The Wanderers

by Mary Johnston

Inmates of this part of the temple, and they were many, were not at all without steady, even employment. The whole, huge place worked, religion being so official, Marduk so actually pervading all that the land knew of the actual.... Iltani found herself with others under the orders of the votary Â-rishat, who kept the room where were kept the clay tablets upon which were written, week by week, the simpler annals of the house of the women of the deity. Iltani had been taught to write. Now with a bride of Marduk a little older than herself, she copied defective tablets upon fresher clay. She worked in a little room from which one stepped into a little court in which there grew a great and old fig tree.

Amat-Tashmit loved to talk. When the votary Â-rishat was near, when other, older votaries passed or stood talking among themselves, the two novices were silent enough. But when none was by, Amat-Tashmit talked, and Iltani also, though less than the other.

Amat-Tashmit, having had the longer residence here, could instruct her sister in devotion. Iltani learned the round of life, so far as Amat-Tashmit had trodden it or could report upon others’ treading. Iltani heard from Amat-Tashmit of the idiosyncrasies of her many and many companion votaries of Marduk. There was a votary of Marduk for every day and night of Marduk’s year. And Amat-Tashmit talked of the bands and bands of priests, the huge number of servants of Marduk. She talked of individual priests of fame, persons of high rank in the court of Marduk. When she spoke of these reverence sat upon her tongue and in the ears of Iltani. But she talked also of priests of no especial fame whom she had chanced to observe. The most of these were young—young men under guidance in the house of Marduk. If was all harmless talk enough that Amat-Tashmit made, but around it and through it ran a haunting warmth and colour.

Matters of fact, serenely accepted as the right and proper will of the god, the king and all Babylon, came also into the talk of the two. As they worked they might look up from the clay and from the fine wedge-shaped stylus which each used, look up and forth, and beyond the fig tree see the “mountain of the god,” the tower, rising by stages high, high against the blue heaven. They saw the broad, winding way leading from stage to stage, and the figures, small at that distance, ascending, descending, ascending. And they might see the chamber atop, room and shrine of Marduk, high up, high up, goal of the seven stairs! The light struck against the bright pictures of the chamber’s outer walls. Sometimes the tower top dazzled like the sun, sometimes it was cosy or golden, a star of morn or eve.

Iltani with Amat-Tashmit watched with a kind of fascination this tower of seven levels, one above the other. It was the “mountain of the god.” Within that topmost room stood the great figure of the god, overlaid with gold, and all around were ranged the most precious votive figures, figures given by kings and by the queens of kings. And in the room was the bed of the god, hung with gold, the bed of Marduk, god of gods, whom to serve was honour and felicity, whom to represent was honour and felicity, the bed of Marduk and the goddess Sarpanit, his spouse.

Each day the novices saw borne around the tower and upward the votary whose name was set against that day in the year of Marduk. She was borne in procession, with music and song. The two watched her and that sister throng mount from stage to stage. Arrived upon the seventh the company circled three times the mountain-top. Then the bride of Marduk went alone into the freshly swept and garlanded Marduk-room. The two watching from the court of the fig tree might see the company part from her it had brought, reabsorb into itself the votary whose place she took, whose day this year was passed, and again with music descend the spiral way. The day went. Iltani and Amat-Tashmit, working with stylus and clay, gave not much thought to the tower and the votary who praised Marduk alone in the chamber where was reared the great gold-covered image.

But when the rays of the sun were slant they stepped from their own small room into the court of the fig tree, for they heard trumpets and knew that the priest who that night would represent the god now went to the mountain-top. Small figures in the distance, they saw him and the band that bore him thither. The strong chanting of the priests came to them, the light glinted upon the lifted, waved, gilded, many-shaped symbols and insignia of Marduk. They watched this company also from stage to stage, to the tower height, watched the company part there from the human Marduk, watched it descend in the red sunset light.... Up there the votary was no longer alone. Up there were Marduk and Sarpanit.

The days passed, the weeks and the months. The temple, or her corner of the temple, grew home-like to Iltani. Around her were much folk and manifold business. She laboured with others, rested and played, ate and drank and slept in a field of crowded bloom, of a thousand bees that gathered honey. All was under rule, all that was done was done ritually, arrows drawn to hit the sun. But many had forgotten the aim of the arrows. The marked rhythm pleased Iltani. Her body seemed to move with it, and that within her body, the worker that had spun the body from itself....

Amat-Tashmit had been given by her parents to the god some months before the coming of Iltani. Now Amat-Tashmit was shown her name written against such a day “for the holy room in the lofty house of Marduk.” Even the seeing of her name written made a gala day for the votary concerned. That day she was excused from work, she was served first at meal time, she was given a wreath of flowers. The next day she went to a range of rooms across the great court of the well and the trees. There, for so many days, would be training, instruction, purification, lasting until the day they adorned her and bore her with timbrel and song to the door of Marduk. As, every day, through the year of Marduk there wound the procession to the “mountain of the god,” so, every day, there moved through the courts of the votaries a woman crowned with flowers.... Iltani watched with a thrill Amat-Tashmit set the flower wreath upon her head.

The next day Amat-Tashmit was gone across the court of the well. Iltani, alone, copied accounts in the small room behind the great tree.