“In honor of his scorned daughter, Goddess of Lust and War, Ishtar, Anu, the very Sky under which men dwelt, led out the Bull of Heaven and handed its lead to Ishtar, who led the Bull of Heaven down to earth.

The bellow of the Bull of Heaven shook the world, the life blood of which—the streams and marshes—froze in their earthbound veins and became sunken and dry. The great River Euphrates lost ten feet of depth.

The Bull approached Uruk and snorted, causing the earth to gape open and swallow a hundred warriors. The Bull snorted again and the earth opened to swallow two hundred warriors. The Bull snorted a third time and caused the earth to split open and swallow Enkidu up to his waist. But the Wildman grabbed the Bull by its horns and fought even as it spat and shat on him in its fury.

Gilgamesh came to the aid of Enkidu, shouting encouragement, certain of victory, flushed with confidence.

Enkidu circled behind the Bull, grabbed its massive tail and places his foot on its haunch as Gilgamesh, with the skill of a butcher, thrust his great knife into its neck, below the base of the horn.

They had slain the Bull of Heaven.

The heart they offered to the Sun, their patron deity, the all-illuminating eye of justice. Bowing to the Sun, they sat side-by-side like brothers.

Ishtar was outraged. Climbing to the top of Uruk’s massive wall, she contorted her form and shrieked, “Gilgamesh slandered me and now the barbarian has slain his own punisher.”

Enkidu laughed at these womanly words, ripped off one of the Bull’s thighs and flung it at Ishtar, saying, “If I could but catch you I would rip you apart and festoon you with the Bull’s vile entrails.”

Ishtar summoned the holy whores who lay with men in her honor. These, her priestesses, placed the Bull’s thigh on the altar and wailed their sacred lament.

Gilgamesh summoned the master craftsmen who marveled at the lapis lazuli horns, each of which weighed thirty pounds and held two hundred gallons. These were filled with oil to anoint the statue of his father, Lugalbanda, previous King of Uruk, the man who had impregnated the goddess Ninsun to conceive Gilgamesh.

The two champions of Uruk bathed in the river and walked hand in hand to the palace as the people cheered.

Gilgamesh inquired of the singing girls, “Who is the most handsome man, the bravest hero?

Gilgamesh is the most handsome of men.

Enkidu is the bravest of heroes.

We are the conquerors who, in our fury flung the Bull’s thigh in Ishtar’s face.

Now, in the streets of Uruk, there remains none to avenger her.”

In the palace they sang and feasted into the night.

Later, as the warriors lay upon their great bed asleep, Enkidu had a terrifying dream.

When Enkidu woke he said to Gilgamesh, “Dear friend, the great gods gather—why?”

The story of Ishtar and the Bull of Heaven is obviously a tale of drought and earthquake, woven into a form that warns the ruler that harkens back to his ancient warrior/herder roots and to the hunt, that his rule is not subject to the whims of his heart but to the hunger of his people, and all live under the everlasting, ever-shifting sky, where the malevolent gods gather.

By spurning Ishtar Gilgamesh broke the ancestral covenant that his father had upheld by mating with the goddess Ninsun, matron of cattle. However, the will of the gods had shifted and Gilgamesh must now mate with the quintessential goddess of civilization, of lust, of conquest—of materialism in its most dynamic forms. Gilgamesh’s choice of a divine mate was not as in sync with his values as was his father’s.

In Indo-European cultures, a bull’s thigh was the god’s portion burnt upon the altar, and, in actuality, was consumed by the priesthood on behalf of the god. This story may represent an oligarchic conspiracy of the priesthood of Uruk laying blame upon the king for natural calamities. Perhaps he reduced their tax base in an appeal to the warrior class and became the victim of palace intrigue?

The ease at which the Bull of Heaven was dispatched, suggests, at the very least, that a successful warrior king could be brought low by a priestly conspiracy at home. This was an age, in Mesopotamia and Egypt, in which the priesthood could conceivable challenge the ruler.

Whatever the possible folk origins of this tale, it makes an excellent meditation on the domestication of Civilized Man as well as the vulnerability of a large community in a fixed location dependent upon intensive grain cultivation, quite literally living at the mercy of Heaven. As late as 1676 Increase Mather, a modern man, wrote of God punishing heathens and Christians alike through drought, and the heathen Indians themselves held great powwows trying to bring on rain through sorcery and eventually begged the Christians for the intercession of their lone God.