Abraham Allegiant (Chronicles of the Nephilim Book 4) (6 page)

Not like him. He began to plan in his mind how he might manipulate them to face each other in a contest of megalomaniacal egos. Maybe they would destroy each other and the assembly would be better off when they did.

But what if by some strange twist of fate, they partnered up together? Then the very pantheon itself would be in jeopardy. Enlil tried to put the horror out of his mind as he concluded his participation in the vainglorious enthronement ceremony.

When they had concluded the official transfer of the Tablet of Destinies and the crown to Marduk, Anu led the assembly of gods and men in a vow of devotion.

“We pledge our fealty and worship to the gracious Marduk, king of the gods!”

Everyone human and divine repeated the words that would usher in a new era ruled by a new chief deity.

When all was performed and done, Marduk concluded the ceremony with a simple pronouncement. “And now we shall build Babylon, the gateway of the gods.”

The process of creating bricks for the building of Babylon began even before the lake was fully drained. It would take some weeks to seal the entrance to the Abyss and then finish the canals and dredging and finally filling in of the lakebed with rock and soil.

In the meantime, Nimrod conscripted the entire workforce and slave force of tens of thousands for the laborious task of making bricks. They would work on the city, the wall, and the temples simultaneously. There were two kinds of bricks; sun-dried bricks for most of the homes, shrines, and inner walled areas, and kiln-fired bricks for the outer walls and most importantly for the temple-tower, Etemenanki and Marduk’s complimentary Esagila.

The ziggurat Etemenanki was the largest of its size in all of Sumer and Akkad. It would take a year of round the sundial labor to build it. Since the structure functioned as a cosmic mountain upon which the gods would descend from heaven, it was a solid structure with the shrine of deity on top and a stairway down its front. The inner base was made of sun-dried bricks, but the outer layer was made of kiln-fired brick. Firing bricks took more time and effort, but created a more durable hardened ceramic block that could withstand outside forces such as wind, rain, storm, battle, and floodwaters.

This was deliberate on Nimrod’s part, because he carried in his memory the legendary Deluge that swept away the antediluvian world with all its achievements of gods and men. He had rebuilt some of the cities and temples over the ruins of the old. He had seen the devastation first hand. And he had visited his distant kin, Noah, and was told of the Creator Elohim, and his vindictive judgment on mankind that was the origin of the Great Flood. He rejected this despotic deity and his capricious controlling obsession from on high.
How dare he make mankind and the angels, and then demand sniveling toe-licking slavery.

Contrary to this monolithic tyranny was the pantheon of gods who watched over mankind from Mount Hermon. This divine assembly of Watchers was willing to share power, to elevate man above his mud brick existence. If it was one thing the Watcher gods gave him hope for, it was the glorious human potential of mankind to become as gods, to commingle heaven and earth in a unity of being.

He knew that what he and Marduk were planning would more than likely provoke another vengeful response from Elohim. So his purpose was to create a temple of durable structure that would resist another Deluge, and would be high enough to rise above any new floodwaters.

The four high gods that had visited Nimrod for the commencement of the construction had approved it and returned to their holy Mount Hermon in the distant west. One day in the near future that distance would be eliminated and the two seats of power would become one in Babylon, the gateway of the gods.

Nimrod was ready for the next step in his plan. He was ready to reveal his queen.

Shamhat was going stir crazy. She had been sequestered in a secluded encampment out near the edge of the massive desert to the west of Babylon for over a year. She was guarded by a well-armed contingent of about a hundred warriors, who were under strictest orders of secrecy and protection to kill anyone who ventured near their posted site. They did not even know her name or who she was, only that she was the holy property of Nimrod, their lord and king. She was not allowed to travel anywhere or have any visitors except for Nimrod who would occasionally arrive unannounced for conjugal satisfaction.

But this confinement was not punishment. It was part of the plan, and she had agreed to it. She was to be Nimrod’s queen, but in order to create an aura of power and mystery to their reign; she would have to be completely dissociated from her past. She would have to be forgotten and then unveiled much later with a new name and a new identity.

In distant days, she had originally been a harlot of Uruk. She had seduced the Wild-Born Enkidu who was the only man she had ever met that showed her true love was possible. Enkidu married her and became the Right Hand of Gilgamesh, the King of Uruk, Nimrod’s previous identity. But Enkidu had died from a mysterious disease, and with him, Shamhat’s belief in love and grace and anything true in this life. She had determined to never again be the tool of men and to climb her way up the stairway of power to achieve as much as she could.

Of course it would always be a man’s world, and so she would have to play the system in order to accomplish her ambition. She would have to use her feminine wiles to her advantage. And her feminine wiles were a highly tuned and cultivated set of skills in
manipulating the simple nature of men. This was about more than their piggish bondage to lust; it also involved their ridiculously transparent slavery to their egos. Women, on the other hand needed men like a fish needed a chariot.

Nimrod had taken Shamhat to be his queen, partly because of her connection to Enkidu, and partly because he saw in her the experience and ambition required to negotiate the political machinations of a kingdom. She knew men better than they knew themselves and this would be an advantage for his rule.

He knew her soul was damaged beyond repair. His Naphil insight could tell she was capable of great treachery. But that also gave her the qualifications to be his queen. Because of his connection to Enkidu, he too had lost his faith in friendship, trust, and goodness. So no matter how cynical and destroyed their past, no matter how small and shriveled that small piece of humanity was, it was still a piece of them both that he would eventually be able to use to his benefit should the time come.

But that time was not now. Now was the time for queenship and marriage. And Nimrod had found the perfect opportunity for the birth of that queen.

The very evening after Marduk slaughtered Tiamat the sea dragon of chaos, Nimrod had secretly transported Shamhat to the lake and had her prepare for a theatrical entrance. Nimrod had concocted the perfect way to create a new divine identity for Shamhat with a new narrative that would forever erase her past.

Late the next morning, Nimrod took a cabal of priests, sorcerers, and magi down to the lake to consecrate the waters of Marduk’s triumph. The assembly of two hundred celebrants performed their rituals and ceremony on the shoreline to sanctify the access to the Abyss over which the ziggurat temple was to be built. This was to be holy ground.

Unbeknownst to the religious participants, Shamhat had been hiding in the lake waters with an artificial breathing apparatus that consisted of a large pitch covered reed balloon full of air, submerged and tied to the bottom. Shamhat then sucked the air through a small pipe attached to the balloon that allowed her to stay below for several hours.

At one point in the ceremony of blessing, the priests threw several lambs and goats into the water as sacrifice. They were tied to large stones that sank the animals to the bottom and their deaths.

That was Shamhat’s signal to come up out of the water and walk up to the shore as if born from the waters of sacrifice.

As she stepped up onto the sand, water glimmering down her voluptuous naked curves, the entire religious procession stood in wonder.

She raised her hands and spoke to the crowd surrounding Nimrod’s chariot throne. “I am born from the holy waters of the Abyss, from the victory over Tiamat by Marduk, king of the gods. Who is the king who can crown me queen?”

Nimrod stood and approached her. The whole faux display of theater was arousing to him. He found himself breathing heavily and staring at her enticing form with renewed erotic desire. She was truly a thing of beauty and lust.

He stepped up to her and announced, “I am Nimrod ruler of Akkad and Sumer. I will make you my queen, divine one.”

Shamhat bowed to the ground before him. He was going to ravish her when they were alone. He was not sure if he would be able to wait that long, as she looked up into his eyes with complete and utter submission.

Then she stood and Nimrod asked her, “What is your name, O daughter of the gods?”

“I am Semiramis,” she said, “Virgin of the Waters.”

Nimrod muttered to her so only she could hear, “I will violate that virginity of yours till you are pleading for mercy.”

He held out his hand to her and shouted for the ears of the crowd, “Come, be my queen!”

She whispered back to him, “I am going to drain you like this lake, big boy.”

He smiled at her erotic innuendo.

But he did not realize that she actually meant it in a different way. It was delicious irony to her.

The musicians began playing music and a royal robe covered Semiramis, which was a good thing because most of the male priests were having a hard time concentrating on their tasks at hand. Her naked full breasts, her curvaceous hips, her voluptuous vulva, all fired the imagination of men’s desires. She was not merely a specimen of physical beauty. She had an aura of erotic power that would turn any man into putty in her hands.

Nimrod was the only putty she was interested in.

The preparation for Nimrod’s wedding to Semiramis was a month long. They had constructed a large temporary shelter for the actual ceremony, and cleared an area large enough to host the hundreds of thousands who would attend. Nimrod called for the other kings of Sumer and Akkad and their royal households to be present. The heads of the clans of the sons of Noah, Joktan, and Phenech, would also bring many of their tribes to witness the wedding.

Nimrod was getting increasingly demanding of his vassal kings. He had raised his tribute taxes on them and was calling for more and more corveé labor to finish his city and tower in an unprecedented period of time.

They had finished draining the lake and leveling it with landfill, but the wedding would be a few miles to the west of the city near the edge of the great desert. The city was surveyed and laid out for the construction of the temple. Bricks were being hauled in and it was just too much to hold his wedding around such a busy mess.

But there was another reason for holding it near the desert; a reason that Nimrod would withhold until the proper moment.

The day of the wedding was sunny and the night of celebration would be arid but cool. The kings of Sumer arrived from the south with their royal households and encamped in the southern plains. They were puppet kings of Nimrod through his son who ruled in Uruk.

The kings of Akkad were less so, as Joktan and Phenech of the clans of Japheth and Shem brought some armed forces as a personal guard to express some independence. Nimrod had heartily welcomed their caution in the interest of building a better relationship with these clans. This marriage marked the beginning of a new dynasty and Nimrod wanted it to be one of trust and support, not mistrust and hostility. He even allowed the several thousand or so guards of Joktan and Phenech to assemble on the desert side of the festivities so that they too could see the ceremony and participate in the feast. It was a gesture of good will that did not go unnoticed by the tribal leaders.

Joktan was the more distrusting of the two and his notice carried a whiff of sarcasm. “I noticed our armed forces were useful to Nimrod to create a barrier from the desert sand winds for the celebration, while his malformed overgrown giants stand comfortably in the aisles of honor.”

Nimrod’s elite Nephilim warriors, his giant progeny, had followed Nimrod and Semiramis in a long train of pomp and circumstance down the aisle that led up to the sanctuary stage. The Nephilim had then stayed in position, lining the aisles all the way to the back of the huge crowd. They were dressed in expensive royal garments of silken robes, jeweled ornaments, and painted faces.

“Look at them,” sniffed Joktan, “they are like a giant gauntlet of the vainglorious ego of their leader, or rather, their bastard father.”

“Really, Joktan,” said Phenech, “You must stop sucking on green persimmons. They accentuate your sour puss.”

Phenech was only trying to make the best of a humiliating situation. Joktan smirked and the two of them sat down in their location at the front of the crowd.

The royal families were seated in the place of honor at the head of the festivities, and the commoners were kept separated by partitions of soldiers in the distance. The king was kind enough to include all the people, but not so kind as to ignore the proper hierarchy of caste distinction between peasants and nobility.

The city-states of Akkad, or central Mesopotamia, were up front: Nippur, Sippar, Kish, and the surrounding area. Behind them
were the southern cities of Sumer: Uruk, Ur, Eridu, Shuruppak. And behind them, were the representatives of the fledgling new northern city-states of Asshur, Nineveh, Rehoboth-Ir, Calah, an
d
Resen.

It was a microcosm of the known world. Two hundred thousand people from every tribe in the land come to see the wedding of the mighty King Nimrod. And Nimrod delivered to them from his bounty. Ten thousand sheep, cattle, and boar were killed daily for meals. Uncounted bushels of grain and barrels of beer flowed into the masses.

But at this moment, all food had been put away, all drink withheld, and all eyes fixed on the ceremony of union being performed at the front of the great congregation. Temple musicians played the lyre, flute, and tambourine. The high priestess of Marduk oversaw an orgy of copulation onstage between the heads of state from the cities and hierodules, temple prostitutes. It was a celebration of fertility, hope, and debauchery.

Marduk stood statuesque at the back of the sanctuary display for divine validation of the union.

Terah had arrived not many days earlier from his work down near Uruk. He stood in the entourage of sorcerers and magi. He was disgusted watching the wanton mass of writhing and moaning that went on in front of him, though he would never let on to his personal sentiments for fear of reprisal.

He did his duty and obeyed god and king. That was all any ruler could ask of a man. That was all he could offer.

When the orgy had run its course, the High Priestess declared Nimrod and Semiramis husband and wife, king and queen of Babylon. They stood before the mass of people and smiled as the cheers rose like incense into the sky.

When it all calmed down, Nimrod took position on a mount and made a pronouncement to the people.

“Thank you all for coming to my wedding and celebrating the ascension of Queen Semiramis to her throne. And now I have but one more pronouncement to make, and that is that from this point forward and forever, I proclaim myself emperor and potentate of all the earth!”

The people murmured amongst themselves. They were not really sure about what they had just heard. Did he say he was now potentate of all the earth? What did that mean for the other kings?

The rulers of the cities would know what it meant in mere seconds.

They looked at one another with shock, and then began clucking with anger at the gall of this king. They were his vassals. As if that was not enough, now his hubris knew no bounds as to claim total supremacy? Insufferable!

Joktan and Phenech looked over at their Guard considering their options. But it was too late.

Terah screamed out, “
Stone Ones, arise
!”

All around the Guard and behind them, the ground began to move, and large stone beings rose from the dirt as if the earth itself was coming alive.

They were the golemim. The army of ten thousand Stone Ones, created by Terah and animated by the sorcery of enchantment. They had traveled silently up from the south and had dug their way into the ground in camouflage the week before. Now they surrounded the armed forces.

Some of the Guard drew their weapons, some of them tried to fight. But it was hopeless. Sword, javelin, and mace were useless against rock. They were enclosed, hemmed in by a wall of rock that tightened in on them. The Stone Ones were three times their number and carried their own weapons of swords, maces, and battle-axes. Blade glanced off boulder; rock and mace crushed human flesh. Several thousand screaming guards of Joktan and Phenech were
swiftly defeated and crushed by the multitude of silent stone warriors of Nimrod.

Everyone watched in terror.

They finished their slaughter in minutes.

The blood drenched Stone Ones lined up in silent military attention, ready for their next orders. They were an undefeatable brute force.

The royal families on stage did not know what to do. But the concealed assassins did. The hierodules pulled daggers and slit the throats of the naked nobility.

The gauntlet of Nephilim warriors that lined the aisle up to the stage had not been there for mere pomp and circumstance. They were there for a task: To execute the royal families of the city-states.

They pulled their blades and blunt weapons to slice and bludgeon the nobles to death. Joktan and Phenech, being the heads of the sons of Noah, were first to die. Blood and gore splattered through the screams and pleadings of the victims. Arms and heads were hacked off, intestines spilled out. These giant warriors were well trained and performed their task with cold efficiency.

In mere moments, the armed guards were dead, the nobles were dead, and all of Nimrod’s potential rivals had been purged in a river of blood. In mere moments, Nimrod had consolidated and secured his absolute power through a swift and mighty show of force, sorcery, and bloodshed.

He breathed a sigh of great accomplishment. Nimrod was potentate of all the land. Semiramis was his queen.

But now, he had to rally the mob or find himself overrun by a tsunami of humanity awash in fear and panic. And the way he would do it was through envy and coveting. Akkadian society had three basic levels: The
wardum
, or slaves, lowest on the social scale, including prisoners and debt slaves; the
muskenu
, or “commoners,” who were economically tied to either temple or palace; and
awilum
, or “free citizens,” who were not legally attached or dependent on either religion or royalty. By rallying the dependent classes against the independent upper class of free citizens as an enemy, he diverted attention from his own deeds, and justified the breakdown of society into total dependency on the city-state and their king.

He was never one to let a crisis go to waste.

He pronounced with an amplified voice of authority, “My people, fear not! My children! You are safe! No more harm will come!”

It was amazing. His delivery carried across the hundreds of acres of land as if it were the amplified voice of deity.

“I regret what I had to do to the rich and powerful, but it was necessary for your good! This privileged upper class, these fat cat aristocrats who exploit you for their own benefit will do so no longer!”

The crowd began to rumble agreeably.

Nimrod continued, “These were the one percent of wealthy pigs who ruled over the ninety nine percent with their greed and their selfishness! But I swear to you by my very head and by the head of my queen Semiramis, that as our subjects you will never go hungry!”

The crowd burst out in applause.

He milked it, “You will never be without shelter in the great city of Babylon!”

More applause resounded.

“You will never be without health and welfare!”

The applause turned to jubilation.

Nimrod then reeled them in like a fish on a line.

“You will be taken care of from cradle to grave under the mighty rule of Nimrod, emperor of the earth!”

Now the masses swarmed with worship and screams of orgasmic release.

Nimrod had become their lord and savior.