Chapter 127
When the gods created mankind,
Death they dispensed to mankind,
Life they kept for themselves.
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— The Epic of Gilgamesh
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July – 3,390 BC
Earth: Village of Assur
NINSIANNA
The entire village streamed outside the walls to the place they buried their dead; with graves dug shallowly into the earth, and then piled high with rocks to make a cairn. Atop each grave, a clay figure had been placed representing the deceased, dressed in scraps of fabric and piled high with the family's customary "prayer offering" to the shaman: three urns of beer and eighty loaves of bread.
Sweating beneath her heavy shamanic headdress and itchy bone neckplate, Ninsianna recited the Atra-hasis, her people's origin story:
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God and man were mixed together in the clay.
A god sacrificed, a sp
