This is the sequel to the original story of The Princess Wife. If
you read this translation before reading the original story, then you will know
the end of the story before you know the beginning.
[x-] = Missing or damaged text {… } =
explanatory comments
Prince Mulu is the Great Fatted Donkey. He is the husband of the
Princess Wife. This sequel begins after Mulu has been
banished from the royal court by his wife.
The Princess Wife (The Sequel)
[Unknown number of lines missing]
Mulu goes to work {acting like a defeated man}. He has been
brought low.
He walks in the manure of the countryside. He has become a pauper.
Mulu is a man without power, without women, and without virtue.
Like a storm, Mulu flies to the wife of Bantu, the Supreme Lord.
She says, “This will open her pure heart. Behold these jewelry
beads of stone.
“These you can barter for baskets of food.”
{Mulu returns to his former wife and he shows her the beads.}
{He acts pitiful and he attempts to reconcile with the princess
wife.}
“Behold these beads! ... I am not a hero. I am not a great man…
“and I have no heaps of grain.”
His wife already knows the plan of the man who is not a hero.
She says, “You're planning to get back your barley and your princely
robes,
“but my trusted maidservant has told me all about your lack of
character.
“The price of one sila of grain {for each bead} also
reveals that my father
“gave you these stones.
“I will purchase them for a basket of [x x…]”
{Then suddenly…}
The “man not his servant” {rebel, enemy} strangles Mulu.
{The wife says to the assailant} “But you are a strong man!”
She decides that he would make a suitable lord and husband.
{The wife continues . . .}
“All women are prostitutes for men who rob and plunder.
“So I decree that the baskets of food will go to the person
“who can strike and kill with his hands.”
For his elder brother’s possessions, Zuzu brays like a happy
replacement donkey.
The princess says, “I shall give you a regal house, and you will be
"a gentleman of the ašag field, who gives
orders but does not work.
“Zuzu, you are destined to
be a powerful man! You will be my princely companion,
“and the Lord of the Cake Rations. And I will be your Princess of the Fodder,
“forever and ever and ever again!”
Zuzu was a virile, slender young man, but with all his grain, he
quickly became
a very very fat man.
{Zuzu has recently returned from another campaign of plundering
the countryside.}
He heaps up his captured grain, his newly captured henbur grain.
Zuzu’s possessions, his authority, and his stolen heaps of grain,
will
soon come to an end.
The princess has decided to replace Zuzu, who is not a man of the
people.
His land and his barley are turned over to his slave women.
Zuzu does not get the grain that he plundered from the
countryside.
The royal woman has decided against his destiny.
The princess declares, “Zuzu is not a man of The Land! {of Sumer}
“For the devastation done by his hands, Zuzu will be banished!”
{Zuzu is banished from the royal court.}
After the sale (of his possessions}, Zuzu, who was not a man of
the people,
is left with nothing.
The verdict of the princess is that “the man with no land” shall
work with his hands.
Zuzu enters into debt slavery.
He becomes the new member in her father's team
of workers.
He measures out the fields, he sows the grain and threshes it,
