was set aflame by Maghrib’s fiery sword of scarlet horizon, the companions of Ibn Jabir began to murmur against him and his tarrying in that place. But Ibn Jabir lost not his desire for wisdom and for it he was rewarded, when a young man with a frame of temperance and hunger approached him after the sunset prayer.

The youth was no more than eighteen, and all of his features were prominent in different ways. His eyes were the dancing colours of the rare rainclouds and his hair was as the tail of the horse of Harun ar-Rashid, a bay stallion, long legged and slender. He had the fingernails of a beggar on the hands of a tailor, and the nose of a warrior on the face of a eunuch. Even so, he only ever made a singular impression, if he made an impression at all — that he was useless. Not vain enough to be proud and thereby haughty and thereby glorious as the heroes of the tribe of Quraysh, but just enough to reek of self-obsession and to repulse. He had an amulet about his neck, but it was neither a jewel, nor a rock, but the old stone of a long-eaten fruit.

“Wherefore, o my most noble and well-perfumed brother, do you tarry in such a desert place,” the youth asked of Ibn Jabir. “If you, and your companions are become lost and the stars cannot guide you on your way, look but on my finger and it shall point you onto the path you must take; and if you are beset by some misfortune that has forced you to be come hither and thereby bless us with your presence, then I will offer you words of counsel or succour, whichsoe’er you need of me.”

“Who is your father,” asked Ibn Jabir in reply.

“My father is a maker of slippers,” said the youth.

“Yet your feet are bare,” said Ibn Jabir.

“For the sake of his slippers, he left me in a place where none has need of the luxury of footwear,” the youth’s words left his clenched smile on a thin stream. Ibn Jabir reached for his purse, for he knew the youth by his reply to be a vagabond and a beggar, and charity was a good deed that weighed tenfold its value that time of year. But the youth seized Ibn Jabir by the wrists and prevented him, “you mistake me,” said he.

“What is it then, that you desire of me? I am come here neither from plight, nor misdirection. Neither your finger, nor your counsel have any use to me. But no youth in the City of Peace makes such offers as earnestly as now you have done, and even for this you deserve reward.”

“Are you a learned man, o noble one?” asked the youth, and Ibn Jabir perceived that he was taller than himself, so that suddenly he felt in his heart that he was not before a young man, but a date tree like the ones that grow at Hor Rajab, and that from the peak of that tree was to come a fruit of sweetness to the lips, if he but wait in the midday sun.

“I was become hafiz, ere I saw the first hairs sprout upon my face,” said Ibn Jabir, “but there is no wisdom in me other than its recitation.”

“Then you well know, that this road you have taken faces neither of the two qiblas, though you are a pilgrim. If you are not misled, then you are beguiled.”

“And you know what it is, that has tempted me?”

“Great are the edifices that the giants built for the ignorant, even greater the empty temples for the worship of djinn.”

“Then you know the history of the ruin,” excitement came over Ibn Jabir, “how came you by this knowledge?”

“I do not. But the rocks of that place are pleasant to the torn soles of shoeless feet, and I hide in the shadows there when the days are too hot to bear, and I am at ease. And for there is no adhan to sweeten our days here with prayer-song, I sing there and listen to the echo of my voice to pass the time. And it travels through the roofless halls, and past the colourless images, and sometimes it travels far enough away, that I forget that it is mine own voice and mine own words I hear, and that is when the world’s sound is most beautiful to me. It is when the word is beautiful that the knowledge of it comes to me, and it fills my ears and colours all around with life,” said the youth.

“The tales of the ruin are then of your own making,” doubt returned to the brow of Ibn Jabir.

The youth saw the change and it shook his countenance, “they are not false,” he said. “They cannot be but true. They come from nowhere, and falsehood cannot come from naught.”

“This man is a poet,” the companions of Ibn Jabir cried out, and they sat themselves down and reclined on their left elbows. “What is your name, poet — that we might praise you or scold you for your work.”

“Only to one have I ever sung, ere now. And hers was all the beauty of this village. A knight travelling from Basra to Baghdad took her for a wife when he passed this way, he grabbed her arm and put her behind him on the saddle of his horse and she was gone from us. I sang to her once, and she liked my voice and my couplets, and for them she gave me a peach, which she had just then began to eat. I kept its bone and its name therefrom was my name, and I am called Injas,” spoke the youth, and showed them his amulet, as he spoke.

“How did the fruit taste,” asked one of the companions.

“It was overripe and foul,” said Injas, “but for the part that she had pressed her lips to and bitten, whose nectar I have not found the words yet to describe, but to compare it to the sweetness of the forever fresh and fragrant fruit of paradise.”

“Tell us the tale of the ruin, Injas al-Hilli,” said Ibn Jabir, “how you know it. And by the quality of your words we will know it to be true or false.”

And this was the song that Injas al-Hilli sang of the forlorn place of his solitude to the wealthy man Ibn Jabir and his companions in the tenth year of the reign of the caliph al-Ma’mun, which was a year of good floods for the Tigris…

A man named Mar-Akkanim started breeding donkeys. Coincidentally this was the time that Sin-leqi-unnini was seen in Babylon riding one. These two factors proved key to Mar-Akkanim becoming the most successful breeder this side of the Euphrates. They also proved to be the undoing of Sharahum, who, upon his sixteenth birthday and the birth of his fifth child, decided to reward himself for a life well-lived and buy one. 

Of course, you already know how that turned out. However, as with all tragedies, it was hijacked and manipulated. In this case, by a few adventurous Canaanite herders who domesticated the camel and eventually put most of our beloved donkey-breeders out of business. Chiefly through their use of Sharahum’s tragic fate. 

The problem, especially to us rational Nippurian folk, is that it was about as crazy as they say it was. 

The donkey that Sharahum bought was about twenty-one. It had fur that looked like the ashes of a Gutian city. It had a dumb face and a chipped left ear. In short, it looked like our world felt. Like it was about to be replaced, like something new was about to come and wipe all we have ever known away.

Still, to Sharahum it was the best thing since bread. He fed it well, and rode it everywhere he went. He was the first in the lower part of Nippur to get one, which started a trend of everyone getting donkeys. And everyone got a better donkey than Sharahum. 

For me, however, it had become a terrible inconvenience, as by a blessing of Marduk, I was deprived of good eyesight, but granted good insight and therefore couldn’t ride a donkey. So the dramatic spike in the amount of donkey manure filling the streets was the thing that I mostly associated with that fad. 

Still, Sharahum loved his donkey. He named it Beqtum and treated it better than his wife, Ibbtu, with whom he, sadly, parted ways. Although I always said that they made for the handsomest of couples.

This was after she was caught with two ‘Arab traders in his bed doing things that, no matter how hard I try and want to, I cannot imagine. 

The fact that he let her go was a testament to his gentle heart and noble spirit. At least, we all said so. But the local priest vehemently opposed it, saying that Ishtar’s wrath would come swiftly upon the unrevenged cuckold.

Of course, it was the same priest that committed suicide a week later, after a scorpion stung him in the most unfortunate of places. 

Truth is, Sharahum was a remarkable man. He was the only man in lower Nippur, apart from myself, who could read. He also seemed to be the only man who read my stories and actually liked them. He worked as an innkeeper for quite some years, and except for the whole marital fiasco, his life was peaceful. 

Then the Bronze Age collapsed. 

Do not ask me what that means, for the life of me I do not know, nor can I find someone who does. But the Bronze Age just collapsed. It’s as if there was a collective understanding that an era ended. And Sharahum’s donkey was the last reminder of it. 

And it was a reminder that caught the eye of a large, muscular, bearded Akkadian commander named Sabu-Kashdum. 

He had been, by Nippurian standards (which, to be completely honest, were and still are, frighteningly low), the most handsome and interesting man that ever existed. What brought him to our part of the city still eludes my understanding, but whatever it was, as he walked through the streets, a khopesh dangling from his hip, every head turned. 

He got along with Sharahum like a Judean Temple on fire. They talked and talked and talked. I remember Sharahum’s recollections of those conversations - fascinated at first, then more and more, until it was almost a complete infatuation.

Next thing you know, he tells the owner of the inn that he wishes to retire from his position and come with Sabu-Kashdum to join the Akkadian army and stand against the evil Arameans, whose language, I have found, is so much more fun to speak than even our little dialect of the King’s Babylonian. 

The innkeeper tried to stop him, hell, the whole city did. No luck. And that’s when the troubles started.

He gave his children away to good households and prepared for a new, bright future. 

His plan was to ride out of the city, triumphant, on his Beqqum, and head for the great metropolis of Kish, where he’d sell his donkey and join up. He gave his children away to good households and spent many days informing his friends and neighbours of his departure. 

We all watched him make his uneven way out of the city. It was picturesque and without incident. Or else, it would have been, if (as is commonly held) donkeys didn’t have free will. 

Beqtum, it turned out, was the favorite among the he-donkeys of lower Nippur, and Sharahum decided to leave during heat. Or at least, that’s what we think happened. I mean, it really is the only rational explanation for what happened next. 

She stopped in the middle of the road. Stopped like nothing ever stops. Unmovable as those weird triangle-shaped houses they have if you go southwest enough. Unmovable like the Will of the Gods, or the heart of a woman. She stopped and so did Sharahum. 

He tried to make her budge. Then he began to yell curses and lost his temper. Eventually the donkey started to move again. But after travelling a fair few miles, it suddenly took a sharp turn and headed off the road into a large vineyard, run by a very grumpy old ex-priest. Sharahum tried to stop it, but couldn’t. So he ripped off a vine and began beating Beqqum as hard as he could. Once again, eventually it started to listen to him again and went the right way. 

Still, we later had to pay a pretty mina to that priest on account of the torn vines and the trampled ground. 

They reached Kish and were approaching the small market before the city walls. And that’s when everything went wrong. 

Sharahum called from afar for them prepare to take the donkey. But as they were about to reach the stalls, Beqqum stopped again. Then, with everybody watching, she turned and started heading back. 

The more Sharahum protested, the faster it got and the more the people laughed. He beat it, spat and cured it as well as its breeder, who was there that day. 

Beqtum threw him off. And everybody roared in laughter. It was even funnier than the time Amirum got drunk during the autumn harvest and nearly drowned in the lugal’s daughter’s bath. 

Then Beqqum turned to him and said, with a clear, proper intonation, as if she was the being that had invented Akkadian, 

“The fuck’s wrong with you, man?” 

The laughter, most naturally, stopped. 

Now, I always found it funny when Enkidu is compared in the Epic of Gilgamesh to a raging wild donkey. Little did I know how accurate that metaphor actually was. A wild donkey is more dangerous than any other beast. It is like a demon or a flood or a great army with chariots and composite bows. 

The things Beqtum proceeded to do that day in the market next to Kish would attest to that fact. 

Actually, it was used by the Kishites as a casus belli to sack Nippur. 

Long story short, Mar-Akkanim died that day, all his donkeys died that day, Sabu-Kashdum died that day, half the garrison that Sharahum was meant to join died that day, nearly everyone in the market died that day. 

But Sharahum did not die. 

He died a few days later, during the sacking of Nippur. 

Truth is, I was (sorta) the one who struck the killing blow. It was on accident. 

I was sitting in my house, baffled and utterly heartbroken by how absolutely awful the twelfth tablet of Gilgamesh was and how low Sin-leqi-unnini stooped. It was a total shekel grab, so I threw it out the window. I didn’t think we were getting sacked, I just thought Amurrum got drunk again and started a fight. 

Anyway, apparently I threw the tablet with such strength that it knocked Sharahum out, and he fell, face first, into a heap of donkey manure. And that’s how he died. 

It was a time of innovation in Babylon, when man was unsatisfied with how far his feet would take him. And so, in a desire for speed, he sped right into his grave. 

After that there were no more donkeys in the streets of Nippur for over two years, I mean it really was paradise. 

Then a few adventurous Canaanites domesticated the camel. 

And now the smell of camel manure fills our busy streets. 

And everybody speaks Aramaic.

Blessed are the people who wander the desert

Blessed are the people who turn into goats

Blessed are the goats whose husks are left shattered

And cursed is the God who laughs when he gloats

Our carcasses cook in the sacrosanct fires

Across crystal waters we carry our loves

Our bodies have turned into soot-mixed desires

Our souls have been seasoned with blood of white doves

The fragrance of flesh he has kept in his hand

His touch is the taste of desire’s dry lips

His eyes are sweet mouthfuls of cold and wet sand

Your love he has used to wet his sword’s tip

Through the vineyards of Babel they tripped and they played

The library Ashur had built was their bed

But the rivers dried up and then she disobeyed

And he left her to walk in the desert of dread

All hail to the goddess who murders her lovers

All hail to the goddess whose menstrual blood burns

All hail to the Lady who bathes in dead flowers

Supreme goddess Ishtar who smites souls that yearn

Aryuk — an awīl of Babylon

Daniel — a captive

[The riverbank. Aryuk and Daniel.]

A: you have not been sleeping, daniel.

D: no. Only barely, i mean. I was taught by the old levites that he whose eyes do not close for three days loses all sense. And i cannot lose all sense. So i sleep, yes. But only just enough, not to dream.

A: why do you fear dreaming?

D: you know why. you would not be here otherwise.

A: he does not come to the others in dreams. They say they’ve seen him face to face.

D: the hebrews hold no value in dreams.

A: why so?

D: joseph was a dreamer, and he them into bondage. balaam was a dreamer and he led them into iniquity.

A: if dreams be false, then why do you fear them, daniel?

D: because i see terrible things, so new and cataclysmic, they cannot be but true, aryuk. There is no demon of sumer nor any shed of babylon can even conjure of such total calamity. But only the god of the ruined temple.

A: then you know why i have sought you out and what my orders are. Will you do it?

D: i am not a prophet, i cannot guide. what are your orders if i should refuse?

A: you are not to be harmed.

D: that’s a shame.

A: but we can take you, though you be unwilling. we can put you in a cell without windows till you sleep.

D: you already have.

A: you elude me, daniel. All of your friends have made it big in babylon — they have houses more opulent than any you could build in your land, wives fairer than any maid of jerusalem. And you? What do you do? You’re a wastrel who writes poetry in a foreign tongue, and sits by the river baking in the sun. You’re jobless, maidenless, purposeless — you have nothing. Not even a god.

D: but i do have something that you need.

…