Nanna Sails to Nibru

He fixed his mind on the city of his father

The moon had a father, and the father lived upriver. In the old Sumerian poem the moon god is called Nanna, and also Suen, and also Ashimbabbar. He fixed his mind on the city of his mother and his father, and then said it himself, eight lines of it. I will set off to my father Enlil. I will set off to my mother Ninlil. The repetition is not padding. It is a decision being held steady.

The city was Nibru, which later ages called Nippur, and he praised it before leaving home: the shining city, the pure place, where palm trees grew before Dilmun existed. Six lines break off in the middle of that praise, and what comes back is one phrase, four times over: very great.

A barge made of far places

He did not simply travel. He built. He sent people to Tummal for the barge's reeds, to the abzu for its pitch, to the forests of Ebla for its planking. By the time it sat in the water the boat had carried nothing yet and was already full of far places.

Between the timber and the cargo, sixty-odd lines of tablet are lost, so we never see the boat finished. What comes back is a voice saying I am Nanna-Suen, I will go to the house of Enlil, and then a list. Bulls, fattened sheep, porcupines, long-tailed bush-rats, carp, baskets of eggs, old reed and fresh reed. Six hundred ewes brought to lamb, six hundred she-goats to kid, six hundred cows to calve. Every line ends the same way: for the house of Enlil.

I am going to Nibru

Then the river. Each stop is named by the two cities it lies between, one ahead of the boat and one behind. Urim, the city we call Ur, lies behind at the first landing and further behind at every one after. Enegir lay ahead, and Ningirida brought out of the house what should not come out of the house. Welcome, welcome, welcome o boat.

She laid out flour before the barge and spread bran, and a covered bronze vat stood at her feet. May ghee and syrup and wine be abundant in your midst, she said, and the carp rejoice at your prow. Nothing she brings is a trick. That is the difficulty of the poem. The refusal, when it comes, is not even his: the poem hands it to the boat. But the boat did not give her its cargo: I am going to Nibru.

At Unug, later called Uruk, it was Inanna, his daughter, and she hailed it as the boat of my father. The boat did not give her its cargo. The poem offers no reason and no reproach, only a shape: a daughter with her arms full at the bank, and a father already going past.

At Tummal, the last landing before Nibru, it was the fair Ninlil, his own mother, hailing the boat of the princely son. The reeds his barge was built from had been fetched from Tummal. She offered what the others had offered, and the boat answered as before. Five landings, five welcomes, and the same short sentence every time, until it stops sounding like a plan and starts sounding like something held with both hands.

Open the house, Kalkal

At the Shining Quay, the quay of Enlil, Nanna-Suen finally docked the boat. He stepped up to his father's house and called out to the porter. Open the house, porter. Open the house, Kalkal. Doorman, doorkeeper, open the house.

He kept calling. He read the whole manifest out, and after every item said the same thing: porter, open the house. Then he offered him what was in the prow as a first offering and what was in the stern as a last. Rejoicing, the porter rejoicing, the porter rejoicing opened the house. The poem says the word three times over, because at last there is something to repeat that is not a refusal.

What he asked for Urim

Enlil was glad of the offerings and put bread in front of his son. Give sweet cakes to my little fellow who eats sweet cakes, he said. Give sweet cakes to my Nanna who loves eating sweet cakes. He fed him the way you feed someone who has come a long way to sit down.

Suen said he was satisfied. Then he asked, and the refrain turned around: every landing on the way up had ended with Nibru, and each of his eight requests ends with home. In the river give me the carp-flood, and I want to set off for Urim. In the fields, speckled barley. In the marshes, carp. In the reedbeds, old reed and fresh reed. In the forests, the ibex and wild ram. In the high plain, the mashgurum tree. In the orchards, syrup and wine. In the palace, long life.

His father gave him all of it, and after every gift the poem says the same thing: and he set off for Urim. He came up the river giving nothing away, and goes back down it carrying everything he came for.

You do not have to arrive tonight. The barge is tied at the quay, the door is open, the asking is finished and the answer was yes. Let the river carry the light back down without you. Whatever you are travelling toward will still be there in the morning.