“If ever I were to go back whence I came, I wonder what I would say. When I returned from my past journeys, I would be brimming with stories, or so people said. This time it would be different. I might say I was coming back from an uninhabited island, with a mild climate, where nothing of what grows has been planted. Adding just one other thing: that there were pools of fresh water, more than in other places, and for no apparent reason.”

The following morning, Utnapishtim said:

“Every time you heard the buzzing in your blood that urged you to travel, you would leave Baghdad and go down to Basra. So without knowing it you passed by the city of Gilgamesh, Uruk, buried under soil and sand. It was no more than a mound in the plain, the rough hunched back of an ass, a tell like so many others.

“In Uruk stood the Eanna. Which means ‘temple of Anu.’ But that wasn’t the case. The Eanna in Uruk was the temple of Inanna. This was one of her most daring exploits. She had snatched Anu’s Eanna, stolen the temple of the supreme god. This was something that went against every law there was. Looking on, the Anunnaki couldn’t believe their eyes.

“Just as she had boldly gone down to the Underworld, violating the realm of her sister Ereshkigal, as if it were just another country to explore, so Inanna had boldly taken from the heavens what belonged to the heavens. Worse, she had changed the god to whom it was devoted. In the Underworld she had immediately been punished. But Anu didn’t react.

“It was a troubling story, something it was best not to talk about. Or to keep between a chosen few. While everyone, over the years, would tell and retell the story of Inanna going down to the Underworld. Even little children knew it.

“Uruk was called the Sheepfold, but it was a great city, the greatest of the great cities, with walls no other city could boast. Gilgamesh himself, together with the Seven Sages, the Apkallu, had designed and built them. They were the color of the prairies. The temples were built of mud bricks with strips of bamboo between them. But Inanna wasn’t satisfied. She wanted stone, marble, metal. She wanted to deck herself with lapis lazuli.

“Such things, people said, could be found only in the country of Aratta, to the east, beyond seven mountain chains. A king, Enmerkar, father of Gilgamesh’s father, boldly set out to cross those mountains. It was the first adventure to excite his grandson’s young mind.

“More than a warrior, Enmerkar was a resourceful man. Crossing the mountains, which seemed to surround him on every side, was grueling. Enmerkar fell ill before he could join battle with the king of Aratta. But there was more than one way for kings to fight, he thought. Bloodshed was not inevitable. Enmerkar knew that the king of Aratta was a master of riddles. Perhaps they could challenge each other with riddles. Then he could find out whether the best way forward was war or barter.