Noah Primeval (Chronicles of the Nephilim) (3 page)

Far away in the skies over Mesopotamia, the wounded pazuzu flapped its double wings struggling to navigate the air streams that
helped it remain aloft on its journey to the city. The two arrows burned its muscles with searing pain, one in its left thigh and the other in its right calf. It had lost much blood. Its wings felt heavy. It labored on, knowing if it landed to rest, it would never make it back into the air.

The desert landscape gave way to the unmistakable marks of civilization as the pazuzu reached the outskirts of the city. Erech encompassed over one hundred hectares of land Below the pazuzu’s labored flight stretched the agricultural fields and farms watered by canals from the bordering Euphrates River. Since their very lives were interwoven with the river,
the residents became expert canal builders. Levees and dikes brought water to their crops in the outlying areas within the city multiple man-made estuaries and aqueducts criss-crossed the various residential divisions, channeling lavish amounts of water for everything from cooking to cleaning to waste disposal. In between those channeled sections were the adobe and sun-dried brick homes. The Sumerian citizens went about their daily business, unaware of the flying presence high above.

In the center of this metropolis that boasted a populace of close to ten thousand, a raised hillock overlooked the city and its outlying farming villages. On
the elevation rose the temple called
Eanu
. It was dedicated to the patron deity of the city, Anu, the father god of heaven. It consisted of a huge platform mound seventy-five cubits high, built from mud brick and limestone at the bottom. At the top of the platform terrace, raised another twenty cubits high, sat the White Temple, the holy place of the gods. Its intense whiteness, the result of gypsum plaster, created a shining glow in the hot sun.

Next to this temple complex
stood a smaller temple district called
Eanna
for Inanna, the goddess of sex and war, and consort of Anu. Eanu dwarfed the Eanna temple. The compound of the goddess had a different design, reflecting the lesser divine status of the consort deity. The Eanna district harbored cult prostitution and other deviant whims of the goddess.

Erech was one
of the largest and most advanced cities of the alluvial plain. It was originally settled by Unuk ben Cain, son of Cain, who also built Eridu, the oldest city named after Unuk’s son, Irad. The original human inhabitants had arrived from the Zagros mountains to establish the first urban civilization on the plains. Those inhabitants formed a slave force that would help them achieve their urban paradise.

Each city
was independent, ruled over by a god. Every year at the New Year Festival the pantheon of city gods would meet in assembly in Erech and deliberate their divine decrees for the upcoming year. Anu arranged his pantheon after Elohim’s divine council of heavenly host. It pleased Anu to mock the Most High with his own hierarchy of power.

The gods had no desire to burden themselves with the petty worries of human administrations, so they each chose a priest-king to rule in his stead through a governorship. Scribes referred to the
arrival of the gods and their rule as the time “when kingship descended from heaven.” But ever since then, the princes of the cities vied for prominence amongst themselves as the gods also sought distinction. The hierarchy was precarious. Bureaucracy always courted ambition and rivalry.

The White Temple on the top of Eanu was the highest point in the city. The large platform structure
imitated a holy mountain, a connection between heaven and earth. The people called the artificial mountain a ziggurat. Its four corners pointed to the four corners of the earth. The long straight limestone stairway that ascended from the base to the White Temple at top inspired the name Stairway to the Heavens by the people. The gods assembled in the White Temple for their deliberations and liturgy. Only the priest-king and his servants could enter it
T
he priest-king of Erech, Lugalanu, stood in the temple performing sacred duties when the wounded pazuzu crashed onto the floor.

Lugalanu hurried his pace through the long dark underground tunnel connecting the ziggurat and the palace in the Eanna district. With practiced effort he balanced his sacrificial bowl in the flickering torchlight without spilling the blood offering for Anu and his consort Inanna. They always wanted blood. It was the food of the gods and they were ravenous.

Lugalanu’s father, the previous priest-king of Erech, had died
not long before, leaving his son as the new ruler of the city, called the Big Boss. Lugalanu’s name meant “leader of Anu,” and his job name reflected his job. His responsibilities included not merely the overseeing of ceremonial and priestly activities but the civil governing of the city and the military defense of the outlying area. This combined religious and civic responsibility sometimes wore him out. He had even pleaded with the father god Anu to divide the duties between two leaders, one civil and one religious, but Anu told him it was not yet to be. Concentrated power was always more efficient at getting things accomplished, and Anu had a lot to accomplish with his priest-king.

The positive result of such multiple responsibilities was a certain breadth of wisdom. And wisdom made Lugalanu a good ruler. He had studied some of the dark secrets of the gods, and he was trained in the art of leadership and war. He pitied his people and sought their good, even if they did not understand that good, and the gods richly rewarded him. He had everything he wanted in this world of power and privilege — except a wife. Oh, he had concubines plenty. His nights were filled with orgies and erotic encounters to satisfy his every lustful desire. What he longed for was to be
known, to make a true connection with another human being, to have a queen who would rule by his side. But how could the supreme human ruler of the city ever find a woman he could trust amidst this crowd of sycophants, manipulators, and usurpers?

Such thoughts fluttered through his mind as Lugalanu passed into the palace area. His royal robes flowed behind him as he whisked over mosaic floors and engraved walls of brick. Palace guards stiffened to attention at the sight of him.

He was pure royalty, a youthful three hundred years old, muscular, and handsome with his regal oblong cranium. All the servants of the gods and their entourage practiced head binding. It expressed devotion to the deities. Infants were taken early and their skulls bound with straps until they protruded like an extended egg. As the infant’s skull matured and hardened, it maintained its oblong shape permanently.

Lugalanu was completely hairless
, like all royal servants. Not a hair on their heads, not an eyebrow or a single nose hair was allowed. It was a sign of perfection to transcend humanity by freeing oneself from the most mammalian of physical traits, hair. It made one look more like the sleek hairless gods he worshipped.

Lugalanu marched through the outer court of the palace, striding past lines of bird-men soldiers. These chimeras with bodies of men and heads of hawks and falcons stood at perfect attention, motionless as statues. Their stoic rigidity masked the savage brutality of fierce warriors, created by the sorceries of the gods to build an army for conquest.
But the bird-men were a mere trifle compared to the apex of the gods’ creativity: the creatures which Lugalanu now approached at the doorway of the inner court.

The gigantic doors loomed over Lugalanu’s head.
They were ten cubits tall, two and half times the size of the largest man, made of the mightiest cedar and inlaid with gold. Guarding either side of the gateway were two immense Nephilim.

These
Nephilim were giant warriors eight to nine cubits tall, nearly as tall as the inner court doors, demigods created by the mating of the divine Sons of God with the human daughters of men. They were the personal royal guard of deity. Their bodies were covered in occultic tattoos used in magic. They had an extra digit on their hands and feet for a total of twelve fingers and twelve toes. No one on earth had seen anything like their armor, coverings made of a light metallic alloy unknown to man. The Nephilim were also called the Seed of Nachash, titans of war that could not easily be defeated by man born of woman. From the perspective of the gods, they were a strategic achievement of intermingling the human and the divine. From the perspective of Elohim, they an evil corruption of creation. They struck terror into the hearts of everyone who saw them, including Lugalanu. Though they seemed to defer to his authority, he could never quite bring himself to look them in the eye. He stared blankly at the floor ahead of him and continued his purposeful march
.

Lugalanu passed the giants into the inner court, the doors closing behind him like a barrier of magic. He paused to take a deep breath before looking up. This moment always
astonished him. The most beautiful atrium ever conceived by the mind of deity lay before him. The vast space measured seventy cubits long and forty cubits high, a man-made paradise. It hosted a mixture of architecture sculpted by the most trained of slave craftsmen, and flora cultivated by the most practiced of horticulturalists. As Lugalanu proceeded down the path toward the throne room, a flurry of doves flew out of the foliage around him past the brick columns into the vaulted ceiling above, a heaven on earth. Gemstones glittered everywhere, embedded in the marble: lapis lazuli, sapphire, beryl, topaz, and amethyst. His own adjacent courtroom as priest-king, though full of its own luxuries, looked like a poor imitation of this chamber.

T
he smell of exotic incense burning on braziers filled his nostrils, as Lugalanu approached the throne room. He saw the shimmering curtains to the throne room were pulled back to display the forms of Anu and Inanna seated on gem-laden thrones. Two large crossbred sphinx-like creatures that the gods called
aladlammu
, guarded the pair. One had the body of a bull, the other of a lion, and both the bearded heads of a human being. They were born of the gods’ magical warping of creation. The stone sculptures outside the palace depicted this pair of living breathing monstrosities. The sight of them sent a shudder through Lugalanu. Their penetrating eyes followed his every move with sentinel alertness.

Anu and Inanna silently watched Lugalanu pour out his libation of blood into crystal chalices on the altar. Lugalanu then genuflected and waited for their command.

The gods lounged resplendent in their royal finery. When standing, they towered well over five and a third cubits, much more than Lugalanu’s own four cubits. Their eyes shimmered with blue lapis lazuli reptilian irises. Their tongues split lizard-like. Despite their androgynous appearance, Inanna dressed the part of a goddess. They had elongated heads, which the head-binding of their servants sought to mimic. Anu and Inanna would tolerate nothing less than human attendants molded into their likeness. They both wore the horned headdress of deity common throughout the region. Both wore royal robes created from the feathers of vultures.

Inanna
cultivated a flamboyance that set her apart from Anu. She wore heavy makeup and pierced her body all over with rings, studs, spikes and other garish ornaments. Her nose, eyebrows, down her arms, and even her intimate parts often hosted these symbols of the forced pain that she pleasured in. She also gloried in outrageous outfits of opulence and ostentation as a display of her ironic status as goddess of sex and war. This day, she was more restrained with her red leather and chains of bondage and domination.

The skin of the gods appeared smooth, but
Lugalanu knew that close up fine subtle serpentine scales that sparkled in the light covered them, producing a visible aura of constant radiant luminescence. Many described this radiance in terms of beryl, crystal or shining bronze. When their passions flared for good or bad, their shining would increase in brilliance, giving the impression of flashes of lightning. Because of this, they were called Shining Ones
.

Lugalanu could always count on Anu to have a certain detached playfulness about him, as if he enjoyed being deity and played up the formalities of royalty with a sardonic loftiness. Inanna, on the other hand, was unpredictable and dangerous. She had a violent temper because everyone always seemed to be in the way of her accomplishing her plans. She
would instantly kill servants who made mistakes in her presence. She might smite even those who gave her gaudy appearance a strange look. Lugalanu sought to ingratiate himself to them at every opportunity.

“My priest-king, Lugalanu, lord of the city, how dost thou fare?” pronounced Anu with a touch of playful overstatement in his voice
.

“Well, my lord Anu, king of gods,” Lugalanu
responded, promptly followed by an obeisance to Inanna. “Queen of heaven, my worship.”

“Up, up. What do you want?” blurted Inanna.

Lugalanu straightened up quickly and replied, “I have intelligence from one of our pazuzu scouts of a human tribe of nomads in the great cedar forest.”

“Well, go slay them,” she snorted.

Anu stepped in. “We want loyal, willing subjects, not rebels of insurrection, Inanna.”

They argued about this frequently. Anu knew that
Inanna wanted to eliminate all the remaining human tribes who worshipped Elohim. But he thought they would accomplish their purposes more effectively if they concentrated on defiling the human bloodline as a way to thwart Elohim’s plans for a kingly seed.