“Then one day it was over. I had managed, with enormous effort, to get some juice to ferment in the shell of a gourd. I tasted it and felt it work on me, relaxing me. The old man was curious. He wanted to try the strange liquid himself. After some time I felt the grip of his legs, that iron collar that suffocated me all day long, slackening. The old man sank into drunkenness.

“As soon as I had freed myself, I started running and didn’t look back. I didn’t want to see the old man ever again. As on other occasions, I had the luck to find a ship that took me on board. I tried to explain what had happened to me. It was hard but I couldn’t help myself. Strangely, they barely bothered to listen, as if I were telling an old story everyone knew. I asked why. One of the sailors said: ‘That must have been the Old Man of the Sea. You were lucky. Those who meet him don’t usually come back to tell the tale.’ From time to time people have asked me: what is drunkenness for? Now I know: to free yourself from the grip of the Old Man of the Sea. But first you have to meet him.”

Utnapishtim sat in silence. Suddenly he said:

“Sindbad, you have seen many seas and could spend a long time talking about their differences. But now that you have come here, you must discover the one sea you haven’t seen: the Apsu, boundless fresh water lying beneath the entire surface of the world and encircling it. Here in Dilmun it’s easy to get down to those waters. They are the final surprise, the final wonder that awaits you, after all the shipwrecks you’ve survived.

“You mustn’t imagine that the waters of the Apsu are an ocean, like others you have known. Even before the Anunnaki appeared, before names were announced, before the destinies were fixed, the Apsu was already there. And to understand the gods, the names, the destinies, you have to go through the Apsu. Being close to the Apsu was the supreme privilege Ea granted me, the way you keep a plant constantly moist. Otherwise, the Anunnaki think of me as a guard at his post. Sometimes they let me know they are expecting news. Which for the most part doesn’t arrive.

“From the early days of the Flood right through to today, I have always lived in Ea’s protecting shadow, never wearied of admiring his capacity to govern everything that is number, measure, weight. And every time I witnessed the clash of rude and deadly powers, I knew that his hand and his counsel, his cunning and his covert irony, would step in to avoid the irreparable and divert, if only for a while, the ruinous rush of events.

“The Anunnaki hankered after hymns, celebrations, praise pure and simple. Ishtar, Ninurta, Nergal, Marduk—they could never get enough. But there were few hymns to Ea. Yet those that there were addressed him as the god of supreme knowledge, in words not used for the other gods. Attributing him with the guardianship of divine powers. There was no predicament so oppressive, even for the Anunnaki, that Ea’s astuteness could not solve it. Yet Ea always stayed apart from the other gods.