“The most elusive to my mind were always the gods of fate. Anu had his celestial decrees that were to be protected. But clearly there were other decrees that came neither from the Anunnaki nor the Igigi, but from these gods who were simply called the Seven. I’ve always wondered if they weren’t the most powerful of all. Yet today, as then, I can’t say for certain.

“The Tablet of Destinies had emerged from the Apsu. And no one knew the Apsu better than Ea, who had killed Apsu and who lived there. The god who had the Tablet of Destinies fixed on his breast believed he held supreme power. And if someone took it away from him, as when Anzu took it from Enlil, not only would his power fade, but his splendor, too. This was what those watchful guardians the gods forever feared.”

“What was written on the Tablet of Destinies? Order. So long as the Anunnaki had control of the Tablet, they knew how to celebrate the rites and implement the law. If they didn’t have it, things fell apart. But there was one detail the Anunnaki always glossed over. When the Tablet of Destinies emerged from the Apsu and from Tiamat, it was already written on, in part. And order was written on that part, too. An order that included all calamities and all evils. Obeying the Tablet of Destinies, one was bound to accept this part, which the Anunnaki had not written.

“I knew very well that nothing had the Anunnaki panicking in their heaven so much as losing control of the Tablet of Destinies. Though this was always something external to them, a talisman to fix on your breast. Hence something that you might lose from one moment to the next. And when that happened even the greatest of the Anunnaki were plunged into a state of unknowing. I often wondered if this wasn’t what happened when the bright shapes of the Anunnaki began to lose their shine, as if a fog had drifted over them, the marshland fog at the confluence of the rivers, not far from where I am now.”

“The Anunnaki were not themselves order. Nor had they formulated order. The Anunnaki had appropriated order, killing its guardians, Apsu and Tiamat, then using their bodies to make the substance of the world. Tiamat clad the stars, the vault of the firmament, and the rugged surface of the earth. The Apsu was a liquid ring, a river that flowed in heaven in the Milky Way, constantly gushing from Ea’s shoulders.

“Gilgamesh came to me still trusting in the power of the Anunnaki, knowing he was related to them, since two parts in three of him were divine. And I was given the unhappy task of disabusing him, recounting the mystery of the gods before the Flood. Throughout his life Gilgamesh had paid no mind to the Tablet of Destinies, as if it were something he could replace. And now he was bound to acknowledge that this couldn’t be done. Even the plant of youth that he received, as a farewell gift, not from me but from the woman beside me, was not what he was hoping for. He sought life without end, which the Anunnaki had kept for themselves. And in fact, a shrewd and watchful snake stole the magic plant from him.”