Iltani grew apace. Said Ramtû to Lugal-naid, “What will you do with this girl? Younger than she have sat their day in the temple of Mylitta! And Ninmar has wed Beligunu!—Do you mean to present Iltani to the god?”
“That is what I intend,” said Lugal-naid. “It is an old oath that I swore if I prospered. I waited to see if I did so prosper. This year I am made superintendent of superintendents. Now Iltani shall become bride of Marduk!”
Iltani went with all her ornaments to the temple of Marduk. She went not unhappily, though she wept at parting with Ramtû, Ina-banat and Belatum. She was going to a life of honour that, so far as it went, and did she always follow righteousness, would reflect honour upon her kindred. A votary of Marduk gave up certain sweetnesses in life, but also she found others. Iltani’s kindred and their friends brought her in procession to the temple. Priests and priestesses ritually met her, Lugal-naid ritually renounced his part in her to the god, her dower that she brought was ritually spread around her, music was made, incense hung in the air....
That had been some months ago. Now that part of the huge temple which she inhabited was familiar to Iltani. Familiar were the rooms and rooms within rooms, the courts in sun and shade, the rites and duties, service of the temple, spirit of the hive!
Huge was the temple, many were its inmates, multifarious its activities. The god and the king who ruled under his shield so merged that the king was half-divine and the god more than half-royal. All life moved under the glance of the god and his fingers pushed it here, withdrew it there, or, resting underneath, held it steadfast. The fingers of the god, clothed in flesh, became his most numerous priesthood. Learning was of the god, judgement and law were of the god, administration was of the god, though the king was named with him.
Marduk was served by a mighty host of priests. Priestesses there were also and in number, but by no means in so great a number. But men and women together, his servants swarmed in his enormous temple. The people likewise filed or poured through the long series of temple rooms and passageways and small and large courts. The people came to the temple for knowledge, for law, for healing, for divination, for exorcism of the innumerable evil ones, for directions as to paths through every thorny desert, for comfort, for glow, for subtle excuses, for life anew, for spiritual wine, and for direct, practical, everyday business. They brought covenanted-for produce of every description, they poured into the temple treasury the temple-tax, that was a broad and deep and continuing stream.
Much life was there, centring in, flowing through the temple, for any to view who had vision, and to grow by who had the seed of growth.
The priestesses of the temple taught, judged, divined, exorcised, healed, performed work of scribe and notary, directed, executed, much as did the priests, and as well. They received honour as did the priests. From their status there fell a fairly broad shaft of warmth and light upon all women of their land. In Egypt, too, fell by the goddess-way a certain light and warmth and colour upon the entire mother hemisphere. In Egypt there was Isis, in Babylonia, Ishtar. And all the Babylonian gods had consorts, goddesses with powers and with devotees. There was Ninlil for Ea, and Antum for Anu, and Sarpanit for Marduk.
That was all true. Yet all was in the convention. Ishtar, indeed, remained dimly, hugely, outside, but Ishtar to an extent undefined, general, like the air that you breathed without thinking of it. But all the others were as wives of men, honourable, free in much, in much powerful, but with distinctness secondary. All men and gods, by virtue of manship, rose by a head above women and goddesses. That was held to be the nature of things, fundamental and unalterable. Faint, old trails of old, old story, old, inexplicable customs resting like crones in nooks and corners, might breathe of a time when the indubitable truth was hardly so firmly established. But the time must have been ancient, ancient! Now ever the truth seemed to grow more established.
The young Iltani came to a wide corner of the temple quarter, rooms below, small, low rooms above, twisting, outside stairs, passageways, large court and small courts, and in the central court a well and old trees. In many places the walls, within and without, had those great pictures of gods and goddesses and sacred beasts and all their huge adventure. It was like living, in a far later time, with a child’s gay picture book or blocks. In the long hot summer, these pictures struck like brands upon the tissues of the mind. In the short, chill winter, with their red and their yellow, they gave out warmth and light.