Advtures of a King

Chapter: 1

What I am telling about happed many, many thousands of years ago; perhaps wh elephants still ran in herds along the banks of the Manzanares River, and the diplodocus, a twty - meter-long lizard, hid from the ormous butchering animals. Th everything was ormous and fantastic in the world. In those times Gilgamesh reigned in Erech, capital of the kingdom of that same name, which was part of what we call Mesopotamia today. This was th so fertile and rich that it is believed that the Earthly Paradise was located there. Betwe its two great rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, infinite orchards, gards and palm groves stretched. As I have already said, Gilgamesh was king and deserved to be; th kingdoms were not inherited, but earned, and he had achieved his thanks to his gallantry and warrior skill. He was tall, without being a giant, because giants do not usually have agility or grace, and Gilgamesh possessed both. His dark skin, his black beard, carefully trimmed, and his dark hair combed upwards and tied with a gold ribbon that matched his tunic, gave him a manly beauty that aroused admiration. But, in addition to being beautiful and brave, Gilgamesh was dowed with great intelligce, which made him stand out among the wisest of his people. This king was two parts god and one part man, since the goddess Ninsun, que of the firmamt, was his mother. His father must also have be an illustrious man wh he married a goddess. Gilgamesh, despite his good qualities, had great defects. These, as happs in almost all m, had the same proportion as his virtues: the two parts of God that he had in his nature led him to look haughtily at his counterparts. He was not satisfied with imposing order and respect for the laws on the people; He exceeded his severity and admitted no restraint to his real will. Wh the Council of Elders did not submit to his whim, he dispsed with their approval. However, he loved courage and surrounded himself with the bravest and most handsome m in the country. He loved beauty in all its manifestations: poetry, music, sculpture, architecture. He wanted to live in beautiful palaces, worship the gods in grandiose temples and organized competitions for wrestlers, athletes, dancers and singers.

All of this cost too much money, and Gilgamesh taxed his subjects, particularly the peasants. Wh they protested, he punished them mercilessly; He stripped them of their crops to fill his own baskets, took away their most gallant and strongest sons to form his guard of warriors, and took the most beautiful wom to his palaces. M have always turned to God in their tribulations, that is why the subjects of Gilgamesh, afflicted by the rigors and demands of their king, turned to the one they worshiped: the Sun-God, who reigned over m and the other gods. Every deity has his court, and the Sun-God had his on a plateau, on the highest peak of the Mount of Cedars. From there he wt to the temples who were consecrated to him and listed to the supplications of his faithful. There were so many who asked him for a remedy for their miseries, that he understood that the situation of the poor people of Erech had become intolerable because of the king. The orchards were abandoned to weeds; The mud, leaf litter and dry branches had blocked the irrigation canals; You could not hear the squeaking of the waterwheels raising the water from the wells, nor could you hear the songs of the reapers, the grape harvesters and the date palms. The Sun-God th ordered the goddess Aruru, celestial molder and sculptor of living beings, to come to his presce. She was the one who, at the beginning of time, had shaped man. Aruru came right away. For some time she had longed to mold some extraordinary being. -Aruru- said the Sun-God-, you know Gilgamesh, the king of Erech. I want you to mold a human being who surpasses him in strgth and kindness of heart. He will be called Enkidu, and no one must know, for now, his existce. The goddess Aruru moved deep into the forests, and, in a clearing, not far from the foot of the Mount of Cedars, she set about carrying out her work. The trance to this place was guarded by a horrible monster, called Jum-baba, who turned anyone who tered its domain into a stone statue. It was ough for him to fix, in the middle of the intruder's forehead, the gaze of her only eye. The monster's roars reached the forest site chThe goddess first took the measuremts, which she calculated the body must have in height and width, and traced them on the ground. She th drew the configuration of the skull, remembering the width and straightness of the tower that Gilgamesh's forehead had. She flatted the new being's forehead line a little; He would be a little less intelligt, but a better fighter. Instead, she gave more width to the bust, at the level of the chest muscles, leaving room for the heart. He wouldn't be as beautiful as his model, but he would be stronger. It wouldn't be as intelligt, but it would be nobler. On the shape drawn on the ground she piled handfuls of clay. After kneading it well until it made a large shapeless figure, she began to mold it with wet hands. She caressed the mud the same as A mother caresses her son: with care and love os by Aruru.

Here she softed a profile, there she highlighted a muscle, below she gave shape to the arch of the feet that had to support so much weight. The Sun-God saw her working betwe the cracks of two clouds. She did not want to show her face, because the clay mass would have dried prematurely, and Aruru's work could be ruined. But wh she saw the finished figure, with the lips parted, which seemed to want to speak, the chest raised as if to inhale the breath of life, and the heart ready to begin the ticking, which only death would interrupt, removed the two clouds that hid it, and appeared radiant in heav. You have worked well, Aruru. Let me do my work now. Th the clay took on the freshness of flesh, the statue's chest began to rise and fall, and the heart began to sd waves of blood through the arteries.