“The Anunnaki didn’t ask whether something was right or wrong. They asked whether or not it belonged to order. And order did not spring from any law, but from the composition of a certain number of elements, the mes. Of which all were required. Even the most terrible mes, which Ishtar rode upon. Even the panther, which drew divine powers from the Apsu.

“The earth needed a bond, a rope, tying it to heaven. Where it was fastened in Ursa Major. Should that rope snap or come untied, everything would swing loose and disintegrate in chance. That was their one enemy. Which they were careful never to name.

“The Tablet of Destinies concentrated in the smallest possible horizontal space the axis that traversed the heavens. Around that axis, keeping it strong, curled Tiamat’s tail. Nothing else was required to have order rule the world. But it was always a precarious order. The celestial bond might fade away, the Tablet of Destinies might be stolen, or fall back into the Apsu. Every year, to have the year begin, the Anunnaki had to meet in counsel and renew what was written on the Tablet of Destinies, which had to remain intact.

“Nowhere else in the world, some claimed, would you find another small object like the Tablet of Destinies. Nor were the eyes of our statues—enormous, wide-open eyes, set in pools of black—to be found elsewhere. No one worshipped talismans, spells, omens as we did. We lived in terror of everything that happens by chance. A few signs etched on a clay tablet went some way to keeping things in check. So we shut ourselves up in the four sides of that Tablet as though in a cosmic cage, something so powerful as to elude even the Anunnaki. Who watched grimly over it, knowing that its decrees couldn’t be carved in stone or reproduced on innumerable other tablets. The Tablet of Destinies was the only one forever steeped in the waters of the Apsu.”

“When Ea was celebrated, it was said that he fixed the destinies. The same was also occasionally said of Ishtar, Anu, Enlil, and Marduk. It wasn’t altogether true. The Tablet of Destinies was fixed before them, when it belonged to Tiamat. But even this wasn’t altogether true, because something was always being added to the Tablet. Why else were there ceremonies at the beginning of each year? Why else did they shut themselves up in the Esagil, in a cell called the chamber of destinies? But it is also true that none of the Anunnaki lived in the Apsu, aside from Ea. And in the beginning, the Apsu and Tiamat were not distinct from each other. Ea lived closer than anyone else to the place whence the destinies had emerged.

“There was a chamber of destinies in other temples, too, in Nippur, Borsippa, and Uruk. But which was the first, the model for all the others? Ea had just killed his father, Apsu. He had the counselor Mummu tied up with a ring through his nose. But he did not hurry up to the Anunnaki in triumph to celebrate his victory, as his son Marduk would when he killed Tiamat. On the contrary, Ea withdrew quietly into a chamber, which was to be the chamber of destinies, the hall of interwoven orders. His spouse, Damkina, came down to him there in her splendor. And there Marduk was conceived. It was the place that governed everything that happens, and it was also a bridal chamber.”