“Mistress, wake up! Mistress!”
It was the hour before dawn in the Mesopotamian city of Larsa. In the royal palace, in the queen’s chamber, a servant boy holding a package anxiously tried to rouse his mistress. The night breeze rippled the madder-red and saffron curtains. Beyond the slit of a narrow window, the ziggurat of Shamash rose over the tightly packed mud-brick dwellings of the city.
“Mistress…”
“What is it, Nur-Adad?” The queen, a woman with chiselled features and long black hair, opened her eyes.
“Mistress, this just arrived from Isin. The messenger said it is secret.”
“Isin? There could be a snake or a scorpion inside.”
“I checked, Mistress. It is a letter.”
“Hold it for me.”
“Of course, Mistress. May I?” Nur-Adad motioned to the oil lamp on the queen’s table. She nodded, and he struck the flint until the oil caught. He unwrapped a clay box and took out a clay tablet covered in cuneiform. The lamp’s dim light was just enough for the queen to make out the writing.
“I, Enlil-bāni, King of Isin, King of Sumer and Akkad, send this letter to Lady Iltani, Queen of Larsa, Our Cherished Sister-in-law. Knowing your wisdom and the love you hold for your children, We appeal to you. Our brother is not fit to be king and his royal days are numbered. His soldiers are few and weak, and before long they will be defeated. Help Us, and both you and your children will not only be guaranteed safety but treated as royalty. Or pass this letter to Sin-Eribam, and your children’s and your fate will be worse than death. May the gods guide you to a wise decision.”
“Has anyone seen it, Nur-Adad?”
“Only me, Mistress. But I can’t read.”
“Of course.”
“Are you well, my lady?”
“Don’t worry, Nur-Adad. Smash the tablet into pieces, it bodes ill. Do it away from prying eyes, and speak of this to no one.”
“Yes, Mistress. I will go outside to do that.”
He packed the tablet back in the wrapping, bowed, and left.
The queen sat still on the bed, her simple linen tunic and shawl loosely draped over her hair, a quiet contrast to the chamber’s luxurious décor. She watched the first rays of sunrise touch the ziggurat. After a long while, she turned and blew out the lamp.
Sometime later, having taken her morning ablutions and a breakfast of barley and fruit, the queen headed to the king’s chambers.
“Lady Iltani! Truly your arrival is the second sunrise of this day! Your beauty surpasses that of the loveliest flowers of our garden, for it brings me even more joy than they.” King Sin-Eribam beamed. The scribes and a court official quietly withdrew.
“My lord, every day you invent new compliments. Have you hired a poet?”
“I have no need for poets when it comes to you, my lady, for my heart turns to the greatest poet of the land in your glorious presence!”
The queen blushed. Her gaze fell to the king’s desk, an ornate wooden table with clay tablets, styluses, and a cylinder seal. A little boy-servant, hardly nine, arrived.
“My lord, the king!”
“Ah, Utu-zer. How is your mother feeling?”
“My lord, the king, my mother is still very sick. I try not to think about it, for it makes me sad.”
“I will send my doctor again with our best medicine. What brings you here, my mighty Utu-zer?”
“My lord, the king, my mother made you your favourite nūnu cakes that you always take at this hour, and sent me to bring them.” He placed a small basket on the table.
“How kind! But tell her I command her to rest. Her health is worth more to me than my favourite nūnu.”
“I shall tell her.” The boy ran off.
The king turned back to the queen, but her face was sombre.
“Is something the matter, Lady Iltani?”
“My lord, may I speak my heart?”
“I hope that you always do.”
“It is not for me to judge the king, nor do I harbour an ill thought. But why do you treat the servant as if he were your grandchild?”
“Little Utu-zer and his mother are good people. I feel blessed to have such servants.”
“The servants all say you are kind, my lord, but you are their king, not their grandfather.”
“Is it wrong to treat servants with kindness, Lady Iltani? Would you rather I beat them?”
“Kindness is a virtue, and the gods teach mortals to be kind. But you, my lord, are not a mere mortal. You are a king, to be feared. Fear guards the divine order.”
“A divine king? Are we not all born of a mother? And do we not all pass to the gloom of Irkalla, ruled by Ereshkigal, after suffering old age and sickness?”
“Indeed, this is what my Sumerian ancestors taught. Yet you hold the power of gods: you can take life at your command. Your thoughts are exalted and unconcerned with the minutiae of ordinary life.”
“When I cast my eyes upon you, Iltani, my thoughts are very much like every ordinary mortal’s.” He rose and moved closer. “What troubles you, my Queen?”
“My lord, you have lowered the barley tax twice. The muškēnum serve only four days in the month now instead of ten. Our people are grateful. They love the king.”
“Is that not a good thing, Lady Iltani?”
“It would be, at any other time. But in our age, with its moral decline, when a brother stabs his own brother and a sister poisons her only sister…”
“Do you speak of my brother, Enlil-bāni? Do you suspect him of treachery?” The king’s brow furrowed.
“There have been rumours, my lord. Forgive me.”
“Iltani, my love.” Sin-Eribam softened. “You worry too much. Come, let me embrace you and soothe your worries away.”
As the midday sun beat down on Larsa, sellers at the Great Bazaar were packing up. The fishmongers with catch fresh from the canal were the first to go, their unsold fish hastily salted. A smith from Isin slowly loaded his shiny wares onto an ox-drawn wagon.
“Cousin Ishme-Erra? It has been many moons since I saw you here in Larsa!” a younger man, pulling his pottery-laden wagon, called.
“A journey of four leagues weighs heavy on these old bones and on the weary yoke-beast beside me. But my heart is lightened to see your face, Cousin Ninurta-bāni. May the great gods place protection over your household and grant long days to your name.”
“And may they bless yours. How are things in the great city of Isin?”
“Isin prospers under holy Gula, lady of healing. But Larsa… Larsa no longer walks proudly. The people laugh with easy hearts; even slaves walk unhurried as though at a festival. And musicians play in the streets rather than the temples.”
“You exaggerate! But it is true, the people are happy. Our new king has eased our burdens. Even the slaves have rights by royal decree.”
“Hear me, Ninurta-bāni, and know that I speak what my eyes have seen. Your people have grown soft. Woe to the city that forgets reverence, for the gods’ hand is heavy on the forgetful.”
“Life is harsh and the gods are to be feared. It is different in Isin, you say?”
“In Isin, we walk in awe beneath the gaze of the gods and our king, appointed by the heavens. The world beyond is chaos; should a city grow complacent, its fate is sealed as surely as Utu rises every morning.”
“Enlil-bāni is still your lord king? He is brother to our King Sin-Eribam, is he not?”
“He is indeed, Gula bless him and his family. They are brothers, but no more alike than Ninurta and Dumuzi, just as a shepherd is no match for a warrior god.”
“You are my cousin and a guest in Larsa. That is why I will forgive your words against our king.”
“I speak what I have seen.” The smith leaned closer. “War is coming, Ninurta-bāni. Our lord has tasked us, smiths, to make new armour for our soldiers. Next time I come, I pray Larsa does not lie in ruins.”
“I pray too. May the gods preserve peace in our lifetimes and beyond.”
“You summoned me, my lord?”
In the gilded hall of Isin, the queen of Isin knelt before King Enlil-bāni.
“Nin-Ninisina, you were High Priestess of Ninisina. What say you about the auspicious date to launch our campaign?”
“Then your mind is made up, my lord? We march on Larsa?”
“Our resolution is firm.”
“Had the king of Larsa not granted all your demands? We have the water again, the canals even your father refused to return.”
“The water was never the cause. It was a test for Sin-Eribam, to see how readily he complies. He is weak. When our father, the great Sin-Iddinam, lay dying, his mind no longer sharp, he summoned Sin-Eribam to his side. I waited outside the chamber, my hands still callused from the training fields, only to hear him praise my brother’s ‘gentle heart’ as the true strength and name him heir to the Larsa throne. Sin-Eribam, who chased butterflies and imitated bird-calls, while I mastered the spear and shield. Such a man was never fit to be king. Since he took the throne, Larsa has only grown weaker. He has neither improved the fortifications nor invested in the armoury. Our spies say the city will not withstand a siege by our trained force.”
“I am certain we shall be victorious, my lord.”
“The gods decree that kings must keep mē, the divine order. Only the resolute can do this. We, Enlil-bāni of Isin, shall take Larsa, restore order, and grant her people the protection they deserve.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Your sister, Iltani, has not replied to Our letter. Perhaps Sin-Eribam was warned. It was foolish to write.”
“Iltani does nothing quickly, we shared the same cradle, after all. I know her hesitations. We planted the fear in her, it may serve us yet.”
“We shall see. Bring me the most auspicious date, Nin-Ninisina. We march soon. We cannot allow Sin-Eribam time to prepare.”
Outside the palace gates, the late afternoon sun scorched the stone streets of Larsa. Ninurta-bāni, robes stained with clay and sweat, pushed forward. Two guards blocked his way.
“State your business, potter,” one said.
“I must speak with the king. I bring news not from the wind that rustles the barley or the heat that cracks the brick. War is coming.”
“The king does not see tradesmen without summons.”
“Then summon him, or the queen. Tell her that Ninurta-bāni, who once moulded cups for her wedding feast, brings news that may save Larsa.”
Minutes passed. A guard returned.
“The queen remembers you. Follow me.”
“What was that business with the potter, Iltani? I heard the soldiers discuss it.”
The queen was back in the same chamber, King Sin-Eribam still at his table.
“He reported what a smith from Isin, by the name of Ishme-Erra, told him. The king of Isin has ordered new armour for the army.”
“Every city renews its armour once in a while. Perhaps it is Isin’s turn.”
“It is just that there have been many rumours of late…”
“We should do better than listen to them. Idle tongues will wag.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Do you remember the time before I was king, Iltani? Only a few years ago.”
“It seems like eternity. The times when we lived without a care. Look, you still have the seal I bought for you when we were newly married.”
She picked up the cylinder seal from his table. It depicted the seated god Amurru receiving ablutions from a high-priestess with a vial and a glass; a smoking incense vase at their feet. The legend read, “Sin-Eribam, servant of Amurru.”
“I cannot believe my eyes! You did not have it altered to include your kingly titles?”
“No. I love this seal too much. That Kassite engraver you found was one of a kind. It is my lucky seal, Iltani. I feel Amurru’s blessing when it is by my side, and I feel as if you are near me.”
“The engraver did make that priestess look a little like me, didn’t he?”
“In my mind, she is you. The two figures are us, and also Amurru and Adgarkidu, of the tale that binds my people to Sumer and Akkad. We Amorites came from uncouth stock, you are Sumerian, a high-born city goddess. A shepherd, though he may be a god, is no match for the daughter of Numušda. He is used to the dusts of the steppes and to eating raw meat; a sandstone beaten by a thousand desert storms, while she is pure like snow-white linen, sweet like honey, fragrant like jasmine oil, refined like polished silver, and noble like lapis lazuli.”
“Now it is you, my lord, who makes me a goddess, while I am but a mortal.”
“We are a people born of this union, Iltani, part wild shepherds, part gods of the city. When my ancestors came and saw wonders they had never dreamed, they fell in love with this land. I take it as my role to be a faithful preserver of our ways: the gentle wisdom of your Sumerian ancestors who taught not only how to write, but literature; not only how to carve stone, but art—and above all, that this life is our chance to be our best, for the Hereafter is a dark gloomy place. I’ve tried to help make Larsa a glorious city, especially a happy one, where we extend a helping hand and celebrate the loving heart that builds, not the hating heart that destroys.”
“Then let us ensure Larsa shines for a thousand years, my lord. Let us forge new armour and fortify our walls, so that from whatever side the enemy comes, they must go home empty-handed.”
“Our father always spoke of war. When he was young, he captured the ancient city of Ur. Governing never brought him the same pleasure; he chased new conquests. So much death and all in vain. I held my sweet cousin Shumu-El’s broken body while he begged me to kill him. My brother, Enlil-bāni, loved weapons. These last two years—have they not been beautiful? The festivals, the rites in our ziggurat? The burdens I lifted from our poorest? Are the people not happy?”
“The people of Larsa are the happiest in the world and love their king.”
“Then why ruin it by talk of war? Life is short and fleeting, like a cup of wine emptied too soon. Let us enjoy every little sip the gods grant us. Besides, Iltani, I inspected our walls two moons ago. They are unbreachable.”
At Iltani’s urging, the next day Sin-Eribam received a small council in a side chamber: Captain Imgur-Sin, the chief scribe, and the overseer of the armoury.
The chief scribe bowed. “Reports from the north road say men of Isin have been measuring canal banks. There is also one subterranean canal they would not know about. It supplies water to E-Nun-Makh.”
The captain added, “Scouts sighted conscripts drilling outside Isin’s walls, regular formations, my lord.”
The overseer cleared his throat. “Our bronze scales are serviceable but old. If Your Majesty commands, the guilds can forge six hundred new cuirasses within two moons, and we can recall the militia for drill.”
All eyes turned to the king. He rested his fingertips on the cylinder seal.
“These happenings could mean different things. To call every man to drill is to fill every house with fear,” he added softly. “Children learn what we rehearse before them.”
The captain kept his eyes lowered. “Fear is already in the houses, my lord.”
Sin-Eribam stood silent a long moment. Then he nodded once.
“Repair the eastern parapets and strengthen the gates. Buy tin and copper now. Call for volunteers to drill with the watch. We will not conscript the potters and the bakers; we will not turn Larsa into a camp before war is certain.”
He took up a fresh clay tablet and spoke as the scribe impressed the words. When it was done, Sin-Eribam pressed his old seal into the wet clay—only the legend, “Sin-Eribam, servant of Amurru.”
He looked at Iltani. “This is my line. We will defend our home. But I will not teach our children to see a foe in every shadow.”
A few days later, at dusk, a horn cried sharply from the eastern wall. Captain Imgur-Sin hurried up the stair, meeting King Sin-Eribam as soldiers dashed to their positions.
“Report,” commanded Sin-Eribam.
“Men from Isin, my lord, thirty at least, along the irrigation channel with ladders. They test our sluice tower.”
Together they reached the parapet. Below, dusk had turned the attackers into dark shapes among reeds, moving toward the low stone tower that controlled water for the city’s gardens. Larsa’s archers loosed a volley of arrows in disciplined silence; two shadows toppled into the reeds. The rest surged forward, ladders clattering against stone. Inside, three militia, gardeners in stiff boiled leather, shouted and pushed the ladders back with poles.
“Signal the gate,” Captain Imgur-Sin urged. “Ten men with hooked pikes, we can trap them in the ditch.”
“No,” the king said quietly. “No pursuit.”
Imgur-Sin turned. “My lord—”
Sin-Eribam’s voice was calm but firm. “Ten men chasing thirty through reeds at night return as five, or not at all. Hold the tower. Oil only if they press hard. We will not trade lives for pride.”
Below, the attackers thrust up once more before withdrawing, dragging their wounded into darkness. A muted cheer rose from Larsa’s soldiers, quickly fading into unease as night settled.
The captain muttered under his breath. “If we had struck now, we might have broken their raiding parties for a moon.”
As he descended the stair, Sin-Eribam found Iltani waiting in the shadow of the wall.
“Why spare them?” she asked. “Because a small stone tower is not worth a dozen new widows,” he said softly. “We hold what we must, Iltani.”
By morning, dust-plumes thickened on the northern road. At E-Nun-Makh, the main ziggurat of Larsa, the temple of Shamash, the sun-god and god of justice, people gathered.
The potter, Ninurta-bāni, was there too. An old woman known for her textile workshop gripped his arm. “They say the legion of Isin is here. King Enlil-bāni conscripted every man over sixteen and drilled them for months. What about us? Are we prepared?”
“Our king knows our walls are strong,” Ninurta-bāni said. “Why fill every hand with a spear when we all have our duties to the city? Why train to kill, when we can build?”
“It is good to build,” she said. “It is better to live. I have six children and twenty-two grandchildren to think of.”
“You worry too much. Look, the priests are ascending the high platform.”
“Citizens of great Larsa! Our lord the king, upholder of kittum u mīšarum, truth and justice, will speak.”
King Sin-Eribam appeared on the platform; the priests stepped back.
“People of Larsa, I, your shepherd, who watches over the land and protects the weak, I speak to you now of the enemy at our gates.
It is not the wild hordes of the Guti who assail us, it is not the Elamites from their faraway lands. It is our own brothers and sisters from the city of Isin. The king of Isin could have come through the main gate, as an honoured guest, a royal, a brother. He would have been treated to a feast and to divine music equal to none. Instead he chose to come like a thief in the night, to try to take what is not his. Well, we in Larsa know how to deal with thieves. We do not show them our hospitality. Instead our archers will remind them which way is home. And they, they should turn back before the arrow stops them. Men of Isin will do well to look after Isin rather than try to make other cities theirs. For mē, the holy order of the gods is served by taking care of what is yours and not coveting what is your neighbour’s. And because Larsa is our home and we shall defend it.”
“Sin-Eribam! Sin-Eribam! Sin-Eribam!” The people chanted.
“People of Larsa,” he said, “we shall repair the walls and gates at once; the treasury pays. Volunteers shall drill with the watch. We shall hold, and we shall keep kittum u mīšarum before the gods.”
“Sin-Eribam! Sin-Eribam!” the people chanted, shorter now, keeping breath for the days ahead.
The priests ascended again. People began to disperse but some stayed to hear the incantation from the Counsels of Wisdom:
“Do not return evil to the man who disputes with you; requite with kindness your evildoer; maintain justice even to your enemy…”
As shadows lengthened across the Isin camps, the outer tents staked the plain. At dawn the first teams moved along the canal cuts with wicker screens and shovels. Keeping out of range of Larsa’s marksmen, rank upon rank of soldiers dug to dam the canals. In the sweltering heat, it was hard work. Days piled upon days, and weeks upon weeks. Disease struck and water was to be boiled, by the royal physician’s decree. Weariness settled into Isin’s ranks. Larsa had not yielded as quickly as Enlil-bāni hoped. By night, Larsa’s archers sent burning arrows to spoil sleep. By day, the bund rose reed by reed. The city’s water ran thinner each morning.
In a tent near the dam works, two soldiers settled for the night.
“This is the best time of the day,” the older one, Ishme-Martu, said, closing his eyes. “I dream I am at home. Beltani hushes the little ones. The small one refuses sleep; she laughs, and then they all laugh. Then Beltani comes to our bed—”
“Now I understand the sounds you wake me with,” Amurrum muttered.
“Yes. Each night we make love,” Ishme-Martu went on, unabashed. “She is the kindest woman under the sky. Her body is like a royal banquet, from her full lips to—”
“Enough!”
“And then I wake here. That is the worst time. Remind me, why are we here? What do you tell yourself?”
“For the glory of Isin and our lord the king. To avenge those who died when they poisoned our water. And to kill that usurper, Sin-Eribam, who poisoned their father’s mind against our king.”
Ishme-Martu scratched his cheek. “Poisoned our water, you say? Have you seen these poisoners, or spoken to someone who has?”
“No. But I heard people talking.”
“I saw a fishmonger chased out of market for bad fish. That I saw. And have you heard Sin-Eribam poisoning his father’s mind? Or was it again people talking?”
Amurrum snorted. “One need not witness all to believe some things. I even heard our lord the king speak of it.”
“Ah, the king,” Ishme-Martu said softly. “Listen. Your brother says the general favours you and spreads stories. Had I not shared this tent with you for three months, I might believe him. You have a sweet boyish face. The general would fancy you.”
“If I did not have respect for your years, Ishme-Martu, I would break your nose right here and now. You are verily the most trying tent-mate in the whole army of Isin.”
“Ah, Amurrum, it must be joyful being you. Your pretty face has clearly not been creased by much thought. That must be how you still look so young. Poisoned this, poisoned that. No one saw, but everyone knows. It is like in the tale of the snake who accused the farmer of poisoning his neighbour’s sheep. People believed the snake. But let us not quarrel. The king is about to speak.”
The captains drew their circles. A low platform of planks stood with hissing torches; scribes waited with clay and stylus. King Enlil-bāni stepped up bareheaded, his raven-black locks that framed his angular face tousled by the wind, his cuirass plain. He surveyed his troops with an intent gaze, letting the roar swell and ebb.
“Men of Isin,” he boomed. “I know many of you question why you’re here, standing before Larsa’s gates, far from home. You wonder: did they poison our water? Is their king a usurper of Larsa’s rightful crown?”
The soldiers roared: “Enlil-bāni!”
He raised a hand, commanding silence.
“Yes, both are true. But there’s a deeper reason. You’ve heard the Lament of Ur, about a weak king who failed his city, and streets ran red. Sin-Eribam is weak. And weakness invites conquest. If Larsa falls, our enemies won’t stop there. We must unite our cities, so that no Elamite, no Guti, shall ever threaten us again. May Isin-Larsa stand a thousand years!”
The army’s cry rose again: “Enlil-bāni! Enlil-bāni! Enlil-bāni!”
Amurrum flashed Ishme-Martu a triumphant smile and dipped his head in a knowing nod. The scribes scratched the words onto clay and sent them down the lines.
That night, seven youths huddled in a tavern near Larsa’s wall, their jars of water almost empty. Rimush, boyish face set with resolve, spoke fast.
“We strike where they least expect—burn the reed mats for the dam, cut tether lines, slit the baskets so they can’t hold mud, spoil their grain with water—then run.”
An older soldier snorted. “And come home full of arrows.”
“Better than waiting like sheep,” Rimush said. “My grandfather died at Ur. At least he died with a knife in his hand.”
Before dawn they slipped over the wall by the old date-palm, mud cooling their feet as they moved along the canal. At the dam, reed mats lay in neat stacks; a single guard dozed by a dying fire.
Rimush counted—one, two, three—and they moved. A knife through the tether line, a hand over the guard’s mouth. Oil splashed over mats, rags caught flame, fire licked upward. Two tumbled the woven mud-baskets, slitting them clean; another pair spooked the oxen—bells clattered, ropes snapped. The youngest boy lingered to throw a torch into fresh-cut reeds.
“Back!” hissed Rimush.
They didn’t reach the ditch before the camp stirred. Four arrows found their mark; one boy ran on, teeth clenched, the other three fell.
By sunrise, three supply tents smouldered and the dam smelled bitter. The bund still stood, but the work was set back days.
From the Isin line, Ishme-Martu stood over blackened reed. “Brave little fools.”
Amurrum wiped blood from his lip. “Fools. What did they win?”
Ishme-Martu nodded toward the tense, ashen faces nearby. “They showed our men Larsa still has teeth. That matters.”
The raids didn’t stop. They came like a drumbeat: ropes sliced, an axle split, a burst of fire on a grain wagon, the splash of tools into a deep pool. Larsa bled Isin in little cuts.
Enlil-bāni’s captains adapted—double sentries at reed stacks, archers in the angles, oxen tied nose to nose with bells between. Men slept with bows across their chests.
In Larsa, three young men did not return. In the temple square, their mothers keened. Each week priests brought gifts from the palace and a clay tablet with Sin-Eribam’s seal. It cost little and cost much; the city read the names and set its jaw.
Weeks turned into months. In Larsa, strict water rations hung over the city like a shadow of fatigue and dread. Only one canal remained, the temple’s, and it now supplied the whole city.
The ritual ablushions at the ziggurat felt like a distant memory. In his dry, silent workshop, the potter Ninurta-bāni’s hands itched for clay. Restless, he enlisted for wall guard duty, to his wife’s round disapproval.
“As much as I’m sick of you loitering,” she scolded, “I don’t want to see you die the moment Isin breaches our walls. Stay home and don’t make me a widow and our poor children, orphans. They’ll spare a good craftsman who’s never fought.”
But he ignored her pleas.
Summer reached its zenith, the heat unrelenting. Even under canopies, Isin’s soldiers sweltered. The city stripped of most of its men, struggled to keep the legion supplied; women worked long hours while caring for children. Rumours of an imminent assault swirled, and the troops grew impatient.
One night, sentries raised the alarm, Larsa’s raiders were in the camp. Ishme-Martu, now a light sleeper, was among the first outside. His arrow stopped a straggler. When it was all over, he walked up to the body he felled and turned it over with his foot: a boy, barely thirteen, dead eyes stared back at him. He looked like Ishme-Martu’s own twelve-year-old at home, yet the soldier felt nothing—only the thought: I hope we attack soon.
Some captains began pressing for action. At dawn, before the heat took hold, word spread: the king would speak.
Enlil-bāni mounted a platform, and the sight of him stirred the soldiers.
“Men of Isin,” he said, “many of you ask why we wait. This doubt spreads like a disease. We must rout it once and for all. A hunter who springs too soon loses his spear, and his life. But one who pursues a tiger until it tires, brings the great beast home. Larsa must weaken before we take her. Her people are running out of water; soon they’ll open their gates themselves. We could rush the walls now and lose many of you, or wait, and feast on her bounty.”
A captain shouted, “If we wait any longer, we’ll have no city to return to, and here we can’t endure much more!”
Enlil-bāni’s gaze turned cold. Silence fell. Four royal guards rushed in, dragged the captain and threw him at the king’s feet.
“Forgive me, Your Majesty!” he pleaded.
One stroke, and his head rolled into the crowd. The soldiers stepped aside.
“We do not let doubt or defiance spread,” Enlil-bāni said. “We cut them out where they appear. That is how we defeat Larsa. That is how we win.”
The legion let out a held breath: “Enlil-bāni! Enlil-bāni! Enlil-bāni!”
In the fourth month of the siege, the palace musicians still played their evening songs. Sin-Eribam sat in his garden, eyes closed, listening to the gentle plucking of the sammû.
“My lord,” Captain Imgur-Sin approached, dust-covered from the ramparts. “The eastern canal is fully dammed. Without it, we have perhaps three weeks of water. The people need to know you have a plan.”
“Have you noticed, Captain,” Sin-Eribam said, touching a potted jasmine, “how flowers seem to bloom most beautifully when their time is short?”
The captain shifted. “My lord? People are struggling, they need hope.”
Sin-Eribam stood and clasped his shoulder. “Then give them mine. Tell them their king believes in them; tell them Larsa has weathered worse.” He looked at the watering jar in his hand, then set it down. “Groundskeeper! Divert the palace garden water to the temple cisterns and the ration lines. The palace drinks last. Have the scribes read this at the gates.”
He turned to the jasmine. “Forgive me, my beauties. We must all sacrifice.”
After the captain left, the music returned, but the notes sounded hollow now, echoing off walls that felt like a cage.
Enlil-bāni studied clay map tablets with growing frustration. “Four months, and still Larsa holds.”
General Naram-Suen cleared his throat. “Their raids grow bolder. Last night they burned two more supply wagons. Meanwhile we lose men to fever and desertion, as well as their arrows.”
“Perhaps if we offered terms—” the general ventured.
“Terms?” Enlil-bāni swept a tablet aside, the clay broke into pieces. “We accept nothing but full surrender.”
He picked up another tablet showing a map and notes in cuneiform.
“One canal remains,” he said at last. “A priest at their ziggurat escaped the city and revealed its secret in return for safety and the return of his privileges. It is underground and may be impossible to dam. It feeds their temple district.”
“What good is it to us?” the general asked.
“We may not dam it, but we can foul it.”
“My lord, to poison water invites gods’ wrath. It strikes the weakest—the children, the old.”
Enlil-bāni’s jaw worked. “If we continue like this, they die by thirst anyway, and more slowly. A quick end spares us and them.” He paused, voice low. “Summon the physician, Arad-Gula.”
Meanwhile in Larsa the twin blight of the scorching heat and too little water turned it into a city of ghosts gliding slowly through the dusty lanes, their pale faces parched with thirst. Even the pomegranates in the palace garden had begun to wither. Three days later the poison reached the city. An old priest of Shamash collapsed during morning prayers. Two children in the potters’ lane took ill at midday. An elderly scribe in the palace by sunset.
Ninurta-bāni found his friend, the baker Shulgi-Naram, retching blood on the bakery floor. “The water,” the baker gasped. “Do not… do not drink…” His lips cracked like dried riverbed clay as he burned with fever.
By evening, twenty were dead. By the next dawn, fifty. Panic moved faster than poison.
In the square before E-Nun-Makh, crowds gathered, no longer singing but shouting.
“Where is our king?” cried a merchant whose daughter lay still on a reed mat. “Where is his kindness now?”
“He tends his garden while we die!” another voice.
Sin-Eribam stepped onto the palace balcony, and for the first time the crowd did not cheer.
“My people—” he began.
“Your people?” the merchant shouted. “We are walking corpses!”
“I grieve with you—”
An old woman who had lost her grandson to poison screamed, “What do you know of grief? You listen to music while we die. You allowed this. What kind of king are you? Why, you don’t even sign like one!”
The words hung like smoke. Sin-Eribam stood silent, and the silence read as admission. Stones flew. Guards raised shields, but the king lifted a hand.
“Let them,” he said quietly.
Blood trickled from a cut on his brow as he stepped back inside.
Later, in the ration court, Iltani knelt to lift a boy from the queue. His skin was hot and dry; his eyes stared past her. She carried him to the shade and called for water that could not help him. He died before the priest arrived. When she rose, a thin line of his blood crossed her wrist like a cord.
That night, Iltani went to the eastern gate and sent a runner with a white cloth on a staff and a tablet bearing her royal seal. “Parley,” the tablet read. “For the children.”
Under the eyes of archers, a single horseman from Isin rode forward, the white cloth limp in the stillness. He removed his helmet, an unexpectedly older and withered face with a white beard.
“I am Captain Bel-eter,” he called. “I carry the king’s word.”
“Speak,” Iltani said from the shadow of the gate, guards three paces behind.
“The king accepts nothing but complete surrender.”
“Let the children leave under truce now,” Iltani said. “Take them to the temple at Isin. Leave their mothers to tend the sick. I will send you the names on a tablet impressed with my seal.”
The captain looked pained. “My lady, I relay what I am given. I cannot bargain for kings. But Her Majesty asked me to give you this.” He handed her a tablet wrapped in cloth, turned his horse, and rode back. The white cloth stirred once.
The unrest in Larsa thinned toward the night but did not cease. At the western gate a knot of men pressed the bars, calling for the children to be let out. A guard thrust the haft of his spear between the bars; a thrown lamp burst on the stones and flared, then guttered.
Iltani went down into the smoke. “Back,” she called, voice hoarse. “Back, or you will burn what little water we have left.”
Faces turned, soot-streaked, dazed. “Open for the little ones!” a woman cried, pointing past Iltani toward the dark nursery wing.
“I have asked,” Iltani said, and her voice cracked. “I have asked, and the answer was ‘no.’ They accept only surrender.”
The dreaded word threw a blanket of silence over the crowd. As if the last glimmer of goodwill were snuffed, curses rose for the king and the queen. Captain Imgur-Sin touched her elbow. “My lady, say the word and I will break this crowd.”
“No,” Iltani said. “Not tonight.”
They held until the anger guttered like an old wick.
Iltani looked at the letter again. Sister, it read in Nin-Ninisina’s hand: the water was my husband’s order. But it is done. Save yourself and your children. You know what must happen. Open the eastern gate at the third watch tomorrow night. I swear by our mother’s grave, you will be protected.
She sat until the lamp oil burned low. The city’s noise came and went through the shutters.
She rose and went to the nursery doorway. Her youngest, barely five, had kicked off his blanket; she tucked it around him, hands trembling. Her eldest had dreamed himself sideways across the mat; she straightened him and watched his chest rise and fall.
How many more nights would they breathe so peacefully? How many more dawns would they wake to see?
She pressed her forehead to the doorpost until her breath steadied.
She found Sin-Eribam in his study, not over defence tablets but writing poetry on fresh clay, lines of cuneiform carefully pressed like leaves of bamboo.
“My lord?”
He looked up, face lit by the first grey of dawn, open as a boy’s. “Iltani. I was writing about you. The day we met. Do you remember? The festival of Inanna?”
“My lord…” The letter weighed in her sleeve.
“I was afraid of you,” he said softly. “This dazzling woman who could have had princes. Yet you chose the second son who preferred songs to swords.”
“The city is dying.”
“Yes.” He set down his stylus. “I have failed them. And you.”
“You could surrender. Abdicate. Enlil-bāni might—”
“We both know what my brother will do.” Sin-Eribam drew his cylinder seal and rolled it between his fingers. “I should have changed this, shouldn’t I? Added my titles. Made it official. But I loved it too much as it was. A memory of simpler days.”
“My lord—”
“Sin-Eribam,” he corrected gently. “Just Sin-Eribam. Perhaps I could have been a good king at another time.”
He pressed the seal into her hands. “For our children. Whatever comes, remember I loved you more than I loved life itself.”
Iltani’s eyes filled with tears. “I can’t, my love. It is your gift. Here…” She pulled a thread from the cord at her breast, ran it through the seal’s drilled hole, and tied it around his neck. “May it bless you and give you strength to weather whatever comes.”
He covered the seal with his palm as if to warm it. “Whatever comes,” he said again.
At the third watch, Iltani stood at the eastern gate with two trusted guards, men whose families she had promised to protect. The air smelled of pitch and old bronze.
“Forgive me,” she whispered to the city that had crowned her.
Her heart froze as she moved. She quickly stabbed one, then the other. Warm blood climbed her sleeve. She did not drop the knife. She pressed the bar’s lever with the heel of her hand and felt the city’s weight tilt.
The great bronze bars, which had held for months, rose with a grinding protest. Rank upon rank, bodies and shields pressed together, Isin’s soldiers poured through. The sack of Larsa began.
By dawn, the streets outside the palace walls ran red. Sin-Eribam stood in the antechamber of the throne room, listening to the iron thud of boots where musicians had played.
“Go home,” he told Captain Imgur-Sin. “Bar your doors. Guard your wives and children. I forbid you to die for a cause already lost.”
“My lord—”
“That is my last order. Obey it. And one more: open the palace cistern. Let the temples draw the last of the pure water for the wounded. Post wardens to the shrines, let there be no looting. In this dark hour above all, let us not forget who we are.”
The captain held his gaze, then bowed. “Yes, my lord.”
Sin-Eribam wiped bitumen dust from his palms onto his robe, and walked into the throne room without a crown and without a sword. The old seal hung at his neck.
Enlil-bāni entered with a cohort of warriors, his blade already bloodied. He gestured to dismiss his captains until only two remained beyond earshot. Silence stood between the brothers. Silence so thick one could slice it with a sword.
“Brother,” Sin-Eribam finally spoke.
“You were never my brother,” Enlil-bāni answered, voice seething, voice seething. “My brother would not let his city be taken. My brother would fight to the last breath. And you—” he shook his head. “You were never my brother. And you were never a king.”
“Yes,” Sin-Eribam said. “I suppose that is true. More a dreamer and fool than a king of this world. I wanted my people to be happy. Were you ever happy, Enlil-bāni?”
A muscle worked in the conqueror’s cheek. “Happiness is for shepherds and children. Not for kings, who take on grave responsibilities.”
“Then I pity you.”
Enlil-bāni’s eyes flicked to the seal on Sin-Eribam’s chest. For a mere heartbeat, the god and the priestess on the seal seemed alive.
“Any last requests?” he asked, almost formally.
“Spare the shrines and the children.”
Enlil-bāni’s jaw tightened. “I have already given that order. Those who break it answer to me.”
“You will be a better king than I was,” Sin-Eribam said, and spread his arms. “I am ready.”
Enlil-bāni lifted the sword in both hands. The stroke he gave was clean.
Iltani and Nin-Ninisina stood in the doorway.
The cylinder seal struck the floor and rolled, hitting the threshold and coming to rest at the queen’s feet.
“You and your children are safe, sister,” Nin-Ninisina turned to Iltani. “As promised.”
Time had stopped. In a daze, unaware of what she was doing, Iltani bent and picked up the seal. Across the floor stretched the bloody impressions of Amurru receiving ablutions from his beautiful priestess, each impression growing fainter until only ghosts of figures remained in front of her.
From the high windows came the cries of the broken city and the first plumes of black smoke. Somewhere below, a door splintered. Above, a child cried.
“Is there truly no other way than this?” Iltani whispered.
Enlil-bāni wiped his blade on a fallen cloak. “There is only one way. The strong survive. The weak perish. Your husband never understood this.”
Iltani held the bloody seal to her breast as if it might warm. “No,” she said. “He refused to.”
She looked at Nin-Ninisina. “And you?”
Her sister did not look away. “I chose life,” she said. “And so have you.”
Iltani closed her fingers around the seal until its edges bit her palm.
When the sun rose over burning Larsa, smoke twisted around the ziggurat like a dark crown. In the square, men with ash on their faces hauled water to the temple steps from the newly opened cistern. A boy steadied an old woman’s cup. A baker’s hands shook as he broke a saved loaf.
At noon, Enlil-bāni ordered a sergeant flogged and hanged, for assaulting a young girl. His soldiers watched in silence, their eyes smoldering with the rage they’d nursed through the long months of siege freshly unleashed on the people of Larsa.
In the throne room, servants began to wash the floor. The first swipes smeared the impressions into a dull red fog, then, slowly, the figures faded, god and priestess, until only the wet shine of the marble remained, ready for the new king and queen.
Outside, the conqueror gave orders to round up Larsa’s men from the age of 13 and to remove the dams on the canals. The city braced.
The Queen of Larsa, now just Iltani, tied the cord of the cylinder seal around her neck, took her children’s hands, and walked out of the city.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in Ukraine, Desmond Wolff grew up in Australia, and now a resident of Switzerland. He describes himself as something of an eternal pilgrim having studied more fields than the countries he’s lived in. But if there’s been an arc, it is to understand the human condition and the yearning for peace and self. self-actualisation. This story mirrors his passions as well as his obsession with history.
About the Author
