Noah Primeval (Chronicles of the Nephilim) (20 page)

Lugalanu led Ham down a circular stairwell deep into the recesses of the earth below the temple complex of Eanu. The spiral brick staircase spun downward like a chambered nautilus sea shell. Lugalanu lit an occasional wall torch for their return trip.

Neela followed them in the shadows. She kept a safe distance to avoid detection, and she scurried along barefoot to silence the sound of her steps.

At the bottom of the dizzying staircase lay a series of twisting pitch-dark corridors. Fortunately for Neela, the hallways continued to be lit by Lugalanu’s torch like a path of bread crumbs. Fear rose in her liver. There were so many turns, she began to lose her bearings. She worried that she could not find her way out if she found herself alone and without the lit torches. She could become a prisoner of the darkness, possibly even die down here. But it was too late to turn back. She had passed the point of no return and would have to continue on in hope she would be all right.

She had lived with risk
all her life. As a little orphan servant girl of eight in the city, she found her way past all the guards, priests, and priestesses to the very top of the White Temple itself. Anu had found her so amusing and curious that instead of punishing her with death, he had rewarded her by appointing her to the temple staff of Inanna. For this act of kindness, Neela gave eternal gratitude to Anu, because it was how she found her way into the sight and passions of Ham. She continued in her stealth pursuit with a renewed sense of enthusiasm in her heart.

Lugalanu and Ham passed a secret corridor that brought back emotional memories for Lugalanu. Down that passage was the sealed burial chamber of his father, Lugalanuruku, the previous priest-king of Erech. He was named after his father, though he was the offspring of a Sacred Marriage rite, a yearly copulation ceremony between the priest-king and the high priestess of the goddess. The ritual ensured fertility of the land. Priestesses were considered royalty and so their children were often successors to the throne, though they would not abdicate their temple status.

He would never forget the grand celebration of the funeral that heralded his own ascension to the throne. His father had died of unknown sickness
when he was young. Neither the
ashipu
magic shaman nor the
ashu
medical doctor could cure him. He was anointed with oil and interred in the large vault on an elaborate bed-like pallet along with his beloved wife, who joined her husband in death.

The funeral procession
had begun at the palace gates. A small band of musicians led the funerary lamentation playing lyres, lutes, and harps. The deathbed with its king and queen followed the musicians, surrounded by six personal guards. Behind them trailed twenty ladies-in-waiting and fifty other servants. The crowd of citizens lined the streets to catch a glimpse of their deceased grand ruler. Once the procession arrived at the temple, they were escorted by an entourage of priests out of the public eye and down into the secret recesses below the ziggurat.

They were led into the large crypt, where
the priest-king was laid in his sarcophagus. Then the entire train of guards and palace servants filled the chamber, drank a poison, lay down and embraced their fate in union with their lord and master. They were to follow him into the afterlife where they would continue to serve him. The guards were fully clothed in armor and the servants in golden headdresses with necklaces of cornelian and lapis lazuli. A second vault next to them contained some gold and other riches along with two chariots and onagers, also killed with poison. The crypts were then sealed and their occupants left as the city mourned publicly. Considering how gloomy and hopeless the “land of no return” was, Lugalanu was grateful to still be a part of the land of the living.

He imagined how grand and glorious his own burial would be with Emzara poisoned beside him along with his own staff of attendants.

Lugalanu and Ham finally reached their destination, a large set of doors in the dead end of an unassuming passageway. It was large enough to accommodate Nephilim.

Ham gulped with a mixture of excitement and fear.

Lugalanu turned to him and said, “You are about to enter the inner sanctum of the gods.
Few humans will ever see what you are about to see. At no point are you to express anything other than wonder and awe. Should you be appalled or revolted by what you see, remember, you do not understand the wisdom of the gods. Their ways and their thoughts are as high above you as the heavens are above the earth. Is that understood?”

“Yes,” said Ham. A shiver went down his spine
. He wondered just what might cause him to be “appalled or revolted.”

They entered the door and closed it behind them. They travelled through a hallway lined with
seven cubit tall, recessed doorways. Lugalanu stopped at one of them and opened it. They stepped inside a long, narrow room, an infirmary sectioned off by rows of brick walls, creating small stalls for beds.

“This is the breeding room for the sacred women who bear the Nephilim for the gods
,” Lugalanu explained.

As they walked down the hallway of stalls, Ham saw beds full of very pregnant women, one to a stall, with accompanying holes for refuse. The women were restrained with leather straps or metal shackles, depending upon their level of risk. It seemed more like a prison than a breeding room.

Lugalanu answered Ham’s unspoken question in a whispered tone, “These are the ones nearest to giving birth. At earlier stages of pregnancy they have much more freedom. But the final stage can be violently painful so they have to be restrained for their own good.”

“What happens after birth?” Ham asked
, innocently enough. He had known of women chosen for this holy high honor, but had never seen them again.

“Unfortunately, it kills them,” said Lugalanu matter-of-factly. Lugalanu had always felt sorry for the women and their plight. He tried to comfort Ham with what he comforted himself often, “Death is just a doorway into higher service of the gods. In some ways, they are better off than us.”

The women looked drugged, not as giddy and hopeful about their future as Lugalanu seemed to suggest. One of the women screamed in agonizing pain just as Ham and Lugalanu passed her stall. She writhed desperately in the bed, straining against her bonds. A few midwives ran to her with a bucket and rags. Ham stared with fascination, wanting to see what happened, but Lugalanu pulled him awa
y.

He
escorted Ham back out into the hallway. The piercing scream of the woman giving birth rang in Ham’s ears and echoed through the corridors.

The next doorway led them into another long hallway of stalls. These compartments did not hold pregnant women
. Instead there were various versions of human-animal chimeras that Ham already knew well, seeing them around the palace and temple grounds. They too were chained to the walls with straw for beds and holes for excrement. These were new kinds he had not seen before and they appeared to be in varying stages of mutation or development. Some looked like they had body parts attached surgically, such as a human body with a pig’s head in one stall and a huge pig’s body with a human head in the next. Others appeared to be an essential fusion of kinds, such as a humanoid whose body was completely covered with hair and whose face looked as much like a wolf as it did a man. It lunged at Ham, snarling for his blood. Ham jumped back, but the chain jerked the wolf man back into its stall.

Other hybrid fusions looked more like developmental failures of miserable creatures with human bodies and malformed appendages or misshapen body structures. These were chimeras gone wrong. It was all a den of sorcery, an experimental
chamber of breeding horrors.

Ham felt the urge to vomit rising in his throat.
He remembered Lugalanu’s words, and suppressed his reaction with a sense of awe and wonder—and morbid curiosity. He could see the practical use for the bird-men soldiers and other creatures like the pazuzu and the crossbred throne guardians. But these monstrous miscegenations suggested a deeper strategy at work in the minds of the gods. Just what, he did not know.

Lugalanu could see the wheels churning in Ham’s mind. He said simply, “You will learn soon enough, and it will all become clear.”

They exited the chamber of horrors and stopped at a final doorway. Lugalanu wanted the importance to sink into Ham’s consciousness. “This is the holy of holies. The secrets of the Watchers reside here. The very knowledge of heaven.” He opened the door.

Inside was a large
vault of potions and vials, jars and vases, strange structures whose technology seemed far advanced from Ham’s known world. Ham had been taught the rudiments of Mesopotamian science. He knew taxonomic categories of plants and animals, astronomical and astrological systems, and drugs for use with medicine and sorcery. But the things in this room were like nothing Ham had ever seen.

H
e looked upon the rudimentary forms of biological and genetic experimental science, mysteries beyond his education. Because the Sons of God were divine beings, they had occultic knowledge of which humans could only dream. But as earth bound creatures, they were limited to the resources at hand. Drugs and potions created a certain amount of magic, but they knew biological alteration was more fundamental than that. So they sought the manipulation of that basic nature through a primitive form of genetics.

Ham became fixated on a series of glass jars before him. He had heard of glass
when it was first introduced to the economy, but he had not seen any of it until now. He stared, fascinated. But what the jars held was even more spell-binding. Ten jars contained fetuses of varying development and at varying stages of transformation from human to something shiny, slender, and reptilian – like the gods.

“Are you impressed with my creations?” a voice said
, behind Ham.

Ham
started out of his trance-like stare. He turned to see the mighty Anu standing behind him. He dropped to the floor in worship. “Greatly, my lord and god, greatly,” he gulped, his heart beating out of his chest.

Anu offered his hand to help him up. Ham
did not know what to do. He had never touched the hand of a god.

Lugalanu whispered with humor, “Your god awaits.”

“Please, stand,” said Anu.

Ham took Anu’s hand with fear and trembling, and stood before his god. The skin was cold, clammy and slightly scaly. But Anu was kind, gentle, and very patiently aware of Ham’s virginal experience with deity. He smiled.

“You are to become an ensi high priest?”

“Eventually, almighty one. My next promotion is to
sanga.” Ham’s voice cracked with trembling.

Anu smiled warmly
. “Your patience and loyalty shall be rewarded soon enough. And I hope you will find your initiation satisfying and calming to your fears.” His voice was so compassionate Ham felt as if he spoke telepathically to his heart and mind.

“It is my intent to be found worthy of such a holy honor,” said Ham.

“Well then, welcome to the secrets of the Watchers,” said Anu.

“My Lord, if I may,” began Ham.

Lugalanu had watched the exchange carefully. He could spot Emzara’s feisty inquisitiveness in her son starting to show itself.

“How can I begin to understand such wonderful sorceries?”

Anu welcomed the curiosity. “That is where faith comes in. What were you taught in school about the creation of the heavens and the earth?”

Ham recited from memory the rote words he had learned from the temple scribes about
Inanna’s Tale of the Huluppu Tree
and the
Eridu Genesis
, “The sky god, Anu, carried off the heavens, and the air god, Enlil, carried off the earth. The Queen of the Great Below, Ereshkigal, was given the underworld for her domain. And Anu, Enlil, Enki, and Ninhursag fashioned the dark–headed people of Sumer.”

“Well done,” smiled Anu. “And now I will tell you the truth. That creation story is a lie.”

Ham’s stomach dropped. What could he be saying? The Most High God and the Lord of the Air, did not separate the heavens from the earth?

“What you have been taught is a myth that is intended to protect humankind from what they could not understand. There are some truths that are so sacred only the most wise and most loyal are to be entrusted with them.”

Ham swallowed. Lugalanu saw him sweating. He had cultivated this young man with great care. He had confidence that Ham would rise to the honor of this high calling.

Anu continued, “What do you know of the deity called Elohim?”

“A distant god of a lost Garden in Eden?” It was all he could muster, as if it was all he knew. But it was not all he knew.

Emzara had actually taught him much about Elohim, for she worshipped him in secret
. She had constantly admonished Ham to worship him as well whenever they had their clandestine meetings. It was all rather distasteful to him. She spoke of Elohim creating the heavens and the earth; and of Adam of the earth and Havah his wife, the mother of all the living; of how they were images of Elohim on earth much like the statues of Anu and Inanna in the temple were images of the deities. She spoke of the Serpent, Nachash, the Shining One, a Watcher himself, who drew them away from Elohim in disobedience and how Elohim expelled them from the Garden, away from his presence. She had told him how Elohim revealed that a Chosen Seed would come who would end the rule of the gods and bring judgment upon the gods, and rest to the land. And that a king would come from his lineage that would ultimately destroy the seed of the Serpent.